I sincerely doubt many out there would care to venture out of this comfortable frog well of ours to descent on this little coffee shop out at some obscure back water town off Ipoh just to eat fish. Heck, travelling there alone may take over half a day by plane and bus, and it is not even half the distance to Bangkok. But give me the slightest chance- that chance to mull the thought of arriving at a place where the “strength” signals on my mobile phone may decide not to follow and do a “I’m good, you go ahead without me” on me, situation. Or perhaps, be at a place where we may actually have trouble getting used to parking incessantly on unlined small town street-side parking lots and where they DON’T CHARGE for it, or worse, where we can’t find a star rated coffee joint that charges a buck and an arm for a latte in plush stale sofas in air-con comfort by a corner of a mall. All, could mean the promise of adventure for some brick-walled street warrior like me. I’ll do it in a heartbeat.

My makan maven in Malaysia ( I can only call him HK for this article and respect his privacy), tempted and teased me with a “let’s do this trip, it’s rough, it’s ulu and it’s the only place on earth that serves up the Sultan fish, caught in the wild”. I had no idea what the heck Sultan fish was but it was the “only place on earth” words that made me go insane and throw mobile connectivity convenience to the wild. So, it was “Lenggong, here I come.”.

The coffeeshop restaurant is as kampong style as it comes and plastered with cute kindergarten style color marker posters.

Lenggong is a town so small, that if you blinked or looked at your GPS searching for it as you pass it, you may miss this one road bypass town. Stand outside this coffeeshop restaurant I am talking about, glance left and right, and you would have seen the whole town, sitting pretty calm and old at the foot of some majestic hills hovering pretty behind. The place is archaeologically significant as there are many traces of Malaysian prehistory that were once excavated from that sleepy town. A Perak man skeleton once found there was believed to be over 10,000 years old. It is about one hundred kilometeres from Ipoh and a four hour drive from Kuala Lumpur. The ride there is tremendously scenic. You pass by towns with limestone hills which are watercolor picturesque and as you near Lenggong, veering gingerly along lakes and rivers, you begin to see “ikan air tawar” signs posted along the roads to lead you to eateries that claim to offer these “fresh water fish”. But folks in the know will point you to Sin Hup Yik restaurant. It occupies two shoplots and is decorated with hand-made kindergarten style colour-marker posters on vanguard sheets. It just touts what they sell and list about ten strange sounding local fishes. Boss Ng Chee Kin left nice stints in Kuala Lumpur kitchens 18 years ago to set it up and over the years, he began to be known for steaming local river fishes. “ I don’t do any other styles. It would be sayang to deep fry it or hide its fresh sweetness with some special sauce”, and Chee Kin also tells me that the Jelawat or Sultan fish is his blue plate signature. If you had tried this supremely sweet, softly firm and juicy fish in its freshest glory, you will also understand why it is hard for me to go back to Pating fish - it is just too amateurish. Even those few bones it contained did not sway my decision. He simply steams it perfectly and douses it with a soy, ginger and spring onion sauce (which was not exactly the best executed, but is easily forgiven, with the fresh Sultan fish it sits on). He did not even bother to de-scale the fish and working on lifting the layers of scales and be rewarded with the flesh, was like walking the stairway to makan heaven. The other fish we demolished was the Tengalan, very omega oily and soft, but this had the runner up prize that afternoon, in our opinion.

Hail, the supremely sweet and juicy Sultan fish, steamed here with its scales intact for the best experience.

Of course, they offer the usual suspects like some chicken and that pork dish but they are mere pitstops to the main action, and best part, the town’s bus station is merely one hundred metres from this coffeeshop. And if it floats your boat, the sultan fish’s scientific name is leptobarbus hoevenii and is native to South East Asia.