Steam-Table Feast · Minangkabau Rice

Nasi Padang

Photo: Chensiyuan / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 3.0

There's no menu to read at a nasi padang stall — diners just point at whichever pre-cooked dishes look good from a steam-table lineup that can run past twenty different curries, stews, and sambals at once.

Steamed rice is served with a self-selected spread of dishes ladled straight from a long steam table — rendang, beef lung sambal, fried chicken, curried vegetables — a format exported from West Sumatra and long settled into Singapore's Malay food centres.

Why it's made this way: Nasi padang is the Minangkabau people's signature culinary export from the city of Padang, and Minangkabau migrants who settled in Singapore carried its steam-table format into the city's Muslim food quarters, including the stalls around Kampong Glam and Geylang Serai.