Malaysia: Old Village Satay Celup

We arrived in Melaka with no reservations, no plans, nothing.  We just showed up at the bus terminal, found a taxi driver, and had him drive us to a random guesthouse.  

Our taxi driver was fantastic.  He basically pointed out all the major landmarks and highlighted all the notable restaurants for us.

Unfortunately, we arrived in Melaka on a weekend and what we didn't know was that Melaka blows up every weekend.  People flood in from everywhere and guesthouses are booked well in advance.  Jalan-Jalan, the guesthouse we were dropped off at, was completely full, but the owner was super nice and let us leave our luggage there while we walked around.

We didn't go any further than next door.  There was one room left at Cheng Ho and though it didn't include a private bathroom, we snatched up the room once we saw another duo come in asking about availability.  We didn't want to chance losing the room and then not finding anything else.

The first thing we did after buying an overpriced map from the front desk was to look for satay celup.

Capitol Satay Celup is the famous one, hence the super long line:

CK and I took one look at the line and ducked into Old Village Satay Celup, which the monster line was covering up.

We weren't the only ones with the same idea.  Check out the other pragmatists:

The first thing you do is grab a tray and scope out the skewer selection:

Here's what we grabbed:

Meat on a stick, veggie on a stick, tofu on a stick, seafood on a stick, everything on a stick.  You get charged by the stick, so make sure you keep track.

Satay celup is basically hot pot with one very big distinction.  Instead of a soup base, you dip your skewers into boiling peanut sauce:

Yes, peanut sauce.  Anyone who knows me knows I hate hot pot (traumatic childhood experience), but satay celup rocks.  Like seriously.

To cool off the hot satay celup, we polished off some lime drinks:

With sour plum.  How unfortunate.

Anyway, satay celup is a must when you visit Melaka.  I don't know what Capitol Satay Celup does differently that makes it so popular, but Old Village Satay Celup wasn't too shabby.  Besides, we got an inside tip from the owner of Jalan-Jalan.  He told us that most of the satay celup restaurants on that street are owned by the same person.

Then again, I'm no satay celup expert.  Maybe the line really is worth it.


Old Village Satay Celup
No. 35, Lorong Bukit Cina
75100 Melaka, Malaysia