BREAKFAST AT BERRY’S
My food experience in Puchong
“Nasi goreng ayam…no garlic”
My first free lunch in Puchong came with a free lesson. But no, thanks—I’m a culinary art explorer. Noble told me that Malaysian dishes are usually garnished with lots of garlic which gives them a peculiar—yet intriguing—taste. The Nigerians I met in Malaysia had conservative palates—not me. In R. Kelly’s words, I have a delicate palate. I easily get bored with food. I spent each Sunday of my 2 years in that land trying out new delicacies. If I didn’t visit a new restaurant, I tried something new on the menu at my regular spots.
I’d once read somewhere, the importance of breakfast & how a beverage or a slice of bread would suffice. This was how my coffee (& tea) ritual started. I find it hard to eat early in the morning. I remembered how I would stock the fridge with iced tea & canned coffee—omo, how I’ve missed this. There was this vending machine on the ground floor at Binary University that came to the rescue whenever I ran out.
But there was this special place where, after early morning lectures, I would go for a late breakfast. Across the road from the school, Berry’s offered sandwiches, cakes & pastries…it provided the final answer to my breakfast headache. I sat in the office sometime last year, a cup of hot coffee in hand, thinking of what I could have for breakfast as Adeola had run out of biscuits—Berry’s came to mind & I searched on Google, just to see the image of the bakery. A nostalgic wave washed over me.
Ever since that day last year, I’d wanted to write a poem. Every time I opened the note, a blank space stared at me. It’s no wonder, though. I’d not been able to write my experience in that Asian country into poems since I returned to Lagos. I’d written one for Susan—a white lover/guitar in my arms on the beach of Langkawi. I’d written another about Adam, a friendly Asian boy I met in an elevator—perhaps the only genuine Malay smile I was offered throughout my stay. I looked back at my time in that country & I had two regrets—didn’t attend the Linking Park concert at Kuala Lumpur & didn’t visit the Langkawi resort. I wrote a poem about the latter in December.
I made a variety of special sauces for rice—because the available red pepper could not give that Nigerian beef or chicken stew taste. I experimented with my vegetables a lot—shrimps, gizzards, carrots, sausages—why not? I cooked for over a dozen African friends on my birthday. Suji (our version of semo or wheat), rice, baked beans & my special sauce. It was a mistake. They all wanted to visit again. They wanted another taste of my delicacies.
Last week, I was chatting with a friend in the UK & we talked about having more time at your disposal in a foreign land. I had a PS3 & fast internet, so my Zambian friends would come around. We would order buckets of KFC chicken & some beer, play soccer into the early hours of the day. Umer, my Pakistani housemate, would make curry chicken sauce & capati. He was used to communal dinners—never failed to invite us to the table every time he cooked. One particular day, I feigned sleep—oh, what persistence he had knocking my room door. It was the third consecutive day he’d made dinner. & yeah, it was capati & curry chicken.
I can’t forget the Asian Café, too. Here, you have a variety of continental dishes. We had hoped we could relive the Nigerian suya experience when after church service at the Chinese Methodist, we had a valedictory dinner for one of our friends returning after he completed his programme. This would rate as my worst culinary experience in Puchong. The grilled meat had sugar. I couldn’t even swallow.
I enjoyed the potluck dinners we had at the Chinese Methodist. I enjoyed the Christmas lunch at a Chinese restaurant—especially the constant refill of the complementary Chinese tea. I ate the shark pepper soup & it was delicious. It was only the octopus I couldn’t bring myself to taste.
Someone said black coffee is for psychopaths. I don’t know how true this is, but one of the experiences that stood out for me was this black roast coffee I tried at one of the Cafes on IOI Boulevard. I felt my tongue disappear! It’s over ten years & I still crave that brutal brew.