Day Trip to Tanjung Sepat

What do you do on a long weekend?
Take a road trip! And all the much better if that trip includes food!

Yeahhh! So that's how we decided to take a drive to Tg Sepat last weekend. In fact, my friend Z and I had wanted to go the weekend before but I managed to catch a bad cold that Saturday, so we decided to postpone the trip.
After reading about Ciki's post on her trip there and with Z's strong recommendation, Tg Sepat became a "must-go" place! And since my other good friend, X was also back in town, it was a perfect time to go for this mini adventure!

It was a cloudy morning when we set out after breakfast ... downcast skies and all... but nevertheless the drive to Tg Sepat was pleasant. It took about an hour from Shah Alam and traffic was great. We reached the little town at almost noon time and the first place we went to was the wet market. We were hoping to buy some fresh fish - we brought along our cooler bags too. However, we were disappointed as there was hardly any fish left at the stalls. The fishmongers told us to return in an hour or so when the next batch of fresh catch would arrive.
It was already starting to drizzle when we reached the market.

We saw some of these cute triangular spotted fish at one of the stalls. Not sure what they are called and certainly I have never seen them in our markets here. The fish-seller said they taste very good when fried. I didn't buy any because I thought we'd be coming back later when the next batch of fresh fish came in. We never did go back because by that time it was pouring and we headed straight home.
We asked the fish-seller where we could get some fishballs and he pointed us to a shop just behind the market.
Talk about "fresh"... well, these workers were actually making the fishballs by hand when we were there. There were quite a variety of fishballs... different shapes and sizes...

I ended up buying this lot of fishball stuff... good for steamboat, eh?
Next, we headed for the famous Tg Sepat Pau. It's located at Lorong 4, next to this Medan Penjaja...

This is the original shop - Hai Yew Heng...

They have just added on this "manufacturing facility" right across the original shop. This is where the paus are made and sold...
Modern machinery to help churn out the pau dough... but the pau are still wrapped manually...

Some of the paus, freshly steamed...
This is the menu of the variety of paus available. For those who don't read Chinese, they have paus with these fillings: pork ("sang yoke"), kaya, redbean paste, pickled veg + pork (mui choy + pork), vegetables and peanuts. The prices are pretty steep, for a small town like Tg Sepat... but the clientele is non-Tg Sepat, I would say. We saw busloads of tourists swarming and buying LOTS of the paus!

Well, we didn't do too badly either - we bought almost 100 paus among ourselves, haha!

They also have this special Yam Fritters being fried on-the-spot at the old pau shop...
They were really quite delicious... strips of yam with onions, shrimps, fried in batter...
Next we headed to the mushroom farm... the Ganofarm Factory...

If you think mushroom only comes in white and grey, then you're wrong! They come in all sorts of colours... pink, yellow, brick red, orange... all so pretty!

Don't you think these Yellow Oyster Mushrooms look kinda like corals?
And these are the Pink Oyster Mushrooms...
And of course, these are the regular grey ones...
They have a shop there which sells their packaged products... these are the yellow mushrooms...
And these are the other products... coffee...
... shampoo...
... and I bought this bottle of Lingzhi powder... seems it's some miracle healer... can heal all sorts of skin rashes, bites, burns, wounds etc!
From the Ganofarm, we headed towards the seafood restaurants as we were hungry by this time. We passed by this picturesque little scene on the way...
There's a row of seafood restaurants facing the sea but this one seemed to be the most popular one... Ocen Seafood Restaurant...

Lot 109 Jalan Laut
42800 Tg Sepat
Tel: 03-31974443

Can you see why? It was packed!
However, our food came pretty fast. The Fried Rice was pretty good - very flavourful. The portion we had was enough for all 5 of us and it cost only RM5.50.
The Hokkien Meehoon wasn't as good but again, at RM5.50, it was a huge plate! We couldn't even finish this - we had to tapau it back!
This plate of Sweet Potatoe Leaves (RM5) was fresh, sweet and crunchy and the portion was more than generous.
We thoroughly enjoyed the fresh Clams in Chinese Wine (RM16) - almost slurped all the soup!
Their Fried Crispy Sotong (RM10) was another crowd pleaser. The crispy pieces of fresh succulent squids disappeared in record time.
Now this here is their popular Fried Mini Fish (RM9) - I don't know what fish it is but these tender smooth morsels of fish fillet had very fine, hair-like bones which you can just swallow. Very unusual but very tasty!
We also ordered this Steamed Golden/Silver Pomfret (RM30) - extremely fresh and tasty.


The Mantis Shrimp (RM9) was disappointing. I couldn't really taste the shrimps as it was too overwhelmed in flour batter and buried underneath a mountain of bombay onions. You can skip this dish.The total bill for 5 of us was RM108 inclusive of drinks - we had several fresh Thai coconuts too! Very reasonable, good value and tasty lunch.

You should try visiting their toilets too... your end-products go straight down into a "collecting pond" right underneath...

See that pond there under the stilted toilet? I guess at high tide, the sea rushes in and "cleanse" the pond... so, errr... no swimming here please!

By lunch time, the sky was totally downcast and it started to rain... these scenes looked like some horror movie background, like something out of a Stephen King movie ... *imagine eerie soulful music too*

Oh, on the way back, driving past Morib, be careful of cows... they're everywhere and they think they're kings of the road!