Meldrum Walk in Downtown Johor Bahru, Malaysia

Meldrum Walk in Downtown Johor Bahru

Just a short 5 minutes stroll away from modern City Square Shopping Centre in the direction of Singapore, you slip into a completely different realm of street foods, colours, movement, sizzles, clanking, chopping, banter, pressing bodies, pungent spices, and aromatic cooking smoke.

This semi chaotic cacophony assaulting all your senses at once on all fronts is Meldrum Walk - a kind of paradise for foodies who dare. 



The BBQ chicken stall

The fried kway teow stall

The clay oven at the tandoori chicken stall



Satay stall

The air here feels warmer from the heat of so many bodies and the cooking fires.

Fried carrot cake

Fried kway teow

Another fried kway teow stall. There are 3 such stalls here, each with their own following

Cooking sizzles and smells aloft. The aromas rush up through your nose straight to those primeval centres in our brain, creating that heady pleasure.

Very popular Indian curry stall

Your are eyes busy trying to take in all the colours and movements and your mind goes racing unconsciously, "What shall I eat?" This is a more fascinating spread than any hotel buffet.

Kambing (mutton) soup

The popiah (spring roll) stall

Freshly pressed sugar cane juice



BBQ stingray

Fried oyster omelette

Foodie Alice in gastronomic Wonderland asks, "Where should I start?" Cheshire cat says, "In this culinary haven, any stall takes you to foodie's paradise." 

Meldrum Walk by day before it awakes into a gastronomic carnival at night fall.

If you get there early enough, you get to see the interesting sights of how the hawkers set up their food carts. Like cars in a factory, each food cart has the same basic design; however, each hawker displays their stall front and food in their own special way. These carts remind me of flower buds that bloom in full glory at night fall.

Hungry customers start to trickle into the lively alleyway around 5pm and by 6pm the flow increases to a flood. Every food stall is packed and you have to be quick, if you want a chair and table to eat at! Fortunately, in this convivial, friendly place, sharing a table with perfect strangers is perfectly normal and fun J

The tandoori chicken stall

The hawkers are busy but they still manage to keep their graciousness and sense of humour, and are very friendly. If a passer-by stops to snap a photo of the hawkers, they would often time pose for the camera and flash a cheerful smile. This makes the dining experience fun and comfortable, which I believe many diners and tourists would appreciate a lot.

Words and pictures can hardly do Meldrum Walk justice. Go and experience it for yourself. 

But be warned, this is a place for intrepid foodies only. Is this the place that separates those who "live to eat" from those who "eat to live"?

(Special thanks to fellow blogger Yvonne Lew whose blog post led me to this food paradise and inspired me to blog about it.)

Address: Meldrum Walk in downtown Johor Bahru

Map: http://g.co/maps/9m437

GPS: 1.460045,103.764673
Hours: 5:00pm to midnight

Non Halal and Halal sections available

Date visited: 12 Feb 2012, 13 Feb 2012, 18 Feb 2012