PALEMBANG, Saco-Indonesia.com - Di Kota Palembang, Sumatera Selatan, pindang ikan patin menjadi kuliner pilihan selain empek-empek dan tekwan. Rasa pedas, asam, dan manis menyatu bersama ikan pantin yang montok.

Ada beberapa tempat pindang ikan patin yang terkenal di Palembang, dua di antaranya di Rumah Makan Pindang Musi Rawas, Jalan Angkatan 45 No 18, dan di Rumah Makan Sri Melayu, Jalan Demang Lebar Daun. Masing-masing memiliki kelebihan, tergantung selera lidah penikmatnya.

Kompas.com sempat makan di dua tempat tersebut. Pertama di RM Sri Melayu. Tempat ini cukup terkenal bagi pengunjung Kota Pelambang yang berasal dari luar kota. Tempatnya luas dan nyaman.

Ketika tiba, pengunjung bisa langsung duduk di meja, atau lesehan. Tidak perlu mengantre sama sekali. Selanjutnya, pelayan restoran akan langsung melayani pesanan Anda. Jangan sungkan untuk bertanya menu andalan di rumah makan ini.

Ada lima menu andalan di sini, yakni pindang ikan patin, pindang tulang (pindang iga sapi), pindang bawung, pindang salai dan pindang udang. Enaknya, jika sudah terlalu lapar, makanan pesanan cepat tersaji alias tidak pakai lama.

Setelah memesan makanan utama, meja akan dipenuhi dengan makanan yang otomatis langsung disajikan. Nasi panas dari bakul yang masih asapnya masih mengepul, lalapan yang terdiri dari terong bulat, kacang panjang, wortel, timun, daun kemangi dan potongan labu.

Selain itu ada ikan seluang, yang merupakan khas Sungai Musi, yang digoreng kering. Ikan ini seperti ikan teri yang berukuran besar, hanya saja tidak diolah asin. Ada juga pepes patin goreng, bedug (bentuknya seperti pemukul bedug) yang terbuat dari campuran daging ikan gabus dan pepaya muda, sambal hati udang, tempoyak (duren mentah yang difermentasikan dan dicampur cabe merah dibungkus daun pisang kemudian dipepes), serta sambal.

Tak lama, muncul menu utama yang sudah dipesan, yakni pindang. Pindang ikan patin yang panas sangat menggugah selera. Warnanya segar, terdapat potongan cabe, daun kemangi, serta irisan nanas menyatu bersama potongan ikan patin dan kuahnya yang merah. Rasanya... segar dan pas.

Sementara pindang tulang, hampir mirip dengan sop iga. Hanya saja, kuahnya kental dan tidak pelit bumbu. Terdapat potongan tomat dan cabe rawit di dalam kuahnya.

Pindang bawung, yang satu ini sangat jarang dapat disajikan. Termasuk beruntung jika pengunjung bisa memesannya karena langkanya ikan bawung. Sementara pindang salai harus menunggu 10 menit untuk penyajiannya. Sebab, ikannya harus diasap terlebih dulu.

Dilihat dari tempat dan makanannya, jangan dibayangkan makan di tempat ini mahal. Kisaran harga makanannya antara Rp 15.000 hingga Rp 70.000.

Di lain hari, jajal juga makan pindang patin di Pindang Musi Rawas. Dengan tempat yang terbatas, sekitar 10 hingga 15 meja, pengunjung harus rela mengantre. Apalagi di saat jam makan siang. Antrean bisa mencapai belasan.

Setiap yang antre akan mendapat nomor, sehingga tidak ada saling serobot. Menu andalannya sama dengan di Rumah Makan Sri Melayu, masakan serba pindang. Hanya saja, rasanya yang berbeda. Namun kembali lagi, semua tergantung selera lidah penikmatnya. Jika suka bumbu yang ringan, di Musi Rawas tepatnya. Jika suka spicy, Sri Melayu pilihan yang tepat.

Editor:Liwon Maulana

Sumber:Kompas.com

Hockey is not exactly known as a city game, but played on roller skates, it once held sway as the sport of choice in many New York neighborhoods.

“City kids had no rinks, no ice, but they would do anything to play hockey,” said Edward Moffett, former director of the Long Island City Y.M.C.A. Roller Hockey League, in Queens, whose games were played in city playgrounds going back to the 1940s.

From the 1960s through the 1980s, the league had more than 60 teams, he said. Players included the Mullen brothers of Hell’s Kitchen and Dan Dorion of Astoria, Queens, who would later play on ice for the National Hockey League.

One street legend from the heyday of New York roller hockey was Craig Allen, who lived in the Woodside Houses projects and became one of the city’s hardest hitters and top scorers.

“Craig was a warrior, one of the best roller hockey players in the city in the ’70s,” said Dave Garmendia, 60, a retired New York police officer who grew up playing with Mr. Allen. “His teammates loved him and his opponents feared him.”

Young Craig took up hockey on the streets of Queens in the 1960s, playing pickup games between sewer covers, wearing steel-wheeled skates clamped onto school shoes and using a roll of electrical tape as the puck.

His skill and ferocity drew attention, Mr. Garmendia said, but so did his skin color. He was black, in a sport made up almost entirely by white players.

“Roller hockey was a white kid’s game, plain and simple, but Craig broke the color barrier,” Mr. Garmendia said. “We used to say Craig did more for race relations than the N.A.A.C.P.”

Mr. Allen went on to coach and referee roller hockey in New York before moving several years ago to South Carolina. But he continued to organize an annual alumni game at Dutch Kills Playground in Long Island City, the same site that held the local championship games.

The reunion this year was on Saturday, but Mr. Allen never made it. On April 26, just before boarding the bus to New York, he died of an asthma attack at age 61.

Word of his death spread rapidly among hundreds of his old hockey colleagues who resolved to continue with the event, now renamed the Craig Allen Memorial Roller Hockey Reunion.

The turnout on Saturday was the largest ever, with players pulling on their old equipment, choosing sides and taking once again to the rink of cracked blacktop with faded lines and circles. They wore no helmets, although one player wore a fedora.

Another, Vinnie Juliano, 77, of Long Island City, wore his hearing aids, along with his 50-year-old taped-up quads, or four-wheeled skates with a leather boot. Many players here never converted to in-line skates, and neither did Mr. Allen, whose photograph appeared on a poster hanging behind the players’ bench.

“I’m seeing people walking by wondering why all these rusty, grizzly old guys are here playing hockey,” one player, Tommy Dominguez, said. “We’re here for Craig, and let me tell you, these old guys still play hard.”

Everyone seemed to have a Craig Allen story, from his earliest teams at Public School 151 to the Bryant Rangers, the Woodside Wings, the Woodside Blues and more.

Mr. Allen, who became a yellow-cab driver, was always recruiting new talent. He gained the nickname Cabby for his habit of stopping at playgrounds all over the city to scout players.

Teams were organized around neighborhoods and churches, and often sponsored by local bars. Mr. Allen, for one, played for bars, including Garry Owen’s and on the Fiddler’s Green Jokers team in Inwood, Manhattan.

Play was tough and fights were frequent.

“We were basically street gangs on skates,” said Steve Rogg, 56, a mail clerk who grew up in Jackson Heights, Queens, and who on Saturday wore his Riedell Classic quads from 1972. “If another team caught up with you the night before a game, they tossed you a beating so you couldn’t play the next day.”

Mr. Garmendia said Mr. Allen’s skin color provoked many fights.

“When we’d go to some ignorant neighborhoods, a lot of players would use slurs,” Mr. Garmendia said, recalling a game in Ozone Park, Queens, where local fans parked motorcycles in a lineup next to the blacktop and taunted Mr. Allen. Mr. Garmendia said he checked a player into the motorcycles, “and the bikes went down like dominoes, which started a serious brawl.”

A group of fans at a game in Brooklyn once stuck a pole through the rink fence as Mr. Allen skated by and broke his jaw, Mr. Garmendia said, adding that carloads of reinforcements soon arrived to defend Mr. Allen.

And at another racially incited brawl, the police responded with six patrol cars and a helicopter.

Before play began on Saturday, the players gathered at center rink to honor Mr. Allen. Billy Barnwell, 59, of Woodside, recalled once how an all-white, all-star squad snubbed Mr. Allen by playing him third string. He scored seven goals in the first game and made first string immediately.

“He’d always hear racial stuff before the game, and I’d ask him, ‘How do you put up with that?’” Mr. Barnwell recalled. “Craig would say, ‘We’ll take care of it,’ and by the end of the game, he’d win guys over. They’d say, ‘This guy’s good.’”