A small box game based on food from Southeast Asia? This is different!
Hi all, I’m Joe Chambers. I had the pleasure of visiting the Asian Board Game Festival (ABGF) – Malaysia in Penang in July 2025, and came across Ketupat Rendang, a game that shows off a bit of culture from Asia.
The Theme, The Food
In preparation for Raya, a holiday marking the end of Ramadan, you and up to three other players are making sure your favorite dishes are cooked and ready for the open house feast. Ketupat Rendang Card Game, from Malaysian publishers Meja Belakang, is a food themed card game that features some popular foods you’ll find in southeast Asia. Ketupat and rendang is a southeast Asian dish which has boiled rice cake wrapped in palm leaves (ketupat) paired with a spicy meat dish made with coconut milk, herbs and spices (rendang).
The other popular dishes featured include Satay – a seasoned, skewered, and grilled meat dish; Dodol – a sweet and sticky, toffee-like dessert; and Lemang – a salted glutinous rice and coconut milk dish wrapped in banana leaves that’s cooked on an open fire inside a bamboo tube.
Penang has been mentioned by many friends from Southeast Asia to have the best food in Malayasia, so this was a perfect place to visit. I highly suggest you try these at least once in your life!
The Game
Players are dealt a secret dish card face down at the beginning of the game and want to make sure their main dish, as well as the side dish shown on the card, are cooked as often as possible. A dish is considered cooked when the food symbol is adjacent to at least one fire symbol. A player’s main dish (bigger icon) is worth 2 points and the side dish (smaller icon) is worth 1 point. Most cards will have multiple food symbols and fire symbols in different sections of the card, so they’ll need to be placed strategically to score.
The back of the center starting card tells you how many cards to remove based on player count, then place it face up with the three starting fires on three sections of the card in the center of the play area. Each player is dealt 2 cards while the remaining cards are shuffled to form a deck in reach of all players.
On your turn, draw a card and then place a card. You can place the card in any matching orientation next to a previously placed card or on top of one or two sections of a previously placed card. The only restriction is the placed card can never completely cover an entire card at any time. The main strategy is to make sure your dishes are exposed and cooked while covering up other dishes.
When the deck is empty the game will end immediately after the final player’s turn, leaving each player with two cards in hand at the end. Any cards with the fire symbol left in players hands are worth 2 negative points, so make sure to play them or your final score could be negative at the end of the game (like mine was the first time I played). It’s important to remember that each main dish is also someone’s side dish, so other players may help your dishes score points without knowing!
My Experience and Thoughts
While I was exploring ABGF for the first time, this game kept appearing out of the corner of my eye. The friendly colors popped on the cards making the food look quite savory. The game became very hard to ignore after seeing some of the cards laid out. I’m happy to have picked it up while I was traveling as this is not only an easy to pick up family friendly game, but also a memorable souvenir from my travels. I plan to bring Ketupat Rendang out to more of my gaming meetups and put it into my rotation of ‘filler’ games.
This is just the start of my foray of sharing games of my travels while traveling. Hopefully this has caught your interest as I plan to introduce more interesting games from our fellow hobbyists around the world.
Unfortunately, this game is not widely available. You can follow the publisher, Meja Belakang, on Instagram and YouTube to see their next convention stop or their next crowdfunding campaign.
Ketupat Rendang was purchased at the Asian Board Game Festival – Malaysia convention in Penang.
Highs
- The cultural theme is appealing, especially when it is food related
- Strategic yet simple game to learn and play
- Small box and short play time makes it easy for on-the-go gaming
Lows
- Once other players figure out which dish belongs to who, it’s easy to be targeted
- Can be a tiny bit random depending on the cards available
Complexity
Time Commitment
Replayability
