Pempek Candy on Jalan Sudirman is the most famous of Palembang's many dedicated pempek restaurants — the kind of place where local families come for a Sunday-morning bowl, businessmen drop in between meetings, and visiting Indonesians from elsewhere on the archipelago detour specifically for lunch.
Pempek is a deep-fried fish-and-sago cake, served in clear broth or with a sweet-sour palm-sugar-and-vinegar sauce called cuko. Candy serves a dozen different styles, of which pempek kapal selam ("submarine pempek," wrapped around a whole egg) and pempek lenggang (grilled in banana leaf) are the must-tries. Cheap and excellent.