218 replies to this topic

[wgallois]

Thanks a lot Shiewie. My sister-in-law and her family live in KL, so we'll certainly be back soon. She's also vegetarian so any tips on vegetarian eating-out in KL would be much appreciated by her in the short-term and me in the, I hope, not-too-distant-future.

[tonkichi]

Here in Singapore, it has been raining every day this week.

Joel, let me know if you need any help on Singapore. Cheers

[Pan]

Joel, here are some comments about the East Coast, for whatever they're worth:

I have personal reasons to love Terengganu and the East Coast generally, because I spent two happy years of childhood there. That said, Tasik Kenyir in Ulu (inland) Terengganu is incredible! It's a huge artificial lake formed by damming the Terengganu River. I wish I could upload some photos, but I don't have the equipment. My mother, who's been to Burma and New Zealand, among other places, said it was the most beautiful place she'd ever seen. See if you can get permission to go up to the top of the dam and shoot photos from there.

I also like Kota Bharu, which has beautiful royal buildings in a style that as far as I know is unique to that city.

I didn't go scuba diving, but my brother did, off Pulau Perhentian, and loved it. Obviously, you won't be able to do that during or shortly after monsoon season, however.

Go to the markets everywhere and enjoy the wonderful fruits (if you have some more time to kill in Kuala Terengganu, walk a few blocks to the park where they have all kinds of plants, chickens, and so forth on display and for sale), and when you're in Kota Bharu, make sure to have some Ayam Percik and Nasi Ulam and sample the sweets in the Pasar Malam (night market).

Have a wonderful time, and I hope you don't get a stomach bug. Strangely, in the 1970s, only the cities had piped water, but piped water was considered safe everywhere in Malaysia, and now, it seems that all but the most remote villages have piped water, but piped water is considered unsafe to drink everywhere in the country. I found that kind of depressing.

I also recommend that you learn some Malay before you go, if you don't already know some. You probably won't need it in KL, where English is very widely spoken, but even in big cities on the East Coast, most people do not speak English.

[tonkichi]

In Singapore, I would....

- explore Little India. There's even a 24-hr shopping centre called Mustaffa's, its supermarket stocks a wonderful selection of mangoes, plus of course the usual spices etc

- explore Chinatown too, but particularly Keong Saik Road, which still has a slightly sleazy air even though chi-chi places like the 1929 hotel and art galleries have taken hold. Also Club Street. Avoid the food stalls in the open air section of Smith Street, walk further along until you reach Chinatown Complex where the hawker centre at Level 2 of is more interesting, plus you can check out the wet market on Level 1.

- visit Night Safari at night. Zoological Gardens or the Bird Park in the day. No cages, and plenty of engaging activities and shows.

- spend a day at The Botanical Gardens, esp the orchid and ginger gardens. Bring a picnic and a frisbee. Esp on weekends

- gawp at our latest architectural showpiece, the Esplanade art centre, which locals call the durian ( a thorny fruit aka King of Fruits. Eat it if you dare, the durian that is, not the Esplanade).

- definitely give Sentosa Island a miss. Major tourist trap and very expensive. Ditto for Clarke Quay, Chinese Garden and the Merlion.

[ecr]

It pains me that I have to spend 3 1/2 hours of my time in Malaysia, at lunchtime no less, in the KL airport .... Is there anything at all decent to eat in the domestic terminal? Probably not nearby --- I know the airport is in the middle of nowhere.

Or should I just pack a sandwich?

[Shiewie]

Hi ecr

Think packing a sandwich would be your best bet.

The food places at the airport are mainly fastfood chains and they are more expensive than the same outlets in town. It seems there was a pretty good nasi lemak place previously at the domestic terminal but MauKitten says that they've changed operators and it's quite inedible now - she couldn't finish the serving on her last visit there so that says something.

There is a cafeteria which the airport staff go to on the 4th floor which may be better but that requires coming out of the transfer lounge into the main area.

[cdh]

What time of day will you be there? I recall the Pan Pacific Hotel that is attached to the airport having a stellar breakfast array of cuisines. The stuff inside the airport terminal was totally unexciting. No other suggestions, sadly.

[ecr]

Geez I hate to waste a meal on Malaysian soil but sounds like a sandwich it is. Thanks folks for the replies!

[jimmyt]

Hi there

I am soon to be departing on my honeymoon to Malyasia and Dubai. As a dedicated foodie I am very interested to have any recommendations for interesting and exciting places to eat in KL (we will have 2 nights there) and Langkawi (8 nights).

As the future Mrs jimmyt and I will be spending a fair amount of time in resorts / hotels (including 5 nights in Pangkor Laut and the Burj Al Arab in Dubai) we would love some suggestions for non-hotel dining that would allow us to do a bit of exploring and sample the local culture and, of course, food!!

Many thanks
JJT

[ecr]

Since you are staying primarily in resorts (too bad you're not stopping in Penang!) I would suggest you dedicate yourselves nearly entirely to hawker foods or casual eateries, maybe one "true" restaurant meal, while in KL. I made good use of the thread Pan provides a link to for a trip to KL last fall.
If I had two days, 3 meals per day in KL (I think I mention most of these in my post near the end of the thread):

Breakfast one: nasi lemak, a must-have in Malaysia!
Lunch one: dim sum at Xin restaurant (some of the best dim sum I've ever had ... and I used to live in Hong Kong)
Dinner one: hawker stalls near Petaling Jaya. Would have to be BBQ sambal seafood and chicken clay pot.

Breakfast two: freshly-made roti and daal followed by some tasty Indian sweets
Lunch two: stir-fried Hokkien mee noodles or char guaytiaow at a hawker stall OR Hainan chicken rice
Dinner two: Nonya food somewhere --- this is one thing we didn't get to on our trip

[JustKay]

I would like to suggest you trying Malay food too, besides the Nasi Lemak.

KLCC is one good place to find food. Either the food courts or the many restaurants there.

There is one outlet there called Kelantan Delights which sells well, Kelantanese food.

Also, you must try Satay. I'm not sure if they (Hj. Samuri Satay) have outlets in KL itself but if you do visit Putrajaya, there is one nice outlet at Taman Warisan Pertanian .

Putrajaya itself has become a tourist destination. You can visit the PM's office complex, the official residence Seri Perdana as well as the Putra Mosque (but don't forget to bring your passport - not photocopies - or you won't be able to get in). And then there is The Souq adjacent to the mosque - there is a food court below with mamak stall, ais kacang stall, Nando's Chicken, Rain Nudle House, a Malay kueh outlet, and Aladdin Cafe which sells nasi Beriyani, and a few more food stalls. And then there is the Taman Botani and The Wetlands. There is a seafood restaurant in Taman Botani called D'Fisherman.

If you visit Putrajaya and are able to hop over to Cyberjaya during lunch time, there is a wonderful Malay restaurant called Kenanga at The Street Mall. Lunch is buffet-style (very authentic dishes - like homemade) so you can sample as many different dishes as you can; dinner is ala-carte Thai food. Next to it is The Penang House which has delicious fares from Penang.

Edited by kew, 23 June 2004 - 02:13 AM.

[PCL]

As the future Mrs jimmyt and I will be spending a fair amount of time in resorts / hotels (including 5 nights in Pangkor Laut and the Burj Al Arab in Dubai) we would love some suggestions for non-hotel dining that would allow us to do a bit of exploring and sample the local culture and, of course, food!!

I was at Pangkor Laut with Mrs PCL two weeks ago for a week. It's a great resort, and it's all on one island. It's an hour by boat back to the mainland, but they don't really want you to leave, and you won't want to!

The Fisherman's Cove restaurant is great, but they are closed Wednesdays I think. Go for the fresh seafood on display, ask for the product (sea bass, snapper, grouper, HUGE tiger prawns etc) to be either grilled or fried. Don't bother with white wine as it's too hot and the ice buckets don't keep much cool. Instead, head for something red and light like the Louis Jadot beaujolais.

For lunch, the Chapman's Bar offers great hawker type food, like banana leaf curry lunch, decent satay. Drink lots of coconut by the beach. Snorkelling is good fun too. And yeah, great burgers at Chapman's which is on Emerald Cove.

Enjoy yourself at Pangkor Laut. The Spa facilities and services are FANTASTIC!

[Tepee]

Just came back from a trip to Trengganu. Will touch on a few stops we made. Now that the Gambang highway is opened, it halves the travelling time.

Stopped at Yik Kee Restaurant at Karak for breakfast; had their regular egg tarts, Portugese egg tarts, siew pau and durian bombs (mashed durian enclosed in a deep-fried batter similar to wu kok or yam fritters). Good break. Bought their giant curry chicken bun, which measures 6 inches wide, and, zoong zi (RM6 per piece)for a quickie lunch when we arrive at Kijal. Discovered they have branches in Petaling Jaya and Gohtong Jaya under the name of Sri Karak.



The way to tackle this baby is to break it into half, you'll get a bundle of foil-wrapped chicken curry with potatoes. Sandwich the curry into your bread...mmmm...really good to eat seated on a beach chair with a lovely sea breeze blowing.



The zoong was no big deal...looked better than it tasted. Perhaps, it's not so fresh or needed refreshing with some steaming.

To wash it down, we had some delicious coconut juice. One of these can yield 1 litre of thirst-quenching juice; we only get half of this from the coconuts we buy in KL at a higher cost.



For dinner, we went to Chukai for their famous stuffed crabs. Someone recommended Restoran Tong Juan to us. At this point, hubby was getting mighty embarassed with his camera-happy wife and told me to abstain from clicking at the stuffed crab we got. After all, he said, they have a website ---> here. Well, other than their specialty, the other dishes were only so-so.

The next day, we travelled 100 miles up to Kuala Trengganu (KT) to make up for the lackadaisical (sp?) seafood dinner we had at Tong Juan. My BIL had a relative in KT and he took us to Restoran Ipoh (what's Ipoh doing in KT?) at Jalan Kampung Cina. THIS is what we call Seafood! We had the freshest grouper fish ever. The highlight was the lala (clams), the size/freshness which we've never seen/tasted before...easily double the size of what we usually get at home.



We also had Nestum prawns....deep-fried biiiiiiiig prawns smothered in toasted Nestum cereals with curry leaves. The serving was HUGE, a big mountain of it...but by the time I got to the camera, I had only one prawn model left. Here it is...in all its succulent glory. The meal cost us half the price of Tong Juan's and definitely satisfied the foodie in us.

[Shiewie]

Hi TP

Oh yum! Please do continue clicking away. Just tell your husband that they're for your greedy online friends. I also have the same complaints from whoever I'm eating with ... they're usually waiting anxiously to dig in while I'm trying to take pics of the food.

The PJ branch of Yut Kee is in PJ New Town, have seen it but haven't tried it yet.

Did you manage to get any nasi dagang while in KT?

Edited by Shiewie, 24 August 2004 - 02:53 AM.

[spaghetttti]

TP, thanks for sharing that wonderful report and great photos. This one in particular practically jumped out of the screen, it's so vivid and very appetizing! Please keep those photos coming!




What's the dish to the left of those gorgeous clams?

[Tepee]

What's the dish to the left of those gorgeous clams?

Er...are you a Muslim? If you are, you may not be too keen about this dish. Since the majority of our group are Hakka chinese (my hubby being the lone Teochew), we ordered the Hakka kau yook, streaky pork steamed with yam. That was good too.

Ah, I'll take this opportunity to add something I missed in my original post. We tried another restaurant called River Bend a few doors away from the infamous Tong Juan the following night. This was also recommended to us, but we dismissed it the first night as it looked comparatively empty. Fortunately, we decided to try them out because we found that their food and pricing were much better than Tong Juan's. Hmmm, makes you suspicious of establishments with hyped-up websites, doesn't it?

[Tepee]

Did you manage to get any nasi dagang while in KT?

The hotel stay included breakfast, and, yes, we had our happy share of nasi dagang with kuah ikan tongkol. There's also some interesting rice and coconut wrapped in little triangular cones; had that with beef serunding. Went back for seconds and thirds....you get the picture.

[Shiewie]

Am inspired by TP's post on Terengganu so will get off my butt and post about my short day trip to Ipoh a couple of weekends ago - this was was solely a trip to eat. Unfortunately there aren't enough hours in day to eat all that we had planned so we'll be making some return trips shortly .

Ipoh is a 2-hour drive to the north of KL - it's a sleepy town full of faded colonial buildings that was once the center of tin-mining boom in Malaysia.


Ipoh Railway Station


Ipoh Town Hall

We started off early in the morning so that we could reach Ipoh for a dim sum breakfast. There were lots of Hong Kong style dim-sum shops in the Greentown are of Ipoh - we went to one called Ming Court. It was pretty good - we were there at about 9-ish and it was packed with local families. We had planned to delicately savour a few dishes only so that we'd have space to eat at other places later on...but we soon forgot about our plans once we saw the food. Here's some of the dim-sum we ate.




We then moved on to a tau foo far (sweet bean curd) stall - it was quite a novelty to us as this was a "drive-in" tau foo far stall - no pictures though as it was kinda difficult trying to snap pictures holding a bowl of tau foo far in one hand and fiddling with the camera in the other.


Next it was on to Nam Heong for some Ipoh Old Town White Coffee.



It's called white coffee coz the coffee beans are roasted in butter - you can see a layer of oil on top if you have it black. Most normally have it tarik (pulled) with some condensed milk - it's frothy like a cuppacino. We also tried a plate of char kuay teow there - slightly different from what we get in KL as there was a dollop of chilli sauce on it.




Lunch was at Then Chun which is famed for its Ipoh Sar Hor Fun (flat rice noodles in a chicken and prawn broth with shredded chciken, prawns and chives) and Creme Caramel.





We also had some deep-fried stuffed chicken wings, sweet potato balls and popiah (no pics of the popiah as it looked kinda of messy)






There was no time for dinner at Ipoh this trip as some of us had dinner appointments in KL. We did however buy a few (12 actually but they're just little ayam kampung) yim guk gai (Salt baked chicken) to take home with us - but we got kind of hungry on the drive back and so we dug into one at a highway stop on the way home .

[PCL]

Great post on Ipoh, Shiwie. The guy who owns the Tien Chun hor fun stall is an old friend of the family. I was born in Ipoh and grew up on food like that. Should note that the satay guy at Tien Chun does a great pork liver and intestine satay. Chee-yun, tai-cheung. Strictly non-halal.

The pics of Ipoh also made me very homesick. Great work. Will be pestering my aunt to make hor-fun very soon. Hope to be in KL and Ipoh later this year.

[Phish]

The last time i was at the airport, i saw that they just opened a Burger King there. The thing you MUST try is the *Double Mushroom Swiss* Burger. It's only available in Malaysia and no other country has anything more devine than this burger. It's the ONLY fast food i eat. But if fast food is not your thing, there's DeliFrance (sp?), *over priced* cafes' and seriously BAD food.

Hope that helps!

[JC]

Phish,

You're right. That Double Mushroom Swiss burger is something else.

But it's not unique to Malaysia. They have it in Australia as well (where Burger King is called Hungry Jacks).

[Shiewie]

Hi PCL

The satay guy at Tien Chun used to slap a plate of satay on each table whether one asked for it or not . And once it's there ... you just can't help but eat it . This no longer seems to be the case though as he now asks tables whether they would like some satay.

Was going to post a shot of Tien Chun to remind you of Ipoh but can't seem to find the images I had stored earlier in the newly reformatted site .

[Phish]

They have it in Australia as well (where Burger King is called Hungry Jacks).

You sure?? Im live in Melbourne, but i never see any mushroom swiss' in Hungry Jacks or Burger King. I only know that Hungry Jacks Australia is popular for their Bacon Deluxe.

[PCL]

You sure??   Im live in Melbourne, but i never see any mushroom swiss' in Hungry Jacks or Burger King. I only know that Hungry Jacks Australia is popular for their Bacon Deluxe.

dude, it was on as a special at Hungry's many years ago. It is most definitely not a standard menu item.

[Phish]

I guess i haven't been paying attention... or else i could've been in UK or Japan during the promotion. But i'm definately sure that they don't offer it anymore... or else i'll be cruising down to Hungry Jacks/ Burger King almost every day!!

[His Nibs]

They have it in singapore too! Another must try BK burger is the rendang double

[Phish]

rendang double

Ooh.. that sounds yum... what's in it?

[JC]

Oh, it's not at Hungry Jack's anymore? Could've been a special item like PCL said. I do remember having it in Melbourne in the early 90s when I studied there. Oh well... that is a long time ago...

The biggest burger I ever had was at Hungry Jack's. They had a special once - a triple Whopper!!!

[JC]

Yup, that satay guy at Tien Chun is such an Ipoh institution. Everybody remembers him! He used to be (20 years ago) much more boisterous, more subdued now with age but you can clearly hear his voice going around asking people if they want satay.

[Pan]

jimmyt, if you're still reading eGullet, we'd love if you'd check in and tell us how you fared during your Malaysian honeymoon.