Malaysia Restaurants

[Pan]

As a continuation of the tangent from the Jackfruit thread.

The quotes are from Tonkichi:

I was born in 1969, and our family moved to KL in 1976. I am not familiar with Hotel Majestic, it is likely to be called something else now.

Yes, the National Art Museum, right across from the old railway station.

Hotel Malaysia is still around.

And the Imperial Room, that wonderful Cantonese banquet restaurant that was our favorite Chinese restaurant in KL back in the mid 70s? I remember Mr. Lam well. Jolly, fatherly man. Ran the place with his wife. Both were justly proud of his restaurant and the food they served, but never arrogant and always gracious.

Merlin is now Concorde Hotel, home of Hard Rock Cafe.

Ugh!

Dim sum is still served at Concorde.

Is it still of superior quality? The dim sum at the Merlin was a little pricier than elsewhere (and the hotel's dinner restaurants were downright expensive), but really good.

I remember going to the Merlin for Sunday yum-cha, saw my first butter sculptures there, and we ran around the courtyard with a pond and live fishes. Another Sunday yum-cha spot was Federal Hotel, with its dragon columns and red decor.

I don't remember the Federal Hotel. Where is it? And what exactly is yum-cha? (I know "cha" is tea.)

Bangles- does not ring a bell here.

Fancy North Indian place on Jalan Tuanku Abdul Rahman north of Masjid Jamek (sp.?). We used to have food with edible gold and silver foil over it there (the things that impress a child ), but anyway, the food was really good, and the mostly orange bangles that hung from the wall were pretty to look at.

My other favorite memories of food in KL were eating roti canai and chapati made by that Indian guy with a griddle on the streets near the Pasar Chow Kit, having a fiery North-Indian lunch at a bare-bones Muslim place called Restoran Alim (with Quran inscriptions on the wall, of course), in the same general area (across from the Sekolah Bahasa2 Moden), and having satay on Jalan Brickfields (though Satay Kajang was better, and the best I had was outside of Jakarta).

Did you ever go ice-skating in PJ? A nice rink opened in 1976 or so but (so I heard) closed a few years later. Too bad. And outside, there was an Indian guy selling the curried chick peas he made. Excellent!

The Hotel Majestic itself mostly made good food, and way too much of it for one person to eat, most of the time. My mother and I usually split meals. They made good nasi goreng with plenty of ikan bilis, as I remember. The only time I ate a whole multi-course meal there (and the courses went on and on - soup, fish, meat - something like 7 courses, I think, and big ones, at that) was when the east-west highway was flooded near Karak and we had to take a detour south to Negeri Sembilan via back roads to get from Terengganu to KL. Back then, it took 7 hours or so to drive from Kg. Merchang (halfway between Kuala Terengganu and Kuala Dungun) and KL; but that day, it took 12 hours.

Edited May 7, 2003 by Pan (log)

[tonkichi]

yum-cha is literally "drink tea". We say yum-cha when we have a dim-sum meal. Usually on weekends, but if you are in HK it can be any day of the week.

I don't remember Hotel Malaysia at all. The Chinese restaurants that we used to go to when we were young were places like Overseas, Tai Thong and Chan Kee. Chan Kee is more of a family-type place that serves wonderful yong-tau-fu and a type of freshwater fish steamed with fresh ginger. The fish has a muddy smell and hundreds of sharp little bones, but the flesh is a lovely fine texture and the taste is sweet; the ginger helps to offset the muddy smell. I remember Chinese restaurants of the past serving tea in glasses with metal holders- very retro. And the condiments would include a bright yellow mustard that was very pungent; as kids we used to dare each other to see how much of it we could eat. Nobody puts out the mustard anymore.

Federal Hotel was one of the grander hotels before the Shangri-Las and Sheratons came in the 80's. It is on Jalan Bukit Bintang, near Sungei Wang Plaza. I have not been there for over 10 years.

The dim-sum at Merlin/ Concorde is still very popular, and when I last ate there about 5 years ago, it was very good. My grandmother insisted on having dim-sum lunch most Sundays, so over the years we ate at Merlin and Federal, later at Shangri-La, then at Dynasty, followed by Nikko,and nowadays it is either the Ritz Carlton or Tai Thong. Very high-quality stuff, and expensive, I am glad it is the older generation who are footing the bill.

My family lived in Jalan Ipoh and later we moved to Bangsar, so we ate around our area. We get our roti canai from our neighbourhood coffeeshop. My mum does not like Indian food so we missed out on stuff like marsala thosay, naan, tandoori, banana leaf rice, etc until I went for studies in London (vindaloos, onion bhajis, pakoras) and later moved to Singapore, and working right in the heart of Little india.

In the 70's and early 80's the culinary scene in KL was not diverse. It was either formal meals at fancy Chinese restaurants or our local coffeeshops for local foods like pau, chicken rice or wanton noodles. We did not eat out often, as my mum was paranoid about hygiene and use of MSG- we either ate very uptown or not at all, so we missed out on a lot of street food.

Fast food though, was OK- those places seemed clean and had airconditioning. KFC was a major destination. Later it was A&W with its root-beer float in frosted glass, coney dog and waffles.In those days the food and drinks at A&W were actually tasty. McDonalds came later, in the early 80's- and it was also good then, with its quarter pounder and more importantly, the toys that went with the meals- my brother amassed a sizeable collection of their digital watches.

"Western" style restaurants like The Ship served steaks and fish n chips- I did not realise that there was other stuff out there like pasta, anchovies and even shepherd's pie.

One restaurant we did go to a great deal was Sakura, on Jalan Imbi. It served excellent street food in an upmarket restaurant setting, and it was a local landmark. The owner sold the restaurant a few years ago and then opened another restaurant called Madam Kwan- this is now the default place for a family gathering. Another favourite Chinese restaurant was, and still is, Chow Yang in PJ, we have been eating there at least once or twice a month for the past ten years.

Now of course, KL is much like most developed cities- you can find any type of food here. It still has a down-to-earth quality about it, and as a whole it is harder to eat a bad meal in KL compared to say, Singapore.

Edited May 7, 2003 by tonkichi (log)

[Pan]

I remember when the Kentucky Fried Chicken opened in KL. It was the chic place to go to, and expensive. As an American, I didn't go, of course, and thought the hype about it was silly in a place that was chock-full of fantastic Chinese, Indian, and Malay food. I had the same reaction to people spending lots of money for American jeans. Then, when I got back to the U.S. in 1977, I found out my fellow Americans were doing the same thing.

I liked The Ship - if that's the one on Jalan Bukit Bintang that I remember (and I believe it is). My parents and I went several times and enjoyed their steaks and such.

There was another place further up Jalan Bukit Bintang than the Hotel Malaysia and The Ship. I'm trying to remember the name, but it was a good Chinese restaurant that IIRC specialized in steamboat, and it was a lot cheaper than the Imperial Room and more informal. I think it was on a side street just off Bukit Bintang to the west.

I'm surprised your mother was paranoid about MSG. I thought everybody in Malaysia used Aji-No-Moto in those days! Certainly, it was ubiquitous in kampung Malay cooking where I was living, but that's another topic.

The name "Sakura" sort of rings a bell; I'm not sure why, nor am I sure where Jalan Imbi is.

[Niall]

Fancy North Indian place on Jalan Tuanku Abdul Rahman north of Masjid Jamek (sp.?). We used to have food with edible gold and silver foil over it there (the things that impress a child    ), but anyway, the food was really good, and the mostly orange bangles that hung from the wall were pretty to look at.

.

Bangles was good, although I preferred Bombay Palace on Jalan Tun Razak.

[tonkichi]

I remember when the Kentucky Fried Chicken opened in KL. It was the chic place to go to, and expensive. As an American, I didn't go, of course, and thought the hype about it was silly in a place that was chock-full of fantastic Chinese, Indian, and Malay food. I had the same reaction to people spending lots of money for American jeans. Then, when I got back to the U.S. in 1977, I found out my fellow Americans were doing the same thing. 

I liked The Ship - if that's the one on Jalan Bukit Bintang that I remember (and I believe it is). My parents and I went several times and enjoyed their steaks and such.

There was another place further up Jalan Bukit Bintang than the Hotel Malaysia and The Ship. I'm trying to remember the name, but it was a good Chinese restaurant that IIRC specialized in steamboat, and it was a lot cheaper than the Imperial Room and more informal. I think it was on a side street just off Bukit Bintang to the west.

I'm surprised your mother was paranoid about MSG. I thought everybody in Malaysia used Aji-No-Moto in those days! Certainly, it was ubiquitous in kampung Malay cooking where I was living, but that's another topic.

The name "Sakura" sort of rings a bell; I'm not sure why, nor am I sure where Jalan Imbi is.

Ajinomoto was not allowed in the house, but I know the amah would sneak some into stews and braises, for that rich flavour. My mum and her generation believed that MSG would make you thirsty and cause hair loss!!

Sakura- they had dishes like Nasi Bojari, and their Nasi Lemak cost at least 10 times as much as the street version..but really delicious. Imbi Road-full of neon lights, cake shops, wedding dress palaces and bah kut teh stalls(pork rib soup). Actually my mum liked to take us to Sakura to learn table manners, she would order the western dishes like chicken chop or fish n chips for us so we could practice using knife and fork, LOL

My father actually used KFC as the yardstick for judging fried chicken. In those days before anyone heard of cholesterol and heart disease, we would have suppers at least 3-4 times a week. It could be peanut pancake or dough fritters (you char kwai or "oil-fried devil") or pork buns from the street stalls, or they would marinate big quantities of either pork ribs or chicken to fry for late night supper. If it was tasty, Daddy would say "even better than KFC"!!

I remember the first time my uncle took us to a Japanese restaurant. In the early 80's. He ordered sushi- and we all (including the other adults) gawked and our jaws fell- raw fish! It looked like the earthworms we dug up from the field after the rain. We had a taste, and could not swallow. of course we now know our toros and sabas, but the first time is always memorable.

Do you remember Central Market? It is now a tacky "handicrafts centre", but in those days it was THE market. My aunt living in the kampung (village) would put on her best samfoo (chinese pajama suit) and take a bus to "Town" on her Central Market jaunts once a week. The sights and smells of a busy produce market...... live chickens and ducks, the Indian lady with all her spices, the Malay makcik with exotic vegetables like petai, kacang botol, oh my. My favourite treat was a swiss-roll cake sandwiched not with jam or icing, but kaya , that rich egg-custard jam, sold at one of the Hainanese-style bakeries; the cake was dense rather than light and airy, but the kaya was even better than my mum's version, it was thick and eggy and sweet.

Edited May 7, 2003 by tonkichi (log)

[Pan]

The market I know I remember is the Pasar Chow Kit, which was east of Jalan Tuanku Abdul Rahman toward Kampung Baru. Yep, big bazaar with lots of vendors selling foodstuffs and sundries. I'm trying to remember whether there was another big pasar in Kampung Baru, or whether the Pasar Chow Kit extended into Kg. Baru.

The restaurant I remembered up the hill on Jalan Bukit Bintang was, in fact, called Hilltop Restaurant! Does that ring a bell?

Niall:

Do you remember Akbar? Sometimes really good food (though not consistently), though service could be really surly and downright nasty there. I don't remember Bombay Palace. Do you know what year it opened?

I had a fabulous banana-leaf Tamil meal in a hole-in-the-wall on the 2nd floor of somewhere on a side street downtown, but we were taken there by a friend and could never find the place again.

[tissue]

Yum! I had the best shark fin in KL a few years ago.

Too bad I forgot the name of the restaurant.

I noticed that most of the restaurants we went to had a dish of dried chili flakes on the table as a condiment.

[herbacidal]

yum-cha is literally "drink tea". We say yum-cha when we have a dim-sum meal. Usually on weekends, but if you are in HK it can be any day of the week.

wow, i can tell that you're cantonese.

jeez, gotta try some of this southeast asian islandic nation cuisine i know very little about.

[Pan]

Well, barring anything unforeseen, my parents will be in Malaysia for at least 4 months, starting in mid-July or so. I plan on spending time in Malaysia with a side trip to Southern Thailand (Patani, I don't know where else - any ideas on interesting places where I can find local Malay culture, such as Wayang Siam?) starting in the last week of July and going through much of August.

We will arrive (separately) in KL, first, and subsequently go to a kampung halfway between K. Dungun and K. Terengganu. We also plan on visiting Besut and I want to go to Bachok, Kota Baru, and probably Pasir Putih in Kelantan before crossing over to Thailand. So I'm interested in places in KT, Dungun, Besut, and the places I mentioned in Kelantan, as well as KL. Other places on the way could include Kuantan and Kemaman, so if you know any great places anywhere along routes we might take, please mention them.

We are interested in recommendations for all of these categories, recognizing that not every town will have all of them in quantity and great quality:

(1) Chinese restaurants

(2) Dim sum specialists

(3) South Indian vegetarian places (can be very spartan as long as the food is delicious)

(4) Halal North Indian restaurants

(5) Malay restaurants

(6) Roti canai/chapatti stalls

(7) Satay places

Fancy banquet places are fine and we enjoyed some of those when we lived in Malaysia in the 70s, but please don't hesitate to mention cheap, basic rooms with wonderful food. Variety is the spice of life, etc. I await your responses with great anticipation.

[Tonyfinch]

Are you not going to Malacca? That's the most interesting town in Malaysia for the visitor IMO. Its also the home of Nonya cuisine- a cross between Chinese and Malay. There are a couple of restaurants which specialise in it and if you're going I'll try to dig out the names.

Edited June 8, 2003 by Tonyfinch (log)

[Matthew Grant]

Malacca was a brief stop I made as a backpacker some 8 years ago and to this day I maintain that the best Satay I ever ate was sitting in the plastic chairs in front of one of the stalls in the food market that came out at night. There is loads of interesting food there - well worth a visit.

The other memory that Malacca holds for me is the sight of a Christmas show in a shopping centre. It involved girls in elve costumes dancing (very badly) to western pop tunes with a very thin Malaysian gentleman dressed as Father Christmas much to the bemusement of the local population. Strange... very strange

[tonkichi]

Here's some recommendation for KL:

(1) Chinese restaurants

Cheap, coffee shop (no frills, no air-con), try any of the cze char places in Imbi Rd, e.g. Soo Kee.

Fancy: the restaurants in Shangri-La and Ritz Carlton

(2) Dim sum specialists

the Chinese restaurant at Ritz Carlton

(3) South Indian vegetarian places (can be very spartan as long as the food is delicious)

(4) Halal North Indian restaurants

(5) Malay restaurants

Not a pure Malay restaurant but Madam Kwan (outlets in KLCC and Bangsar) serves excellent local hawker food in restaurant setting, and their star dishes are nasi lemak and nasi bojari. The malay standards such as fried chicken, beef rendang, sambal kangkung, assam prawns and petai are all well executed. The ice-kachang and chendol desserts are first-rate, even better than what you can get in Malacca.

(6) Roti canai/chapatti stalls

The mamak stalls - open air stalls open only at night.

(7) Satay places

Kajang (45 mins drive away from KL), otherwise the mamak stalls.

[Shiewie]

Hi Pan

Am compiling a list for you - mainly KL except for a couple in Terengganu. A foodie mag here has recently published a food guide for Kelantan, will extract the list for you. However food reviews in publications here are somewhat unreliable - I've yet to see an unfavourable review.

Question - how basic / spartan can these places get? Some of the best food in Malaysia is found in roadside hawker stalls / some place under a tree and the surroundings can be kind of grotty. Another question - will location be a consideration? Some of these places are located quite a distance from the city centre and traffic in KL can be a nightmare.

[Pumpkin Lover]

There's a really great site w/restaurant reviews:

http://www.friedchillies.com/

(My mom's Malaysian, and this is one of the most delicious sites to read).

[Pan]

Question - how basic / spartan can these places get? Some of the best food in Malaysia is found in roadside hawker stalls / some place under a tree and the surroundings can be kind of grotty. Another question - will location be a consideration? Some of these places are located quite a distance from the city centre and traffic in KL can be a nightmare.

Thank you, Shiewie, and thank you tonkichi and Pumpkin Lover.

Stalls are fine, unless they're so dirty you think they're likely to make us sick (my mother once got food poisoning from undercooked mee goreng at a stall - it was kind of funny, despite everything, because she went to the Emergency Room in Hospital Besar in KT thinking she had worms and was told "You have mee goreng" - but we all otherwise ate food from stalls many, many times without incident). I don't drive, but please post the names and locations of places because it's possible that my mother may be driving some of the time. I've heard about the bottlenecks in KL nowadays, but perhaps some of the places you're thinking about may be on the way out of the city in the direction of the East Coast. However, places that are reasonably easy to get to from within the city are most welcome.

[Pan]

tonkichi:

Just out of curiosity: Is Madam Kwan halal?

[Pan]

Pumpkin Lover:

I forgot to welcome you to eGullet. But I'm tempted to say "Thanks but no thanks" vis-avis http://www.friedchillies.com/.

When I checked their reviews, their "Western" category immediately dumbfounded me:

http://www.friedchillies.com/reviews.php

Western

3. American Chili's - Biggest juiciest steak in Bangsar.

19. TGI Fridays - Big burgers for big Appetites.

22. Planet Hollywood KL- Coolest Restaurant in Town

25. Victoria Station Bangsar- Juicy and Tender.

51. Dome Cafe - Great for a light meal.

67. The White House - No politicians here

68. Hard Rock Cafe - Rockin Good Ribs Combo...

79. San Francisco Steakhouse - Steak Out with Lobsters

87. The Ship - Steaks..steaks...steaks

93. Jake's Charbroil Steaks - Really WOW!!!...

99. Coliseum Cafe - Old but not forgotten...

102. Rahsia - Shh..it's a secret..

105. The Social - Socializing Dinner..

106. Out of Africa - Safari Dinner..

109. The Big Plate - Steaks Malaysian Style..

114. The Outback Steakhouse - Rack of Lamb..uuhh!

134. Austin Chase Coffee - Hearty Breakfast!

158. Top Hat - Top Hats to them!

A good review of TGI Fridays? Yuck! And the Hard Rock Cafe as something worth going to to eat? So unless they are reliable for everything but Western food, I think I'll give them a pass.

But I like their Parking rating: "Can-lah"

Edited June 9, 2003 by Pan (log)

[tonkichi]

tonkichi:

Just out of curiosity: Is Madam Kwan halal?

Yes I think so, since many Malays eat there.

[Pumpkin Lover]

A good review of TGI Fridays? Yuck! And the Hard Rock Cafe as something worth going to to eat? So unless they are reliable for everything but Western food, I think I'll give them a pass.

Yeah, totally--there's one downside to that. What can you do? The rest of the reviews, I think, are pretty much alright.

(The pictures are pretty, too).

Seriously, they capture what Malaysians really care about in food, which is trying to figure out where you can buy the best of a certain dish, like nasi lemak or pau or whatever. In that sense, I think their reviews are good, and the site needs to be read regularly to really capture all that.

And thank ye for the welcome!

[Shiewie]

Just out of curiosity: Is Madam Kwan halal?

Yes, Madam Kwan should be halal, if not, definitely pork-free. (Restaurants need to be certified by the Religious Department in order to claim halal status.) It's hard to find non-Chinese restaurants that serve pork in Malaysia. (To sidetrack a little - Spaghetti Carbonara with beef bacon is a total waste of calories .) The Nasi Bojari and Nasi Lemak at Madam Kwan's as mentioned by tonkichi are really good but some of the other stuff there is pretty mediocre - Assam Laksa, Kuay Teow soup. Remember Sakura Restaurant on Jalan Imbi? Think it's been around since the 70s. Well, the lady who started Sakura opened Madam Kwan's after she sold out of Sakura.

I'm tempted to say "Thanks but no thanks" vis-avis http://www.friedchillies.com/

Although I don't agree with all the reviews on Fried Chillies, I do agree with Pumpkin Lover that the site does capture the essence of the Malaysian obsession with food. I do trawl through the site from time to time to find out what new places have been reviewed and also to see what's discussed in the forum there. Sigh, as mentioned in an earlier post, there are never any unfavourable food reviews here in Malaysia.

I would only recommend 2 of the places in Fried Chillies' Western category - Jake's for charbroiled tenderloin and Colliseum for the nostalagic atmosphere.

Colliseum has been around for ages - my mother remembers going there as a child in the 1930's ... and the crockery, tablecoths and waiters all look as if they've been in service since then! The food there typifies what was served in colonial Malaya - heavy gravies, mushy veg and salad means a couple of pieces of iceberg lettuce with slices of cucumbers, tomato wedges, capsicum/bell peppers and onion rings with thousand island dressing . They're famous for their sizzling steaks drowned in gravy (which I used to like as kid but I think my tastes have changed somewhat since). I do like the fluffy kopitiam (local coffee-shop) style bread served with a hunk of salted butter, fried mee-hoon and baked crab.

Songkhla Hawker (in the Coffee and Dessert) received rave reviews in the Malaysian segment in Asian WSJ series on great eating places in Asia. Attached here is the section of the review by John Krich in The Asian WSJ dated 15 Nov 2002 on Songkhla Hawker

"Songkhla Hawker

I'm relieved that much of this amazing stall, claiming a whole corner of a broad side street in the Chow Kit neighborhood, is more or less in the dark. Because much of the food here is as indescribable as it is unfamiliar. I could see that I was served a plate of lemongrass-charged rice, nasi kerabu, topped with grated coconut. But I had to be told that the rice was blue, a north-eastern specialty achieved with natural coloring.

The many cloaked and shy Malay ladies who ply their trade here hail from Malaysia's northernmost states of Kelantan and Kedah. Hence, loyal regulars have named the business after the Thai border town of Songkhla, and many dishes show a Thai influence-such as the beef curries and a fiery green mango salad, pounded to order with chilies and dried shrimps in a mortar a la Bangkok.

While there are only a few stunted plastic tables for diners, there are three sections to this ambitious sidewalk enterprise. (Is this place the equivalent of a five-star hotel buffet for those on a one-ringgit budget?) One wing consists of numerous, spice-charged stews, including a coconut-tinged tuna curry. Another wing holds fresh roasted cockles that promise an intense burst of mollusk flavor. Sewing up Songkhla Hawker's selection is a central section displaying an astounding assortment of sweets. Scanning the rows of quivering rice and coconut balls, rolls, dumplings and porridges, I was reminded of my first sight of a Turkish bakery with its long display cases full of more variants of baklava than I thought could possibly be forged from mere filo pastry, honey and nuts. This time, the main materials at hand are tapioca and sago, banana and the nicely bitter molasses-like cane syrup Malaysians call gula melaka. But you don't need names here, just point and try, unless you like the sound of ordering bubur chacha -- a porridge featuring sweet colored nubs that resemble green beans turned to candy.

As I washed down my sixth or seventh sweet with a huge mug of fresh-blended watermelon juice, I wasn't a bit bothered by the sight of a Snickers-sized cockroach crawling toward a basin full of the stall's surplus dishes. Fortunately, the pots of cooked food nearby looked fresh and untainted. If there has ever been an argument for the superiority of food over atmosphere, servings over service, this place is it.

+ Dazzling array of desserts, unique Thai-Malay seasonings.

- Front-row views of the curb, dirty dishes and cockroaches.

Songkhla Hawker,

on Jalan Sultan Sulaiman, in front of the post office, Chow Kit.

(Turn a half-block east at the Pizza Hut on Jalan Tuanku Abdul Rahman.)

No telephone.

Open: daily, 6 p.m. to 2 a.m.

Prices: by world standards, free grub; a ringgit or two per dessert.

No credit cards accepted."

More on other categories later.

[Krista G]

Maybe I should start a new thread since this is a question of my own rather than additional help on KL food...but I'll be in Penang (as well as Singapore and Bangkok) in August and was wondering where to find the best places to eat. I'm interested in regional things that you can't find in NYC like Roti John. Of course there's Gurney Drive, which I've heard much about--but what else? It's my first trip to Asia so I have a lot to learn, I guess.

By the way, I found Friedchillies.com a couple weeks ago and thought it was quite amusing (reviews of IKEA meatballs?!), but then, I get a kick out of fast food franchises in other countries. I've been totally fascinated by the S.E. Asian Pizza Hut websites, lots of Thousand Island dressing and sausage stuffed into the crust. I won't even get into the McDonald's offerings...

[Shiewie]

By the way, since there are no unfavorable restaurant reviews in Malaysia, do the numbers in the ratings take on more weight?

Uhmm...I've never really noticed the numbers in the ratings. I think the numbers pretty subjective - a question of personal preference.

For example, if we look under the Malay category in the Fried Chillies and compare the various reviews of Nasi Lemak (the ones that I have tried), the ratings for taste are as follows:

Nasi Lemak Cikgu - 8

Nasi Lemak Antarabangsa - 7

Nasi Lemak Tanglin - 6

My personal preference is Nasi Lemak Tanglin and would rate it higher than the other 2. For me, a good Nasi Lemak must have rice that is al dente (mushy rice is a no-no) with sufficient santan (coconut milk) and hints of pandan leaves that have cooked with the rice. The sambal should be slightly sweet (but not overly so) to balance the spiciness.

The texture of the rice at Nasi Lemak Tanglin is excellent - I haven't been in a while but a phone call to a friend who just went there for breakfast yesterday confirmed that it's still as good - wonderfully al-dente rice - the grains of rice are separate and do not stick together. Nasi Lemak Tanglin used to be the highlight of my Saturday mornings on the way to work - some offices here are open on Saturdays .

Nasi Lemak Tanglin is located in the Lake Gardens, near the Bukit Aman police headquarters and just up the road from the Methodist Girls' School. It's also near the KL Bird Park and Islamic Museum so it may be pretty convenient to have breakfast there if you're going to these spots. However be prepared to wait as there's always a queue. It's open for breakfast Mondays to Fridays and alternate Saturdays (2nd and 4th Saturdays of the month).

Nasi Lemak used to be one of my favourite places for a late night nasi lemak. Unfortunately I think the standards have dropped somewhat - was last there in Oct last year. The rice was not sufficently firm and the sambal a wee bit too sweet. However, it's still pretty crowded. It's located on a street in Kampung Baru where there are lots of other food stalls. Parking is anywhere you can find a spot on the roadside. However, there is a LRT (Light Rail Transit) station located nearby - I think it's the Kampung Baru station on the Putra Line.

I've only been to Nasi Lemak Cikgu once. The fried chicken is good but I don't remember it as being particularly memorable. But then again my memory of it may be clouded by the hot midday sun and heat of the zinc sheds which the stall is located under. This stall may be pretty hard to get to without a car as it's located in the burbs.

FriedChillies organised Nasi Lemak cook-off in Oct last year - see these links under the Misc. Articles section http://www.friedchillies.com/features.php on the Fried Chillies site.

Since we are on the topic of nasi lemak, there are a couple of pretty good nasi lemak places in KL city centre area which may be easier to get to:

- stall in front of the old clock tower on Lebuh Pasar Besar - it's near the HSBC Bank and down the road from Central Market - there's no place to sit down - it's purely 'bungkus' (take-away) for the people who work in the offices in that area - breakfast only

- stall at coffee shop on Jalan Dang Wangi (what used to be Campbell Road) near the bridge - it's breakfast only as well - can't remeber the name of the shop (will note it the next time I go past it). However you can spot it quite easily as the there's a huge wooden container (at breakfast time only, of course) which the rice is served out of.

[Pan]

Thank you very much for the additional info, Shiewie. tonkichi, it's very unlikely that I'll visit Singapore on this trip. It's much more likely that from KL, I'll head due east and then go north from Terengganu (after some time in the village I used to live in) through Kelantan to various parts of Thailand and perhaps Laos or Cambodia (though it'll already be the rainy season in northern Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia in August, evidently), then back through Terengganu to KL and out. But everything is subject to change except the point of arrival and departure and the trip to the kampung in Terengganu, though a visit to Besut and Kelantan is also pretty definite, barring something unforeseen.

Anyone have info on the Malay-majority part of Thailand? I've been hearing conflicting things about how safe it is to visit (and will it be interesting?). I'll contact a friend who's spent a lot of time in Thailand and can probably tell me stuff, but please share your knowledge on this, if you have some.

[Shiewie]

Krista G

Here is a link to a list of Penang Hawker Food - it's a forum on the website of the Penang Turf Club - scroll right to th bottom and it's the 4th post from the bottom. The list is very extensive but kind of hard to read as it's all lumped together. Most of the places I went to are on the list.

- My favourite is the hawker area on Swatow Lane (Lorong Swatow) - behind the Sheraton Penang and Fima / Cold Storage Supermarket - practically everything there is good - assam laksa, curry mee/laksa, char kway teow, ice kacang, oh chien. It's open only in the afternoon/early evening from around 3pm to 7-ish.

- The Sisters coffee-shop has good char kuay teow (more pricey than what one would normally pay) and grilled otak-otak.

- Penang Road chendol

- Ice Kacang with durian ice-cream at the Keck Seng coffee shop

- Assam Laksa at Air Itam - at the foot of the Kek Lok Si temple

- Assam Laksa at the Balik Pulau market

- Assam Laksa at the Keck seng coffee-shop

- Assam Laksa, fruit rojak, mochi at Gurney Drive

A couple of other food related places you may like to visit are a tropical fruit farm in Balik Pulau and Bao Sheng durian farm

[Krista G]

Shiewie, thanks for all the suggestions. I'm crazy about laksa, but I think I'm more familiar with the Singapore version (brown, curry-ish, gravy, right?). I'll have to explore the world of assam laksa. The one time I tried ordering it here in NYC the waitress tried steering me away from it. I really had to insist that I truly wanted it. I also love char kuay teow, at least the American-Asian version. I can't wait to try the real thing. This is going to be a serious eating vacation, I only wish I had more time in each city.