If you have ever spent any time with us irl (as the kids say), chances are good we’ll have been eating. And we’ll probably have been playing the one-food-only game. This is where you have to choose the cuisine of only one nation, for the rest of your life. John chooses Italian, followed by Indian. Laurel, however, struggles, always wanting ‘Asian’. (This is not a nation.) But Laurel has now found a way to win the game! The food of Kuala Lumpur is a fantastic mix of Chinese, Indonesian/Malay, and Indian! (This leaves out Japanese, Korean, and Thai, but beggars can’t be choosers…) Indeed, Laurel now feels as though she could eat, forever, in any one of the food courts found in the giant malls all throughout the city. Or the food stalls everywhere on the street. So, put the drool-guard on your screen and let’s get to it!
National Dishes
Nasi lemak is usually agreed to be the dish of Malaysia. At its simplest, it’s rice cooked in coconut cream and pandan leaves (which give it a creamy texture and rich flavour. Most of the time, a chicken leg and hard-boiled egg come along for the ride, as do anchovies, peanuts, cucumber slices, and bean sprouts. Plus, obviously, sambal chili paste. Best of all, this is breakfast! (The featured image, above, has fried squid, which is a variant we like a lot.)
Then there is rendang, beef (sometimes chicken) slowly cooked in coconut milk and spices. We ate our very favourite version of this dish in Malacca, and it was full of lemongrass. Satay you have probably heard of: grilled meat on a stick served with a peanut sauce. (Chicken is most common outside of Malaysia and Indonesia, but lamb and cow, and especially their intestines, play a starring role within the country.)
We also love char kway teow, beef with flat rice noodles and a dark soy sauce. It’s something like the Thai dish pad see ew, but smokier and less sweet. And we can’t forget about hokkien mee, a noodle dish cooked (usually in lard) with prawns, boiled egg, and lots of chilis. We’ve also eaten dim sum (mostly from Dolly Dim Sum) every few days.
But there’s also the Indian-inspired dishes of Malaysia, such as roti canai, a flaky flatbread usually served with dal. But also, sometimes, with more sophisticated curries. Speaking of curry, our top pick for fusion in the food of Kuala Lumpur is the Muslim Indian dish fish head curry, combining the Chinese love of fish heads with south Indian curry. The fish is red snapper and – despite what you might think – there’s a ton of meat in there. And it’s delicious!
We tried this at Restoran ZK, usually agreed to have the best fish head curry in the city. They make it in huge vats with okra and tofu – yum!
Night Markets/Street Food
Just about every one of the above comes in ‘fancy’ versions as well as in street-food versions. We tried all of the items listed below, most of them at the Connaught Night Market, a giant Wednesday-night extravaganza that goes on as far as the eye can see. There are other night markets in KL, but this one beats them all.
It’s got regular street food, plus what we think of as international fusion, pairing two flavours or concepts around the world. What do we mean by this?
Well, how about popiah (a kind of spring roll from Fujian) made with seaweed?
Or a green tea pretzel, or coffee- or chocolate-flavoured bagels, or mozzarella-shrimp rolls? Or durian-flavoured tiramisu?
Durian
Wait, hold on: durian deserves its own section. This fruit, beloved in Southeast Asia, is an acquired taste. Or so we are told; we haven’t acquired it quite yet. Its smell is famous, its taste even more so. Think sewage, plus scallion. We first tried it in a popsicle, assuming that would blunt the flavours. No such luck: we were burping onion flavour for hours.
But it’s wildly popular, as we said, on its own and as a component in all kinds of desserts.
So (durian aside), we’re spoiled for choice here. A Malaysian we met told us that Malaysians eat five or sometimes even six meals a day. And we can understand why!
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