Kuala Lumpur's Eat Streets

Article by: Robyn Eckhardt, August 2007

Kuala Lumpur (KL, in local parlance) presents quite a dilemma to the travelling food lover. Boasting a cuisine born of multiple ethnicities (Indian, Chinese, and Malay) and myriad cultural influences (Indonesian, Arab, Portugese) the question becomes not what to eat, but what to forgo? Even two weeks of three-squares-a-day noshing would leave many a gastronomic stone unturned. Still, a traveller's got to try.

Brickfields breakfast

Brickfields is KL's largest 'Little India' and just behind its traffic-choked Jalan Tun Sambanthan lies a quiet neighbourhood of housing flats and curbside eateries – ideal for a leisurely al fresco morning meal.

Pick of the dishes: as the croissant is to the French, so roti canai is to Malaysians. The roti wallah, who works an unnamed stall on Jalan Sultan Abdul Samad rolls, kneads, flips, and griddles his roti canai (plain) and roti telur (with egg) to incomparable flakiness and serves them with mild dhal, fiery sambal, and red cardamom-fragrant curry. Teh halia (milky sweet tea spiked with fresh ginger) makes a fine accompaniment.

Use your noodle

In Malaysia, noodles fulfill the role of breakfast, lunch, dinner and snack, and locals take their noodles very seriously - woe to the hawker who boils his mee beyond al dente or serves less than silky rice noodles.

Pick of the dishes: pan meen (literally 'board noodles') are, if not particular to KL, more easily found here than elsewhere in Malaysia. These fresh wheat noodles are so-named for a dough that is rolled flat as a board before being torn by hand for soup or machine-cut for a 'dry' version. For the definitive dry pan meen, head to Restoran Kin Kin in the back streets of Chow Kit. It does a roaring business (expect to share a table) and the wait for your food can be excruciatingly long, but all is forgiven when you dive into a bowl of chewy, square-cut noodles topped with minced pork and crackling, deep-fried ikan bilis (dried anchovies), chopped scallions, and a soft poached egg. Spice things up with Kin Kin's signature dried chilli paste and then cool the fire with a spoonful of the accompanying meat broth.

Malay repast

woe to the hawker who boils his mee beyond al dente or serves less than silky rice noodles

Malay food is best when it's fresh from a home kitchen. Luckily there is a number of family-owned eateries nestled in the narrow lanes of Kampung Baru, a Malay village a stone's throw from the Golden Triangle.

Pick of the dishes: assam (sour) fish and ulam (blanched and fresh vegetables). Fatimah Selera Kampung is a tiny open-air restaurant built off the front of a private house, serving chunks of firm, white-fleshed fish in a tamarind-sour and spicy chilli sauce redolent of lemongrass and galangal. Choose a selection of ulam to eat with fiery sambal belacan (chilli pounded with shrimp paste) or milder kecap manis (sweet soy sauce). Other hearty options include coconut-rich curries, rendang, and pecel jawa, a mix of vegetables and tofu dressed with peanut sauce.

Sublime sweets

Kuih (a generic word for cakes and pastries) are the sugar fix of choice for Malaysian sweet-tooths. These days mediocre mass-produced pretenders abound, so it's well worth the effort to seek out specialty vendors.

Pick of the dishes: ondeh-ondeh. These are little balls of pandan leaf-flavoured glutinous rice flour, filled with gula melaka (sugar made from boiled coconut palm sap) and rolled in grated coconut. Head to Bangsar at precisely 3:30 in the afternoon when Ah Mun, a kuih cook for over thirty years, opens his motorcycle trolley for business. Clusters of customers hover like vultures as he bags up the goodies at lightning speed. All of Ah Mun's creations are sublime, but it's the ondeh-ondeh that consistently sell out first.

Nostalgic kopi

Ah Mun, a kuih cook for over thirty years, opens his motorcycle trolley for business

Kopitiam - traditional Chinese-owned coffee shops serving strong brews and Malaysian comfort food - are the local antidote to Starbucks. They are increasingly rare in KL's evolving urban landscape, but they offer a caffeine jolt with a lovely side-serve of sweet nostalgia.

Pick of the dishes: kopi (coffee), of course. Nowhere does it better than at Yut Kee, a repository of KL culinary history perched at the end of the city's tarted-up Heritage Row. Run by the son of the original Hainanese owner, the eighty-year-old institution churns out exemplary renditions of old-time specialties like pan-fried chops and fried rice. When it's time for kopi, get it with a side of grilled bread slathered with butter and spread with housemade kaya (sinfully rich coconut milk and egg jam).