Malaysian Cuisine

A key factor in our decision to come to South East Asia was the food - here's an overview of what we ate in Malaysia.

Malaysian food is very similar to what we saw in Singapore, however a key thing about food here is that, being a Muslim country, many places promote themselves as halal and don’t serve pork. While some dishes will be served with chopsticks, most dishes come with a fork and a spoon. The food is very reasonably priced, with a good sized meal and drinks very rarely costing more than £15 for the two of us. Like Singapore, dishes can be split into four cuisines: Chinese, Indian, Malay and Western. Because of this, the food hasn’t been that spicy, apart from one or two exceptions. We’ve sampled a bit of everything during our two and a half weeks here.

Chinese

There are three main Chinese dishes we’ve had here. The first is dim sum, small bites of steamed meat and fish. The best dim sum we had was in George Town (this place is a foodie heaven!), at Jetty Dim Sum, in particular the bacon wrapped one!

The second was bao or steamed buns. The best ones were filled with bbq chicken or pork and they made a great snack or starter.

Finally, there are many main dishes that are similar to what you’d find at home, including lemon chicken, sweet and sour chicken and beef in black bean sauce. Again, all equally tasty.

Indian

When we weren’t having peanut butter on bread for breakfast, we quite often had Indian. We were introduced to roti canai on our first morning in Kuching by our guest house owner. This is a thin bread, with a curry style dipping sauce. Although a bit weird having something we’d more likely have for lunch or dinner for breakfast, it was very tasty and we ended up having it a lot, as it is served at many streetside stalls.

We did go for an Indian meal one night in Little India in George Town, where we had tandoori chicken with a very tasty sauce, a mix of tamarind and mint. Truly delicious, and the chicken wasn’t too bad either, although the service wasn’t particularly quick and they got our order wrong.

Malay

Unsurprisingly, most Malay dishes come with either noodles or rice. In Kuching on Sarawak, they had two main specialities, the Sarawak laksa and kolo mee. Laksa in Malaysia is different to the Thai laksa as they do not use coconut milk. Instead it’s more tomato based but still packs a kick. The best laksa we had was at the Cultural Village in Kuching.

Kolo mee is a fried noodle dish. It looks a little bit like pot noodle but tastes much better, mainly because it contains more than just noodles, typically minced pork and vegetables.

As with Singapore, there was an abundance of satay, which again made good snacks or light lunches. We also managed to get some tasty rendang curries.

Three things I’d not heard of before were bak kut teh (pork ribs in a meaty soup), char kuay tow (flat noodles with various veg) and pajeri terung nenas (a luxury curry dish typically served at Malay weddings). The last two in particular were delicious, I wasn’t so struck with the bak kut teh.

Seafood

Many of the places we visited were by the sea meaning there was an abundance of seafood on offer, mainly from night markets selling that day’s catch. We always opted for whole fish rather than crabs or lobster (it’s a bit weird choosing your food when it’s still walking around in front of you!), so enjoyed bbq’d red snapper, sea bass and some giant tiger prawns, cooked in various different sauces such as ginger, garlic or mango. The fish market in Kota Kinabalu was definitely worth a visit, as was Topspot Food Court in Kuching despite the numerous steps we had to climb on very aching legs to reach it!

Fruit and veg

Most vegetables in Malaysia are green, including recognisable vegetables like pak choi, and less recognisable ones like kang kong, a type of jungle fern. These were tasty dishes in their own right and in some cases outshone the meat dishes! Many times we skipped the rice and noodles and simply had fish and vegetables.

One unusual dish we ordered was bamboo. This versatile grass was very good and had a similar texture to water chestnuts. Like most of the veg, the flavour mainly comes from the sauces it’s cooked in, things like ginger, garlic and chilli.

There is also an abundance of weird and wonderful fruit here. Some are recognisable such as bananas, grapes and mango (although there are many different types of mango!), others less so. The most noticeable fruit is the durian, for its distinctive and not particularly pleasant smell. This fruit is so smelly, it’s not allowed to be taken on public transport or into many hostels. Just like the cosmetic store, Lush, you can smell a durian stall before you actually see one. Apparently it doesn’t taste as bad as it smells, although we haven’t quite plucked up the courage to eat one yet.

There are a few fruits with similar textures to lychees, including what is apparently called a white apple and a rambutan (a red hairy fruit). The rambutan was tastier, although both were pretty juicy.

Desserts

While we haven’t had that many desserts, a few deserve a mention. Firstly, a traditional cake served in Sarawak is layer cake. Again, this is something the host of our guest house gave us when we arrived. It comes in many different flavours but must take ages to make as there are so many layers!

In George Town, TripAdvisor informed us that Bro’nana served great desserts. Essentially these are bananas covered in cheese and then fried, with a choice of toppings. I opted for chocolate while James had honey and cereal. Although a little odd, they weren’t too bad!

One cake I had to try was CowDung Tart, just for its ridiculous name, and also because it had cheese in it! It was essentially a bit like a pastry, filled with cream cheese and chocolate. Despite the name it was actually pretty tasty!

Finally, just for the fact that it was just what I needed after a very long day of hiking up and down Mount Kinabalu, I had to mention the mango pudding we had for lunch on Christmas Day. It was so refreshing, and tasted a bit like a mango blamonge. Delicious!

Western

While we’ve tried to avoid it, we have had some western food since we’ve been here, most notably pizza and lasagne on Christmas Day. We’ve also had quite a few pastries for breakfast and some particularly tasty buttermilk fried chicken with sriracha mayo at Taps Bar in KL. You can’t have rice and noodles all the time!

And finally…

One thing that deserves a mention is floss. It’s odd. Essentially it’s put on top of a bun, typically the sort of bun you’d get at home covered in white icing with a cherry on top. But it’s chicken flavoured. Or spicy chicken flavoured. It kind of has a consistency of candy floss when you eat it but it’s one of those things that isn’t disgusting but isn’t delicious either, it’s definitely just odd!