Taste of Malaysia: A tour of three Malaysian restaurants

Last year, I was lucky enough to get a few tickets to go to the Taste of London festival through my sister who works in marketing. Not only did I get to watch a very hungover Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall totally mess up baking a cheesecake, but got to meet a few well know chefs and most importantly of all, got to eat loads of great food. It was a really enjoyable day and as soon as I had left, was already looking forward to the 2010 version.

One of this years sponsors is "Malaysia Kitchen 2010", a year long programme associated with promoting Malaysian food in Britain. As part of their sponsorship, they have created the Taste of Malaysia area, educating the public about Malaysian cuisine whilst providing food from Awana, Satay House and Tukdin, three popular Malaysian restaurants in London. In order to kickstart Taste of Malaysia, I was invited along with a few others on a Malaysian food "crawl" taking in food from these three restaurants. I could hardly turn down an invite involving food from my homeland and happily signed up.

First step on our culinary tour was Awana. Located in the heart of Kensington, this is very much high end Malaysian food. On entrance to the attractive dining room, awash with leather and teak, we were introduced to Hailong Wang who plied us with some of the house speciality cocktails. Adequately lubricated, we were shown to a dedicated area where they grill their satay and fling their dough until they make a bread called "roti canai". It was pretty interesting to watch how thin they get the dough before folding to get a similar multi-layered effect, a bit like in filo, to get a light crispy texture. Soon our food was ready and we were shown to a table to sample it.

Out came a variety of food. As well as the plain roti (served with curry and dal) and some gently charred and quite delicious chicken satay, we were served some beef rendang filled bread (murtabak), pomegranate salad and a little pastry case stuffed with an assortment of tasty little titbits, the name of which eludes me. I have eaten at Awana on a fair few occasions and whilst the food is always quite good, the prices reflect the neighbourhood and it can all add up.

After finishing our food and thanking our host, we were soon whisked away onto our next destination, Satay House in Paddington. A smaller restaurant catering to the masses, this was already full to the brim with smiling customers when we arrived. Meandering inbetween customers chairs and tables, we made our way to their downstairs dining room, got our drinks and soon the procession of food started.

The "control" of chicken and beef satay were first to land. Slightly thinner and a little chewier with a sweeter baste. These were still appetising and came with traditional accompaniments of rice cakes, cucumber and onion. Other dishes included prawns, plain fried vegetarian noodles and the best dish by far, their beef rendang. A rendang is essentially a slow cooked dry curry, deeply flavoured with spices and chilli and cooked in a coconut base. This version had a wonderful chilli kick which had a slow burn and did not detract from the highly spiced and fairly tender meat. And just as we finished, deep fried wings with chilli, garlic and soy were brought, almost as if they hadn't stuffed us enough. On the contrary, we (well, definitely I) were struggling under the sheer weight of their hospitality. With one stop to go, I took one, enjoyed it immensely and ignored the rest sitting in front of me until it was time to leave for our last destination.

By this stage, I was on the verge of throwing the towel in, but under the impression that the third stop meant dessert, I gee'ed myself up and entered our carriage rather full and happy. The final stop was Tukdin just "tucked in" around the corner from Lancaster gate tube station. What we encountered when we arrived was not the promise of desserts, but more food. The owner was intent on showcasing his menu to us so who were we to complain.

Malaysia is split into three main ethnicities (Indian, Chinese and of course the Malays) and whereas the first two restaurants felt more swayed towards the Chinese, this was definitely a Malay restaurant. As the Malay's are predominantly Muslim, no alcohol or pork is to be found on the menu, and all the meat is Halal. As the food rolled out, the satay was once again first to arrive. This time served off the skewer, the chicken had an even sweeter baste with a deeper combination of ginger and other spices. Not bad at all. More food kept coming and at one stage, we had to request smaller portions as most of were on our last legs and we didn't want to insult the restaurants hospitality by leaving piles of food behind. Nevertheless, we sampled everything we were given, including chilli mussels, plain fried mee (egg noodles), a chicken rendang, sweet and sour sea bass and my favourite of all, a light variation on a stir fried beef yellow curry.

So, just over three hours, three restaurants and about 15 different dishes later, we were done. It had been an excellent experience and it was great to get a little taster of what will be on at the Taste of Malaysia next week. Out of all the three satay we had tried (our "control" dish, if you may), I enjoyed Awanas offering the most. More subtle flavours and a better char won me over, although opinion was vastly divided amongst the group. Horses for courses some might say. I would have liked to have seen more traditional Malaysian dishes such as rojak and nasi lemak, but really just a minor niggle. Overall, excellent food, great company and big thanks to Sauce Comms for organising. Make your way to Taste of London next week (17th to 21st June) and experience a taste of Malaysia for yourself!

Please have a look here if you fancy checking out a few more of the photos.

Awana - 85 Sloane Avenue, London SW3 3DX

Satay House - 13 Sale Place, London W2 1PX

Tukdin - 41 Craven Road, London W2 3BX

Kiasu, proper Straits food - Bayswater

Kiasu has quite a following in London. Located in the secondary Chinatown that is Bayswater, it differentiates itself from its popular neighbours (Goldmine and Four Seasons are a few doors down one way, whilst Royal China and Mandarin Kitchen can be found down the other) by selling Straits food. Originating out of Malaysia and Singapore, many of its dishes are based on hawker stall classics, where they often sell for no more than about a pound a dish. The prices are clearly not comparable here in London, but even so, each main comes to easily under a tenner.

To give this place the once over, I brought two of the harshest critics of Straits cuisine I know, my parents. Both born and bred in Kuala Lumpur and brought up on char kway teow, prawn mee and nasi lemak, who better to judge whether the food was decent and, most importantly, faithful to true Straits food cuisine.




We started with some chicken satay and a rothi paratha, two staple roadside dishes. The satay were quite poor. Four paltry skewers of chicken, with inadequate spicing and a poor sauce. All the traditional accompaniments were there (such as onion, cucumber and pressed rice) but it felt like it had just come out of a packet. The roti, on the other hand, were very good. Crisp and compact, with a good homemade hot curry. Simple but nice.



For my main, I ordered Ko Lo Mee. In truth, I didn't really know what I was ordering, I was actually expecting something slightly different. The char siu (barbecued pork) and won ton soup were there as expected (both of a high standard), but instead of the dry egg noodles with dark soy I was expecting, I got a claggy mess of overdone egg noodles steeped in a sweet chilli sauce, seemingly straight out of a bottle. It was horrible. I tried to eat this and failed.



My parents mains were much more successful. My dads Char Kway Teow (essentially fried noodles) was superb. What's in it? There are probably too many bits and bobs to list them all here but my favourite bits were the generous amounts of Chinese sausage and the little nuggets of fried pork fat interspersed within the noodles, releasing individual explosions of flavour. If I had to fault it, the noodles were slightly greasy but that would be my only criticism.



My mum went for another straits classic, Hainanese chicken rice, and this was probably as good as you are going to get in central London. The rice was delicately flavoured with ginger and cooked in the chicken stock, with a light chicken broth on the side. The soya chicken itself was moist and was bursting with flavour, no mean feat considering the hard time chicken often gets for being a quite "generic" meat.

I am torn by Kiasu. Some of the food was sublime whilst some of it was a horror show. And the service, don't even get me started on that. It was slow and we had to ask them for various missing dishes, numerous times. I know it was busy but that shouldn't be an excuse.

"Kiasu" can be loosely translated as the fear of losing. I still think it has a long way to go to truly rule supreme in the London straits food standing. There are many pretenders to the crown including Rasa Sayang, Satay house and the newer chain, Jom Makan, to name just a few. I don't think it is quite "losing" but it has some way to go before it wins.

Kiasu (website) - 48 Queensway, W2 3RY

Its a family affair at Cafe Anglais - Bayswater

Birthday's in my family are often tricky occasions. I have 6 in my family so we celebrate one every other month or so. It's tricky to decide what to buy, demanding on the wallet but mainly, it's the frustration on where we are going to go for the birthday dinner that causes the most issues.

It's my dads turn and he is your standard chinaman. He wants no fuss and doesn't really care for presents. In fact, he has a special cupboard where we know most of our presents go, often totally unused. He does, however, like to eat. After perusing the menu at Cafe Anglais, I decided the vast food options had enough to cater for everyone tastes.



Located inside the Whiteley's shopping centre, the dining room is simple but elegant and a lot larger than I expected after entering through the rather unassuming shopping center entrance. Owing to roadworks, everyone else had trouble getting to the car park, so I munched on bread and radishes until everybody eventually arrived. Over 30 minutes later, everyone had arrived and we were finally ready to order.

Ordering a mix from the set menu and off the main menu, I will run through what I had a taste of, but if you want to check out the rest of the pictures, please have a look at them here.



Parmesan custard and anchovy toast - One of Cafe Anglais signature dishes. Anchovies and me do not agree but I gave it a go. They still don't agree but dad and erste schwester (who adore strong flavours) wolfed it down. Gone in about 3 minutes flat. Highly recommended, but not by me.



Cold roast venison, celeriac remoulade and pickled damsons - My single favourite dish of the evening, and probably in my top 5 of the year. The cold roast venison was absolutely packed with flavour, slightly gamey in taste but beefy in texture. The damsons added quite a strong sweet and sour dimension and the crunchy celeriac remoulade acted as a binding agent, mellowing out all the contrasting flavours. Even the watercress wasn't an unnecessary addition, adding a peppery layer to the end dish.



Rabbit terrine - Zweite Schwester's starter deserves a special mention. Smooth rabbit terrine served with thin, crisp toast and additional roast fennel. The slight gamey flavour of the rabbit was highly evident, with subtle undertones of star anise. Light and very very moreish.



Breast of veal, spinach and garlic stuffing - My main and *oof* it was a beast. A rolled breast of veal which was stuffed with a spinach and garlic stuffing. A fairly average dish which felt more like a chore eating it. The first mouthful was pleasurable but it was so heavy that after half had been consumed, I just had to stop and would definitely benefited from being smaller, and containing less stuffing. Close, but no cigar.



Chocolate and banana bread pudding - Banana cake, one of mankind's finest inventions. Made right, it is light, sweet and you just never want it to end. This version was heavy and the addition of the chocolate didn't really add too much to the flavours of the banana. It also felt quite dry and dousing it in the cream added a much needed moistness to the dish. Again, this was average and simply wasn't banana cake.

A meal of highs and lows. Most dishes were well executed but in parts slightly ill conceived. The starters (on the whole) hit the spot and got the meal off to a great start but the mains and desserts just didn't maintain the high standard.

I did feel the service was overbearing at times. We were enjoying our meal and taking our time, after all, my family doesn't get that many chances to get together. However, I felt the staff kept hovering around us, removing plates as quickly as possible as if to hurry us on without coming out and actually saying it. I may be being paranoid but I certainly didn't feel comfortable.

On the whole, everyone had a great time. All my dishes may not have hit the spot, but my family were very happy and everyone had a good time. My dad is a hard man to please, but for once, he really had no complaints. I now have another reason to visit Bayswater other than Chinese food and lobster noodles.

Le Cafe Anglais (website) - 8 Porchester Gardens, W2 4DB