Kuala Lumpur (like Singapore) has a dearth of Sri Lankan eateries. When I first moved there from Singapore in 2011, there was only one Sri Lankan eatery of note: Aliyaa in Plaza Damansara - pointed out to me by my new neighbours, a older Malaysian couple of Jaffna-Tamil descent. Aliyaa’s still there - quite an expensive restaurant, and very much priced to take advantage of the wealthy eighbourhood it’s located in.
Fast forward to the present day - I no longer live in Kuala Lumpur, but do make trips down there every now & then - and I discovered from my most recent trip last weekend that there are now two other “proper” restaurants which serve Sri Lankan food. One was Yarl Restaurant, which has progressed from a road-side shack to a newly-refurbished shophouse in the Brickfields (Little India) neighbourhood. Yarl Restaurant was first set-up a few years ago using funds provided by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to help Jaffna-Tamil refugees fleeing the Sri Lankan civil war (1983-2009). A decade after the war ended, the restaurant still pulled in the crowd - mainly Malaysian-Tamils in search of good Jaffna-Tamil food. It’s widened its offerings to include freshly-made Sri Lankan-style appams, but still retained its rustic, rough-at-the-edges feel.
The other Sri Lankan restaurant where I had lunch last Sunday was Lankan Cafe, a casual bistro with a more “upmarket” feel compared to Yarl, and with a wider menu.
- There were 6 of us, and we ordered a selection of appams to share - egg appams, sweet appams sprinkled with jaggery sugar and plain appams.
Taste-wise, the appams had a “slight” sweetish taste reminisscent of Malaysian-Tamil appams, so it’s possibly “localised” to suit the local Malaysian palate. Their appams were also cooked using shallower mini-woks, unlike the ones at Yarl which were exactly the same as those we had in Sri Lanka back in June.
These were accompanied by the omnipresent Sri Lankan sambol triumvirate: pol sambol (spiced, grated coconut with Maldivian fish), katta sambol (ultra-spicy minced chilis) and seeni sambol (spicy, caramelised onion relish).
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Another appetiser we had were the mutton cutlets - little croquettes with a crisp shell encasing spiced, minced mutton filling. Delish with the seeni sambol (actually, anything would taste good with seeni sambol!)
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One of the lunch items we came for was the Lamprais, which is only available on weekends. Lamprais is a Dutch-Burgher dish which is esentially rice with a selection of curried meats & vegetables, wrapped into a parcel using banana leaves, then oven-baked.
Unwrapping a lamprais would unveil an aromatic, delicious rice parcel, flavoured with curries and infused with the scent from the banana leaves.
The version here included spiced chicken and mutton, a hard-boiled egg, and aubergine curry, with golden-fried shallots.
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One can never visit a Sri Lankan restaurant without ordering a Sri Lankan crab curry. There were 3 versions available - we were recommended the Mantara Crab Curry. The liquid, chocolate-coloured sauce was absolutely delicious. The crabs - NOT fresh at all, with powdery, dry flesh. Sorely disappointed. I’d definitely avoid ordering this dish again if I do come back here.
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The other main dish - Mutton Bone Marrow Curry saved the day: the perfectly-cooked mutton shanks were blankered with a spicy, deep-flavoured curry generously studded with chunks of mutton meat. Short straws were provided for diners to suck the marrow out of the mutton shank.
- We ordered some stringhoppers/Idiyappam for the carbs to accompany the curried dishes.
Overall, it would have been a really good meal, but for the big, big road-bump that was the unfresh crabs.
Address
Lankan Cafe
388, 1st Floor, Jalan 5/59, Taman Petaling
Bukit Gasing, 46000 Petaling Jaya, Malaysia
Tel: +6037772-2575
Opening hours: 10am-10pm, Tues-Sun. Closed on Mondays
