Kuala Lumpur trip 2024

medgirl · November 21, 2024, 3:54pm

Arrived at our hotel at nearly 10pm in KL. Dumped our bags and went out in search of something to eat. Some places still open at that hour. For some reason, a very basic Bangladeshi canteen had some items which appealed to us as it was like home style comfort food for us after a long flight and taxi ride. The men in there seemed surprised to have us as customers and a bit bemused by the random selections we made. We had: one samosa, one piece of carp in a light gravy, one piece of curried chicken in a thicker gravy and ‘lal shak’ (red leafy vegetable). We got one order of white rice, which was an enormous portion.

A nice itemised bill printed out in Bengali - grand total of RM 25 for 2 persons! This included a bottle of water we didn’t really want, but it was RM 1, so we didn’t quibble.

medgirl · November 21, 2024, 4:26pm

Jokopi (1-3, Jalan Tun H S Lee, City Centre, 50000 Kuala Lumpur)

We came across this little coffee shop that was still open at 11pm and nicely bustling with a small crowd of young Malaysians enjoying themselves. I had a coffee soft serve drizzled with gula melaka. It was really good - not too sweet and came with something akin to puffed rice on the bottom.

linguafood · November 21, 2024, 4:43pm

Looks delish. What’s gula melaka?

Saregama · November 21, 2024, 5:58pm

Oooh that looks so good! Love coffee ice cream.

Does the gula melaka taste closer to nolen gur than regular jaggery? My mom uses jaggery powder in her coffee and it adds a caramelly note, but I find it’s more noticeable in tea where I can distinctly taste gur vs sugar.

Saregama · November 21, 2024, 6:02pm

My dad traveled extensively for work, and one of his favorite things to do anywhere was to go into any random south asian restaurant for a cup of tea at least one afternoon .

Lal shak is red amaranth, I assume. Food loooks homey and delicious!

(Also I had never paid attention to the Bengali script till you posted the bill - didn’t realize it is so similar to Hindi / Sanskrit.)

medgirl · November 21, 2024, 11:56pm

Gula melaka is a type of palm sugar/molasses. I’m not sure if it is tapped from date palm or coconut palm trees.

It is dark brown and has a complex flavour. There are equivalents in India as well (saregama mentioned nolen gur, which is the local equivalent in Bengal).

medgirl · November 21, 2024, 11:57pm

It wasn’t the most generous drizzle! But it does seem to bear a resemblance to gur - a more complex flavour profile to refined sugar.

medgirl · November 22, 2024, 12:02am

Yes, Bengali is derived from Sanskrit and the script is based on Devanagari script.

My husband wasn’t keen to go into a Bangladeshi establishment because of how Bangladeshi-run restaurants dish out ‘Indian’ food in the UK. I said, look, this looks like a canteen for labourers, so they will be cooking their own food, not vindaloo and madras type stuff. And it turned out to be the case - home style cooking, probably providing for people who are working far from home.

medgirl · November 22, 2024, 12:42am

Wandered out of the hotel around 7am looking for some breakfast.

Decided to try a South Indian place that was full of people who looked like office goers grabbing a bite before heading to work.

They didn’t speak English. We didn’t speaka what they they were speaking and couldn’t even get hold of a menu. We eventually settled on Hindi to order. One masala chai, one filter coffee, one masala soda and one roti canai. Had to keep asking for the trio of buckets of sambhar dal and chutnies to be brought to our table. Was OK for RM 17 but we will check out other options in the neighbourhood.

I wasn’t sure why the bowl the filter coffee cup came in was full of hot milk. I’ve never had it like that in India or the UK. Later I saw a lady pouring her coffee out into the milk, stirring it and sipping from the bowl. Hmmmm, not sure about that.

medgirl · November 22, 2024, 12:54am

I’m not a complete coffee nerd but I do like my coffee in the morning and that weird filter coffee in a moat of milk in the South Indian place did not hit the spot this morning. So we wandered around and saw there are heaps of options. I was like Goldilocks, driving my husband mad by going into one place and coming out again saying it was too fancy, then going into another place and saying it wasn’t fancy enough. We finally landed on 8055 Coffee (89, Jalan Wangsa Delima 5, Pusat Bandar Wangsa Maju, 53300 Kuala Lumpur) - I thought this was just right.

It’s located in an old Chinese shop house and has a vibe that could be described as Malay hipster. Very friendly service and a menu that has my favourite option of a cortado.

Very friendly service from two ladies who took great care making the coffees. They have a tiny pastry cabinet but were out of the one item I wanted to try - an ikan bilis donut! Maybe next time.

klyeoh · November 22, 2024, 2:17am

It’s coconut palm sugar here.

klyeoh · November 22, 2024, 2:20am

I’d never seen it done that either anywhere else in KL!! Maybe it’s just their own unique take on serving!.

medgirl · November 22, 2024, 6:54am

Friends wanted to meet us this morning to catch up and grab something to eat. They have family in KL and are not based here all the time, so we had a few hours of wandering around and actually ended up abandoning the first option they chose, a restaurant called Luckbros Kopi. I understand this is a chain and we went to the one at 9, Jalan Balai Polis, City Centre, 50000 Kuala Lumpur. We started off with some drinks and kaya toast but they were quite expensive for what they were. And while my lemon ice tea was good, the asam boi ice drinks the others had did not have a good balance of flavours and the Kaya toast skimped on the kaya.

So we eventually ended up at a place in Chow Kit recommended by a friend of our friends - a place called Yut Kee (1, Jalan Kamunting, Chow Kit, 50300 Kuala Lumpur)

We ordered iced fresh lime juices (very refreshing in the humidity), chicken rice, beef rendang and rice, belachan fried rice, hokkien noodles.

Very old school atmosphere. Service was friendly. And their menu had the option to buy half a kilogram of coffee powder!

medgirl · November 22, 2024, 7:10am

Some random pics.

Mural on the side of a kopitiam.

Happy durian selling chocolate?

Murals in Chinatown:

klyeoh · November 22, 2024, 1:33pm

Wished I was there to show you around. So many good local food places located in various nooks and crannies where you trudged past today!

medgirl · November 22, 2024, 2:10pm

That would have been great Peter. We did clock some interesting places while strolling around. Some things I would like to circle back to:

Pik Wah: the roast meats and egg tarts looked good.
Long Kee dried meats: thinking we could pick up some gifts from here
Bunn Choon restaurant: crowds looked more manageable than Ho Kow kopitiam next door, where people were queuing down the road and waiting for upto 30 min (they have a board right waiting time written on it).

We sort of felt we had to defer to our friends’ choice for eating out this afternoon. But we will go back to explore at leisure.

medgirl · November 22, 2024, 2:40pm

ADU Sugar restaurant (10A First Floor, Lrg Ara Kiri 2, Bangsar, 59100 Kuala Lumpur)

We had booked Friday night dinner at this restaurant, based on advice from @klyeoh. It was a wonderful experience. The restaurant is discreetly tucked away up a flight of stairs (our taxi driver was a bit worried it didn’t exist!). The decor is eclectic with lots of artefacts, paintings and low lighting. There were lots of fans, so the room temperature was comfortable (I hate aggressive air conditioning). We were very surprised to find ourselves the only customers in the entire restaurant! There were only 2 members of staff, a lady acting as front of house and a lady doing the cooking.

The entrance:

View from where I was sitting:

The menu:

There is also a vegetarian/vegan menu (we didn’t order anything from this):

We ordered the laksa Johor, duck rendang with blue coconut rice, and the nasi goreng.

The laksa came first, with the blue rice. We kept the blue rice to one side as we were going to have the duck with the rice.

Johor laksa:

The gravy had a very intense seafood flavour. And some shredded tart vegetables added welcome contrast to the rich seafood gravy. A good start.

Blue rice and duck leg rendang:

Amazing! The duck meat was so rich and flavourful. We actually ordered another portion of rice (steamed white rice) to finish every bit of the duck and it’s rich sauce. It also had some very wispy dried ? herbs / ? seaweed sort of greens on the top.

Then the nasi goreng:

This was made with the house special XO sauce and was a total flavour bomb. And there were 3 huge shell-on prawns in the rice.

The desserts sounded interesting, so we ordered the dark chocolate brownie with smoked banana, walnuts and vanilla ice cream, and your trifle made from pandan sponge, mascarpone and coconut nibs.

I had the brownie - it wasn’t too sweet and the smoked banana incorporated in it really added a grown up twist to the usual brownie vanilla ice cream combo. The trifle was very coconutty, I couldn’t really make out the pandan flavour very well. But my husband enjoyed it.

Overall, we were really very happy with our experience here. Bill came to MYR 223.

Thank you @klyeoh for this recommendation!

linguafood · November 22, 2024, 2:49pm

Wow, everything looks delish, but the duck in particular! Is the rice colored with pea flower?

klyeoh · November 22, 2024, 2:52pm

Very good to hear that you enjoyed your dinner there, @medgirl. I wished you had a chance to meet the colourful, flamboyant owner, Adu Amran. He ran a Malay restaurant in London for over a decade before returning to Malaysia and became one of the judges for Masterchef Malaysia.

klyeoh · November 22, 2024, 2:55pm

Go to Madras Lane in the morning - there’s a trio of KL-style curry noodle stalls, all in a row there. Go for the one in the middle.

The chee cheong fun stall is one of my faves.

The yong tau fu stall there is uber-popular, but I don’t like their way of serving using disposable containers, even if you are eating there, nowadays.