Our first meal in Malaysia was a gloomy meal. Not because the food wasn’t good, but our luggages didn’t arrive with us with our plane. They made us spent hours waiting at the airport, and still no bags. The airplane was late twice, from Hong Kong to KL due to a storm, and then again it was delayed from KL to Langkawi. We had also a big argument with the staff in KL airport, due to the delay of the plane, they asked us to pay more for checking in luggages at the counter. (machines checking were closed). They were very inflexible with our explanations due to their mistakes. The dilemma, we paid our bags for not getting them.
Originally we had planned to eat at the night market that was opened that night of the week. When we left arrived at our hotel, it was already late, the taxi driver told us the market was closing. We spent some time walking around to check out some addresses for food, turning out that Langkawi has big construction sites everywhere, most of the places I wanted to visit has vanished on the map. Our next choice would be Orkid Ria, a seafood restaurant, then them too, were closing. A waiter cleaning recommended us to eat at a road side restaurant just next to the them. Turning out it was quite alright, even with our bad mood, especially we had committed a big error, all the electronic chargers were in the checkin luggages!
They didn’t speak any English, so we pointed at the fish or the ingredient that were in trays with ice, and they cooked in the style they wanted. Dishes were simple but were sufficient for that night.
After a few early morning calls insisting that we would be leaving Langkawi the day after, and they had to deliver our bags as soon as possible. Finally the bags arrived at our hotel, we were relief! We had an early lunch at Orkid Ria.
Dinner, we wanted to try an upscale place, Nam restaurant in the Bon Ton Resorts. The place was lovely, especially the individual houses that resembles Malay ancient homes. The restaurant was big and open space. We had read that the owner owned also an animal rescue, there were a lot of cats wandering in the restaurant.
We both ordered the Nyonya Platter: with 9 dishes, tapas sizes: prawns in pandan leaf, fish Tamarind, beef with peanuts, chicken with lime leaf, pickled lamb curry, ladies finger samba, pineapple scar, eggplant in a coconut curry and mango and cashew nut rice. Accompanied with a freshly squeezed pineapple ginger and lime neat juice.
With our limited understand of Nyonya cuisine, we didn’t appreciate the meal: the meat were deep fried and were dried and tasteless, the rice was hard (made a day before?). The prawns were overcooked. The vegetables were slightly better. We gave some meat to the cats, even them, they didn’t want and ran away. The best of the night was the cocktail.
I vaguely remembered the price of the meal, around 220RM for 2… I believe it was a nice stylish place to stay or to have drinks but forget about the food! Go to eat local street food.
Langkawi tends to serve only Malay food, and that Nyonya Platter you had certainly looked Malay. Besides, Nyonya food is usually cooked by the Chinese Babas & Nyonyas, rather than Malays. In Penang, try Nyonya Breeze in Straits Quay, to have a taste of what Penang-style Nyonya food is like.
