Malaysian Archives

In Fusion

Potluck Hawker Eatery: A Taste of South-East Asian Street Food in Vancouver

July 14, 2020

Potluck Hawker Eatery is now open in the Cambie Village area of Vancouver. This is a counter-service style restaurant inspired by the South-East Asian hawker street food markets.

Chef Justin Cheung put his own spin on Malaysian cuisine, paying homage to a comprehensive training of Thai cooking and a nod to a Filipino potluck. It is fantastic and we are all here for it.

Interior

The 993 square-feet restaurant draws inspiration from the ritual of potlucks, where families spend the day in the kitchen preparing their family’s signature dish and contributing to the table – a coming together of stomach-filling, soul-warming dishes. We absolutely love the space and don’t forget to take a selfie in the washroom because it’s amazing. Make sure you go into both washrooms too.

My favourite part is seeing the ingredients that go into the dishes on the walls. its gives it nice character and also transparency in what they cook with.

If anyone blames the smell on you, tell them it’s from the durian wallpaper.

Thai Iced Tea

One of our favourite drinks and its very nice and refreshing for a summer’s day. Bold tea flavour and they sweeten it with condensed milk. If you want it less sweet, just ask.

Beet Carpaccio

This has spicy fish sauce and lime juice dressing, fried shallots and fresh herbs. You heard that right beet, not beef. It was tangy and refreshing. The chilis give it a nice kick of spice. It really reminded us of butter beef but without the beef or butter.

Burmese Shrimp Ceviche

The dish has cucumber, cherry tomatoes and shrimp lightly pickled in fresh lime juice, fish sauce and chili. Not as flavourful compared to the other dishes but you’ll want to eat this before all the other dishes so the work better together. The shrimp was really nice and fresh in this ceviche.

Salted Egg Yolk Fried Chicken Sando

This beauty has crispy chicken thigh, green mango slaw, tamarind chili jam, in Fife Bakery milk bread. We also got their Malaysian shaker fries as an add-on.

This dish was our favourite. The fried chicken thigh was tender and juicy. It balanced well with the crunchy slaw, salted egg yolk, and jam. The bread was really good, lightly toasted but very soft. The shaker fries has that savoury-sweet flavour combination.

Nasi Goreng

This is an Indonesian style fried rice with house special soy topped with shrimp crackers and fried egg. You can choose to have this with chicken, seafood or tofu. The egg was cooked perfectly to moisten up the fried rice. The rice did end up to be quite moist.

Mama Cheung’s Laksa

This is dish is named after the chef’s mom. It has coconut curry noodle soup with fish cake, prawns, puff tofu, boiled egg and mixed noodle. You can choose to have this with vermicelli or egg noodles. Very flavourful with a kick of spice.

Fish Sauce Caramel Wings

They use free-run Farmcrest chickens from Salmon Arm, BC. It was finger lickin’ good with the pandan infused palm sugar and sesame. Their fried food is exceptional here. The chicken is seasoned as well as the batter so they really get the flavour to shine throughout the wings.

Roti Canai with Condensed Milk

Not the combination that I would have through would work together, but it was simple and tasty. A good way to end the meal.

Final Thoughts

The food at Potluck Hawker Eatery is fantastic and packed with a depth of flavour. The essence of South East Asian cuisine really shines through. A lot of the dishes do use cilantro and spicy peppers, so if you adore that, head on over to Potluck. If you’re not into those flavours, they can accomodate no cilantro and reduced spice levels too. Salted Egg Yolk Fried Chicken Sando is the best.

Highly recommend this place and we just can’t stop thinking about their fried dishes. All so nicely battered and seasoned. Vancouver definitely needed more restaurants like this.

Address:
3424 Cambie St, Vancouver, BC

Website:
https://www.potluckyvr.ca/

In Malaysian

Rice and Noodle: Southeast Asian-inspired Dishes in Vancouver

March 24, 2018

Rice and Noodle serves up Southeast Asian inspired food in a convenient and affordable way on Robson Street right in the middle of Downtown Vancouver. All their dishes are MSG-free, made to order and highly customizable to your tastes. Their menu has rice dishes and noodle dishes where you can choose your own protein, spiciness level and any thing else extra you want in it.

You can also order online for pick up or you can get delivery through the different delivery services around town like Just Eat, Door Dash, UberEats, Foodora, Skip the Dishes, etc.

Interior

You order your meal at the counter in the back and then you can take a seat until they bring you over your order.

Laksa

The laksa soup is made with a coconut curry broth, rice noodle, broccoli, carrot, onion, tofu, zucchini, and then topped with bean sprouts, boiled egg, and cilantro. I really enjoyed this laksa as it had a good level of spice to the broth. I highly recommend this.

Tom Yum Soup

This has a lemongrass broth, prawns, rice noodle, cilantro mushroom, onion and tomato. It’s a little bit sour and a little bit spicy.

Panang Red Curry

This has red curry with basil, cauliflower and yam with rice. It has a hint of spice to it but not too much.

Creamy Peanut Stirfry

This has bean sprouts, carrot, onion, red pepper, spinach and then the rice.

Family Combo for 5

We got this combo for the rest of the dishes. It comes with all these 6 dishes for $50.

Pad Thai with Shrimp
Kung Pao Chicken
Mongolian Beef
Green Curry with Chicken
Pineapple Fried Rice with Chicken
5 Spring Rolls Thai

Pad Thai Shrimp

This dish has rice noodle, egg, tofu, bean sprouts, green onion, crushed peanuts, and prawns. Squeeze some lime on it and it’s ready to eat.

KungPao Chicken

On the plate is rice, chicken, green bean, onion, pineapple, red pepper, ginger, cashew, and spinach.

Mongolian Beef

This has beef, broccoli, bean sprouts, carrot, green bean, ginger, onion, red cabbage, water chestnut, and a mound of rice.

Green Curry with Chicken

Pineapple Fried Rice with Chicken

I missed taking a picture of this, but I wasn’t a fan of this. It has fried rice, egg, carrot, green bean, onion, pineapple, red pepper and chicken.

Spring Rolls

One spring roll per person and it has a crisp and crunchy exterior.

Final Thoughts

Overall, I like how the dishes are highly customizable. You can switch up your protein options, spice level and add any extra items to it. For my own personal preferences, I love a little bit of spice instead of mild. I would choose 3 chili peppers next time.My favourite dish of the evening was the Laksa.

We Rate Rice and Noodle:

Address:
1236 Robson St, Vancouver, BC

Website:
http://thericeandnoodle.com/

In Malaysian

Green and Oak: Malaysian Cuisine in North Burnaby

February 18, 2018

Green & Oak is a new restaurant in North Burnaby on Hastings Street specializing in Malaysian cuisine. They took over the previous location – Mr Chili. A few of us came here for dinner to try it out.

Interior

The space is large and there are lots of seats for small to large groups. We made a reservation ahead of time since we had a large group for dinner.

Satay Skewers

The skewers come in chicken, pork or beef. Each order is 1 piece each, so we got 3 of each. The skewers were all ok, but could be a bit more juicy.

Roti-Canai

This is freshly made in-house and it is Malaysian flatbread.It comes with 2 pieces cut up and served with a curry dipping sauce.

Chicken Wings

These are deep-fried whole chicken wings and it comes with a garlic lemon dip. Very crunchy on the exterior and the meat inside was very juicy. It comes with 3 pieces per order.

Hainanese Chicken

The whole chicken comes with 4 soups and 4 rice dishes as well. It is a popular dish in Singapore as the chicken is cooked in delicious chicken stock and served in a red chili and ginger dipping sauces.

The Hainanese chicken was ok but nothing amazing. We wished it was served a bit warmer.

The rice was a bit oily but the soup was delicious.

Seafood Laksa Noodle Soup

This is a curry-based soup with tofu, bean sprouts, egg, lemongrass, lime juice, coconut milk, vermicelli noodles and seafood. You can also ask for it with egg noodles too. The flavour is different than most laksas in town, so people either love it or hate it. I really enjoyed the broth and I could eat the whole bowl.

Mee Goreng

This has egg noodle with beef, shrimp, tofu, cucumber and tomato. It was ok.

Belachan Fried Rice

This is fried rice with dried shrimp, chili pepper, pork, shrimp, egg, and sou sauce. This was pretty average too.

Char Kuey Teow

This was delicious. It has fried rice noodle with shrimp, tofu, pork, egg, chili, and soy sauce.

Malaysian Curry Rice

This is put together with curry paste, lemongrass, shallot, onion, basil, other herbs and is served with steamed rice.

Final Thoughts

Overall, I love the look of the space and the service was decent. Some of the dishes are a hit and miss. I enjoyed the chicken wings, Char Kuey Teow, and the laksa.

We Rate Green and Oak:

Address:
3760 Hastings St, Burnaby, BC

In Cafe

Mamalee Malaysian Delight: Hainanese Chicken in Vancouver

October 30, 2015

Mamalee Malaysia Delight was Cafe D’Lite but underwent rebranding in 2013 as a tribute to the owner – Betty for her spirit and heritage. It represents Betty’s continuing commitment to an authentic Malaysian dining experience that is second to none.

I have been looking for the best Hainanese Chicken in Vancouver and a lot of people recommended Mamalee. Since I was in the area, M and I came here to have a quick dinner.

By 6pm, this place was packed! We were fortunate to get the last table so we didn’t have to wait in line. Looking at the other tables, it seems like almost everyone orders the same few items.

Can you guess their specialty? Of course! Hainanaese Chicken. It can come on rice, or in soup with noodles. So manu choices.

To order, you fill this out and return it back to the server.

Roti Canai ($5.95) comes with laksa sauce for dipping. The roti was flakey on the outside and was very delicious.

Regular Hainanese Chicken Rice ($9.95) you get yummy rice with a lot of Hainanese chicken. I gobbled this right up. All the chicken is boneless and so addictive.

It also comes with soup, which is a nice bonus.

Large Hainanese Chicken Rice ($12.50) is definitely larger! M had this and he just loved it too.

Overall, the food is delicious and the prices are pretty good as well. Hainanese Chicken all the way! A majority of the people who come here order their Hainanese Chicken. So far, this place is on the top of my list to get Hainanese Chicken. Great potion size too. I would definitely come back.

We Rate Mamalee Malaysian Delight:

Address:
3144 West Broadway, Vancouver

Website:
http://mamalee.ca/

In Burnaby Cariboo-Lougheed

Angie’s Malaysian Eatery: Hainanese Chicken near Edmonds

August 15, 2015

Angie’s Malaysian Eatery just opened up last May and they sell a fusion Hawker-style food from Brunei. I am on the search for the best Hainanese Chicken in the Lower Mainland, so I had to make a stop here. They are a family-run business, so its quite cool to see how they work together.

I came here around 6pm on a Friday and it was packed. Word must have spread about this little restaurant really quickly. It’s great that they were doing so well. We noticed there were a lot of large groups that took up most the tables.

Roti Canai comes with a small bowl of curry sauce for dipping. The roti itself was a bit disappointing as it was not very crispy. Quite doughy. I would of like it if they cooked it for longer.

Despite the texture of the roti, my friend still enjoyed it. I think it was mostly because of the curry sauce.

Curry Chicken Rice needed more meat in it. We mostly got vegetables in ours. It was good, but the curry was quite watery too. The portion is meant for one person, but I think you may need something extra to get full.

Seria Kolomee it has fish cake, BBQ Pork, minced meat sauce, fried shallots, veggies on top of dry noodles. It also came with a calamansi lime and some pickled peppers on the side.

I thought it was pretty good.

Hainanese Chicken is the personal sized dish and probably their most popular item. The chicken is cut up into very think pieces and comes with rice and a chilli vinegar sauce. The portion is definitely a bit on the small side. The chicken was small, so we wanted more.

We got their entree version that has double the amount of chicken.

Buttermilk Tiger Prawn comes with the shells intact with the delicious sauce and sprinkled with fried shallots. It got quite messy trying to remove the shells as the sauce would go everywhere.

Overall,the food was pretty good but I wish the portions were a bit bigger. The prices are reasonable as everything is mostly under $10.

We Rate Angie’s Malaysian Eatery:

Address:
7355 Edmonds Street, Burnaby

In Malaysian

Tamarind Hill: Malaysian Cuisine in North Vancouver

June 14, 2015

Tamarind Hill is located in North Vancouver and serve up Malaysian food. Their top items are Rotis & Satays, Green Papaya & Mango Salad, Hainanese Chicken, Rendeng Beef, Kari Lamb, King Prawns with Indian Black Peppercorn and Garlic Butter.

After hiking, I came here with a few friends to eat some dinner. We came to this place because it was highly recommended by people who live in the area.

Roti Canai (2 pieces -$7) is their signature Malaysian soft bread with pan-fried golden crust, served with a spicy curry dip. We ordered 4 pieces, so the pictures has double the amount. There was 5 of us, so we wanted to make sure there was enough.

Satays (5 skewers for $7) comes in either chicken, beef, or lamb. We got one of each for everyone, so we ordered 15 in total. These bite size meat skewers marinated with lemongrass, turmeric, onions and coriander with a delicious peanut sauce dip.

Boneless Hainanese Chicken with Hainanese Chicken Rice ($15.95) is steamed to perfect tenderness, topped with light sweet soy, served with grated ginger green onion dip and sweet chili dip. I love how it’s boneless! The dish is served warm rather than the traditional cold.

Char Kuey Teow ($10.75) is stir fried flat rice noodle with spicy sweet soy, egg, bean sprout shrimp, fish cake & cuttlefish. This totally reminds me of a Chinese dish. Tastes very familiar but a tad spicy.

Nasi Goreng ($10.75) is a popular Malaysian style fried rice with beef, shrimp, egg, tomato, onion & green beans. I thought it was a decent dish.

To go with all this food, we had some Tiger Beer from Singapore. It’s another light beer that pairs nicely with this food.

Overall, the food was decent but the flavours didn’t wow me. That might just be me since I found Malaysian cuisine is very similar to other South Asian cuisine.

We Rate Tamarind Hill:

Website:
www.tamarindhill.ca

Address:
1440 Lonsdale Avenue,
North Vancouver

In Bakery

PappaRotti: Coffee Buns

June 7, 2014

PappaRoti has made its way to Vancouver as the first location in Canada. The first store opened up in Malaysia in 2003 selling their signature roti buns. It was a hit and now they have over 400 locations around the world.

Their signature item is the roti bun, which has a sweet caramelized coffee cream on top. It is best paired with tea or coffee.

KoreanGirl and I have been on search for Coffee Buns in Vancouver. Before coming to PappaRoti, we had some at Coffee Bun and Cafe Joie.

PappaRoti was quite busy during the night at 7pm. It got increasingly busy as the night went on. A lot of people were eating catching up with friends, having a meeting or doing homework.

Their menu has coffee, tea, frappes, and smoothies.

Original Bun ($3.65) is twice baked and coated with their caramel coffee cream topping. The top was crispy and the inside was light and fluffy. Eat it right when it comes out of the oven because that is the best.

Dry Cappuccino ($3.50) is my favourite type of cappuccino as it has more foam. I don’t like it with too much milk. The coffee they use is created by JJ Bean, which I was surprised as PappaRotti is a chain. I thought it would be pretty standardized.

KoreanGirl ordered a Milk Tea, but whatever tea they used made it taste a bit weird.

They don’t have a large variety for food, but people mostly come here for the coffee, tea and coffee buns.

Overall, it’s a nice place to chill. There is lots of seating and the coffee is good.

We Rate PappaRotti:

Address:
1505 Robson St
Vancouver BC

Website:
http://papparoti.ca/

In East Village

Laksa King: Laksa and Roti

May 3, 2014

M and I were craving some laksa and we were passing by Laksa King restaurant. The last time I came here was in 2011, which it was called Bo Laksa King, but Bo has left and now it’s just called Laksa King. With new owners, comes with new interior look with booths and a new mural painting.

The mural looks like a diner with some classic cars in the front. I thought this was a bit odd since this is a Burmese restaurant.

The menu more or less has stayed the same.

Nasi Goreng ($9.25) has stir fry rice with egg, shrimp, beef, shrimp paste, chilli and shredded lettuce. It tasted ok, but it all tasted quite bland and dry.

Laksa ($8.75) has your choice of vermicelli or yellow noodles served with tiger prawns, fish ball, tofu buff, hard boiled egg, chicken and a coconut curry broth. It was a tad spicy, but it is full of deep flavours.

Roti Canai (large – $6.99) has 2 pieces with the curry dip in the centre. The roti was beautifully crispy on the outside and it went really well with the dip. I could eat this all day.

Overall, the food was ok. It was a bit weird dining here since we were the only table dining here. Plus, even though we were the only ones here, the service was cold and not nice.

We rate Laksa King:

Address:
2546 E Hastings St
Vancouver, BC V5K

Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/laksakinginvancouver

In Cambodian

Indochine Kitchen + Bar: Wings and Import Beer Specials

September 22, 2012

Indochine is located on Broadway and Ontario St. They have menu items influence by South Asian countries such as Thai, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia. After heading from Science World, we drove a few minutes and decided to come here for the Wednesday special of half price wings and $4.99 import beers. Past visitors have remarked a few items are similar to popular restaurant – Phnom Penh. It is indeed related to Indochine! Same family of restaurants, but Indochine is higher end.

They have some good specials on other nights too! Notably Tuesday, Wednesday and Sunday.

The interior has a large bar with lots of TVs surrounding the room. It’s a great place to see the game or just kick back for a few drinks.

Heineken ($4.99)

Vietnamese Iced Coffee took a long time to arrive at the table. M finished half his beer before my drink even arrived. The taste was good, but the wait was long.

Indochine Garlic Butter Chicken Wings ($4.75) comes with garlic chips and lemon pepper dipping sauce. It was delicious and the most popular item in Indochine. Hands down, awesome! It is also similar to Phnom Penh but its in smaller portions.

Sriracha Buffalo Wings ($4.75) has traditional buffalo wings marinated with Sriracha hot sauce. It wasn’t too spicy either.

Honey Garlic Wings ($4.75) has deep-fried wings glazed with a honey garlic sauce. We enjoyed these and had a good balance of sauce ratio.

Butter Beef Carpaccio ($12) has buttery slices of raw beef in a citrus Vietnamese vinaigrette, garlic chips and cilantro. It’s a very popular item and people order this because it’s a popular item found at Phnom Penh. During our visit at Indochine, when our butter beef carpaccio arrived, the meat was warm and threw off the entire taste and texture of the dish.

Singaporean Laksa ($8.75) has rice vermicelli noodles in a spicy seafood coconut curry broth with prawns, tofu puffs, fish balls, Fish slices, a hardboiled egg and bean sprouts. It was a decent size, but it was definitely a hard dish to share. The flavours of the broth was very good and not too spicy. We enjoyed it.

Overall, the food was good during the 1/2 priced Wings on Wednesday, but I felt the regular prices are a bit expensive. A lot of people compare Phnom Penh and Indochine, but they have different target demographics, so if you have Phnom Penh expectations, you may be disappointed. Portion sizes and prices are different.

We Rate Indochine:

Address:
1 E Broadway
Vancouver, BC

Website:
http://www.indochinekitchen.ca/

[googlemap width=”620″ height=”480″ src=”https://maps.google.ca/maps?q=1+E+Broadway+Vancouver,+BC+V5T&hnear=1+E+Broadway,+Vancouver,+British+Columbia+V5T+1W1&gl=ca&t=m&z=16 “]

In Indonesian

Hawker’s Delight: Cheap $5 Dinners, But Is It Good?

January 11, 2012

Hawkers Delight is located on Main street and they are known for their amazing cheap food. All items on the menu are around $5. It’s cash only, but as long as you have a $10 in your pocket, you will be OK. They serve up Malaysian/Indonesian dishes and have good vegetarian options.

M, KoreanGirl and I came here because we were feeling pretty frugal and needed a super cheap dinner.

Tofu Goreng ($5.25) are little stuffed tofu puffs with cucumbers and bean sprouts with a lots of peanut sauce and sweet soy sauce. Each one of those puffs are soaked in a lot of sauce. When you take a bite, its gonna be messy, so watch out for your clothes!

Some of us at the table liked it, and I particularly didn’t like that taste of the sauces and how messy it was to eat.

Dried Noodle ($5.75) has a bed of warm dry noodles, bean sprouts, veggies, and a bunch of other ingredients. I thought it was alright, but I didn’t really love the taste of it.

Nasi Goreng ($5.25) is like Mee Goreng, but in a fried rice form. KoreanGirl and M both had their versions spicy. They were surprised by the low price and good taste.

Overall, I think there are a few items that are a hit and a miss. The prices are quite affordable, but you do get what you pay for. Perhaps it just didn’t suit my tastes.

Words of Wisdom:

Free parking in side streets
Take Out containers are $0.25
Cash Only
Order at Counter and everything else is self serve

We Rate Hawkers Delight:

Address:
4127 Main St
Vancouver, BC V5V

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In Bubble Tea

Bo Laksa King’s Bubbles & Bits: Roti Canai and Laksa

December 24, 2011

Bo Laksa King’s Bubble & Bits serves up Malaysian food! I heard their Laksa is really good, so I took a few friends here to try it out.

They are cash only, so you are outta luck, if you don’t have any….there should be a bank close by.

Their interior is not very large, but can fit a few groups of 4’s and 2’s.

Roti Canai (Large -$5.99) is like a asian pancake with a curry chicken dipping sauce. It was very fresh and crispy. It was probably one of the best Roti Canai I have had! The sauce was really really good too. The 4 of us fought over this dish since it was so good! Highly recommended.

Beef Rendang ($8.75) is marinated beef slowly cooked in coconut gravy plus a special sauce served with rice. M really liked it because it was very flavourful and the meat was really tender.

Mee Goreng ($7.75) is spicy stir fried noodle with veggies, chicken with a sweet and spicy sauce. I really did not like this dish because of the sauce they used. I much prefer the instant mee goreng from the store.

Laksa ($7.50) has vermicelli or yellow noodles, prawns, fish balls, tofu puffs, eggs, chicken and a nice coconut curry broth. Scarface and TaiwaneseGirl both liked it.

Overall, the food is pretty good if you go for the usual items. Too bad I lucked out and chose a dish I didn’t like.

Words of Wisdom:

Cash Only
Parking on Street
Laksa and Roti Canai Higly recommended

We Rate Bo Laksa King’s Bubbles & Bits:

Address:
2546 E Hastings St
Vancouver, BC V5K

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/pages/BO-LAKSA-KING/139851834390

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In Cafe

Mamak Malaysian Cafe

March 1, 2011

My coworker and I were craving something delicious near our office. After scouring the internet for places that were close by … or somewhat close by, we decided to check out Mamak Malaysia Cafe.

I’ve heard great things from other local bloggers – Chow Times and There is Always Room and how their food was to die for. Maybe not literally die, but so good that it’ll keep you coming back for more.

Mamak is located at Pub 340, it is super weird looking on the outside. If you arrive and feel super super confused, don’t be! They have a nice big sign on the outside window. Once you see this you are in the right place.

If you somehow manage to miss the sign in the front, walk inside look to your left and should be able to see the kitchen.

You can sit anywhere you want, but I would suggest not walking straight since thats more of the pub area. If you want to be cozy, then sit in the dining area on your immediate right.

I started off with the Roti Canai ($2.50). It comes with Mamak’s home-made roti served with authentic curry dip and spicy sambal sauce! It came with a knife too to cut the roti to share. Since my coworked didn’t want to try, it I really didn’t know what to do with the knife …except to think of an ingenious way to murder someone with the knife.

Anyways… the roti was very crispy and flaky …perfection! Dipping it into the sambal sauce was like heaven. This is the best roti I have ever had! Like… EVER. Please go order this!

For my main, I had the Malaysia Laksa ($8.50). It has rice noodle in curry coconut milk soup with chicken, shrimp, egg and fish-cake. I think there was tofu and green beans in that too. The tofu puffs really soaked up the the flavour of the soup, so when you put it into your mouth and chew it, you can taste all the flavour in the soup. Yum!

The sizes of the chicken in the Laksa was the size of a finger, yet again delicious. I am usually not a noodle person…even finishing a bowl of ramen is tough, but because of the thin rice noodles, I could finish this all!

I was talking to their waitress and they said Laksa was one of their most favorite dish of their customers…people would come in over and over again ordering this very dish. I mean, it’s cool to have a favorite dish, but why not just have a goal of eating the entire menu?

I will definitely be back for some more! Charles, the owner of Mamak even talked to each table individually to have a little chit chats with them. You can tell he really holds a passion for what he does. When he came to our table he asked us how the food was, if we worked around here and how we heard of Mamak. I just said we worked a few blocks away and I heard about it because I blog about food and saw lots of reviews. I think I was nervous or something because I didn’t tell him which blog I was from..hehe opps. I told you I’m shy!

Words of Wisdom:

Under $10 for lunch
Well made malaysia cuisine
Roti Canai is a must!

We rate Mamak Malaysia Cafe:

Address:

340 Cambie Street
Vancouver, BC

Website:
mamak.ca

In Cafe

Penang Delight Cafe

February 26, 2011

Every time I pass by Penang to go to Kimura, it seems like it is really packed. Plus the photos online looked very delicious.

Since it was time for dinner with ConsultingGirl, I suggested we try this place out.

Penang is located on Rupert and 22nd. They specialize in Malaysian cuisine.

The interior looks really nice and cozy. They even have some really cute decorations on the wall such as little crabs, coconuts and other decor. This place tends to be packed on weekends, so if you are going with more than 4 people, do make a reservation.

When we went it was busy at first but then it really died down around 8:30pm.

We started with the beef satay ($5.95). It came with 4 skewers of beef and I think peanut sauce. I did not like this dish very much because the beef was a bit tough. I really imagined these be a bit more larger and tender.

It was also hard to dip the skewer in the sauce dish, so you will need to use your utensils to spread it onto the skewer.

The satay at Thai House Royal are so much better.

The next appetizer was the Penang Shrimp ($4.95). It is deep fried marinated pork in shrimp in a bean curd wrap. There were other ingredients in here as well, such as water chestnut and cucumbers. There was also a sweet sauce to go a long with it.

This is was pretty good, I liked the change of the wrapper so it’s not the usual wonton wrapper. This gives the roll more of a crunch and a nutty flavour. The addition of the water chestnuts gives it more texture and i love the crunchiness.

The next dish was the Kari Ayam ($7.95), which is dark meat chicken with potatoes stewed in red curry, lemon grass and coconut milk. We were really unimpressed with this dish because it was mostly potatoes and chicken. This dish also got very very cold very fast.

After we had the first bowl, we went to get more and it was pretty cold by then. Not warm, but actually cold. Maybe it’s not their fault since is was a cold day.

Even if the dish didn’t get cold, I would probably not order this again.

The next dish was the Curry Chicken Laksa ($8.95). In has shredded chicken with rice noodle, bean sprouts, fried tofu in a coconut curry broth. This was a pretty good dish and had this subtle taste and i think it was saffron or some other asian spice.

The shredded chicken was very very shredded, it took us a while to figure out it this was a veggie dish or not. Sure enough, we did find it. If you do want more chicken pieces perhaps getting the Hainanese chicken version of this dish. You can also get beef or fish ball versions as well.

I ordered the Soy Milk with Grass Jelly ($2.50). I thought it was supposed to be a cool drink but turns out it is just soy milk and grass jelly. It was also very small too. 4 gulps and it was gone. This is something pretty basic which you can make yourself.

I actually ordered this drink and wanted it at the beginning of the meal but after reminding the waitress, they brought it at the end of the meal.

Overall, the taste of the food was so-so, not the best but decent.

In the end, ConsultingGirl and I got a very weird vibe from this place. One hour before closing, they started cleaning up the restaurant, putting the chairs up onto the tables and cleaning the floors. We kept thinking they were closing and felt like they were trying to get us out. The weird thing was they were still accepting new customers. We were super puzzled.

Words of Wisdom: