Malaysia has one of the great eating cultures of the world and it is under-celebrated relative to Thailand’s or Vietnam’s, largely because it does not reduce to a single national cuisine.
What it has instead is three cuisines that have lived alongside each other for a hundred and fifty years — Malay, Chinese and Indian — plus Peranakan, the hybrid that formed where Chinese settlers married locally, and the indigenous cooking of Borneo and the peninsula.
They borrow from each other constantly and they have not merged, which is the interesting part.
The dishes to eat first
Nasi lemak. The national dish. Rice cooked in coconut milk with pandan, served with sambal, fried anchovies, roasted peanuts, cucumber and half a hard-boiled egg, often with fried chicken or beef rendang. Eaten for breakfast, wrapped in banana leaf and newspaper for a couple of ringgit.
Roti canai. Flaky flatbread, stretched and slapped and griddled, with dhal and curry. From a mamak stall, any hour of the day or night.
Char kway teow. Flat rice noodles fried over ferocious heat with prawns, cockles, egg and chives. The prize is wok hei — the taste that only comes from a seasoned wok at temperature.
Nasi kandar. Rice with several curries ladled over it, deliberately mixed. A Penang Tamil-Muslim format and one of the great ideas in eating.
Hokkien mee. In Kuala Lumpur this means thick yellow noodles braised in dark soy with pork lard and crisp lardons — different from the Penang version of the same name, which is a prawn soup. Ordering the wrong one in the wrong city is a standing joke.
Bak kut teh. Pork ribs simmered for hours in a herbal broth of garlic, star anise and Chinese medicinal herbs, with dough sticks and rice. A Klang speciality, and Klang is half an hour away.
Satay. Charcoal-grilled skewers with peanut sauce, cucumber and ketupat.
Laksa. Two families: curry laksa, coconut-based, which is what KL means by it; and asam laksa, sour with tamarind and fish, which is Penang’s.
Cendol and ais kacang for dessert — shaved ice with palm sugar, coconut milk, green rice-flour jellies, red beans and, in the case of ais kacang, sweetcorn. It sounds wrong and it is exactly right at three in the afternoon.
Where to eat
Hawker centres and food courts. The correct answer most of the time. Individual stalls under one roof, often air-conditioned, cheap, and frequently better than restaurants. Hutong in the basement of Lot 10 gathers long-established hawker names; the food courts in most large malls are good.
Kopitiams and mamak stalls. See their own page — this is the everyday texture of Malaysian eating and the vocabulary for ordering is worth ten minutes of learning.
Jalan Alor in the evening, with the caveats on that page.
Kampung Baru for Malay food, particularly Saturday night.
Brickfields for South Indian and banana leaf rice.
Chinatown for Cantonese, roast meats and the hawker stalls off the main street.
Wet markets — Chow Kit, Imbi, Pudu — in the morning, where the stalls feed the traders.
How to eat
Right hand only when eating with your hands, which is normal for Malay and Indian food.
Banana leaf rice is refillable by convention — the servers come round with more rice and vegetables and you take them. Fold the leaf towards you when you finish.
Halal and non-halal are clearly signed. Malay stalls are halal; Chinese stalls frequently serve pork. Nobody minds which you eat, but do not bring pork to a Malay table.
You seat yourself at hawker centres. Drinks are ordered from the drinks stall, which is a separate business from the food stalls and is how the seating is paid for — so order a drink.
A packet of tissues on a table means it is taken. This is a real convention and ignoring it will get you a look.
The festivals
Eating in Malaysia is structured by them.
Ramadan brings the bazaar Ramadan — afternoon markets selling food for the breaking of the fast, and the best street food of the year. The one at Kampung Baru is among the biggest.
Hari Raya Aidilfitri, Chinese New Year and Deepavali all involve open houses, a genuinely Malaysian institution where families receive visitors of any background and feed them.
Drinking
Teh tarik, kopi, Milo ais, fresh coconut water, sugarcane juice, limau ais.
Alcohol is expensive — Malaysia has some of the highest beer duties in the world. See how much Kuala Lumpur costs.
Practical
Hygiene at hawker stalls is generally good and the busy stalls turn over stock fast, which is the best safety signal there is. Tap water is treated but most people drink bottled or boiled.
Vegetarians do well: Indian vegetarian restaurants are everywhere and Chinese Buddhist vegetarian food is excellent. Say “no belacan” — shrimp paste — which turns up in things that look vegetable.
Nut allergies are a genuine difficulty here. Peanuts are in satay sauce, nasi lemak, cendol, gado-gado and a great deal else, and cross-contamination in a hawker kitchen is very likely. Take this seriously.