A street of plastic stools and open kitchens that fills every night, priced for tourists and still worth going to.
By day Jalan Alor is an unremarkable back street behind Bukit Bintang. From about six in the evening the tables come out, the woks go on, and it becomes the best-known place to eat in Kuala Lumpur.
Officially it was renamed Jalan Kejora in 2007. Nobody uses it.
What to eat
Char kway teow — flat rice noodles fried hard over a very high flame with prawns, cockles, egg, chives and bean sprouts. The flavour everybody chases is wok hei, the taste of the seasoned metal at temperature, and it cannot be produced on a domestic hob.
Satay — skewers over charcoal with peanut sauce, cucumber and compressed rice cake.
Grilled fish and seafood, laid out on ice at the front, priced by weight, cooked with sambal in a banana leaf.
Hokkien mee, thick noodles in dark soy with pork lard.
Chicken wings, charcoal-grilled and honeyed, which are the single most ordered thing on the street.
Wan tan mee, claypot chicken rice, Thai and Vietnamese stalls, and fruit — mango, mangosteen, rambutan, and durian in season, which you will smell before you see.
Coconut water, sugarcane juice, and beer at the stalls that serve it.
The honest view
It is priced for visitors and it has been for years. A plate here costs noticeably more than the same plate in a neighbourhood coffee shop two kilometres away.
Some stalls are much better than others and the difference is not signposted. Walk the street once, look at who is eating and how full the tables are, and go back.
The touting is aggressive at the Bukit Bintang end. Places that need a man with a menu on the pavement are not the ones you want.
It is loud, hot and crowded, and in the wetter months it can be rained off entirely.
None of that means skip it. It is genuinely good, it is genuinely atmospheric, and eating outdoors in a street of open kitchens is one of the pleasures of this city. Just do not believe it is where Kuala Lumpur eats.
Where locals actually eat
Kopitiam and mamak shops all over the city — see the mamak and the kopitiam.
Petaling Street and the Chinatown side streets, particularly the hawker stalls off Jalan Hang Lekir.
Kampung Baru, on Saturday night especially, for Malay food.
Brickfields for South Indian banana-leaf rice.
Imbi Market and Chow Kit in the mornings.
The food courts in the malls, which sound unpromising and are often excellent and air-conditioned.
Practical
Evening only — from about six until well after midnight.
Cash is useful, though most stalls now take QR payment.
Prices are usually displayed; ask before ordering seafood by weight, which is where bills surprise people.
Halal and non-halal stalls sit side by side on this street, which is not the case everywhere. Look at the signage if it matters to you.
More Food & Drink
The Mamak and the Kopitiam
Open all night, costs almost nothing, and is where the whole country actually eats. Learn to order and Kuala Lumpur opens up.
Durian and the Fruit Season
Banned from hotels, taxis and the metro, and worth trying anyway — plus the other twenty fruits nobody warns you about.