Kuala Lumpur Revisited - Cuisine

Roast pork buns, baked with a flourish and taste - Dragon-I Restaurant

Nasi Lemak version 4.0 from Benjamin Yong's WanderMama, Bangsar Village One, KL, with prawn curry (background) and the chicken rendang (foreground).   The curry tradition in Malaysia is primarily based on significant Indian influences, as for thousands of years before the Arab traders arrived in south-east Asia, Indian politics, language, culture and customs predominated this region.

Fish head noodle soup, garnished with tomato, shallots and bean curd - a Cantonese favourite from Goon Wah Restaurant, Jalan Kuchai Lama, KL

Kl street food - the wanton egg noodles, mixed with two types of soy sauce, a great any time snack that has its roots in immigration tradition from South China - the versions I prefer are from Hong Kong and Kl.

Marinated chicken wings, peppered with sesame seeds, a classic favourite of Goon Wah's, Jalan Kuchai Lama, KL.

Wok stir fried meal, garnished with scrambled egg, bean sprout and shallots - from Dragon-I.

Centre court at the Pavilions KL, Bukit Bintang district -this shopping centre has the best food court choices as well.

Cheese cake or coconut mixed with oats biscuit? - Artisan Cafe, Bangsar Village Two.

Hakka classic - the Yong Tau Foo, from the Ying Ker Lu Restaurant, Pavilions KL.

Not what I see as cream brûlée, but this was offered at one of the trendy expresso cafes in the Klang Valley.

Classic plate and bowl setting in a Chinese restaurant  - replete with chill condiment, vinegar sauce and Guangzhou dessert of longan and twice boiled almonds.

Dainty dumplings from Shanghai - as in most cities around the world, central and northern Chinese food are now easily available around the world.  This photo depicts the siew long pau, with hot soup and minced pork inside.

Traditional Hakka dish, a one spot meal.  The Hakka heritage of KL is not emphasised these days, although it is a fact that Kapitan Yap Ah Loy established and strengthened  a multi-racial community KL in the 19th century, that was later chosen by the British colonials to be the administrative capital of Malaya, covering the Straits Settlements as well.

Yum cha has always been a much appreciated practice amongst the Chinese in KL - above the delicately shaped steamed wortip, eaten with a dipping sauce and with held chopsticks.

Mr Wong, Bridge Lane - Sydney CBD

What intrigued me - green apple ice garnished with chestnuts, coconut sorbet and Osmanthus jelly.
The staff took pains to describe this creation to me with a smile.


The entrance is foreboding, the atmosphere darkish and the possibilities naughtily limitless.  A light shower had come down in an emptied banking district,  so it was with relief that shelter was found in another of the Merivale Group's creative outlets. The maitre'd was efficient, matter of fact and productive.  No bookings can be made at Mr Wong's if I understand correctly but the place was chock a block by 8pm. With all our national consciousness of Australian Chinese restaurants and my heritage of southern and central Chinese cuisine, I was obviously curious.  Was this going to be a romanticised make up of what China is today, or was in the minds of backpackers and colonials, or will be in the cyberspace-connected generation of the near future?

The delicate porcelain hanging on brick-broken walls under really low lighting provided a startling contrast on arrival.  The lady showing the table was smiling friendly even if she had a busy evening.  You walk carefully to the basement, laid out more like a drinking bar than a Chinese tea house, even if there are plenty of tea variations, liquor and cocktails to choose from.  An unrenovated warehouse atmosphere suggested this was more of a club than a standard Asian restaurant. Music streamed in from above, the level of chatter was relatively high and I felt more like in an Aussie or English pub than in anything else.  Were people there to be seen, or to try the food, or just to hang out after a long day at work?

Preparations in Mr Wong's kitchen are open and sort of a display - especially with the  hanging ducks on a rack.

The menu is rather extensive, with many options for entrees and dessert. Still, somehow, some may feel it can be a place to eat and go, and not to hang out too long, especially at lunchtimes.  Others may feel more relaxed and linger on with more drink than food, especially when  it does close late near midnight.  It may be a place to entertain clients but I would not rather go there to negotiate or lock in difficult deals.  Cutlery is optional, as there are chopstick sets, together with Japanese soy sauce bottles, condiment and sauce plates and drinking water bottles.  Day or night, Mr Wong's seems to be the only lively place this side of the lane.  If people still cannot accept the synergy of Western wines with Chinese food, they should come observe this restaurant - it need not be Tsingtao forever.  I appreciated the glass of moscato (AUD11) to down with the dessert.

A setting of five spiced roast pork belly  (siew yoke), accompanied by the must have Cantonese hoi sin sauce, the optional Brit styled mustard and a weaved basket container of steamed rice.  

The offering of items like fried rice, beef in black bean sauce, salt and pepper pork ribs and deep fried vanilla or chocolate  ice cream (though with butter scotch sauce, instead of caramel) point strongly to the preconceptions and preferences of the team who dreamed up and actualised the concept and reality of Mr Wong's.  These dishes are not in the wish list of serious fine diners in east Asia but hark back to a time when Mr Wong's targeted market of diners first had their taste of a typical Chinese restaurant in some residential suburb.   So it made sense when the clientele of Mr Wong's are not your gathering of Chinese family groups, but twenty somethings who do meet up on week nights and have the discretionary ability to spend and soak up a life that is still relatively free and easy.

Cool, dark and handsome - the bar tender surrounded by diners and a depiction on a bricked wall of a Shanghai woman from the 1930's.

You may think twice before inviting along children or grandparents, for there are low lit stairs, diners sitting too close together or moving behind your back.  The old folks will however acknowledge the extent of the wine list and may relate better to the made up surroundings better than Gen Y or Gen Millennium.

Steamed fresh fish with ginger and shallots and putting delicate shitake strips on steamed tofu are very traditional  and obviously can be found in Sydney's Chinatown down George Street, so what do diners find special to try here?  I reckon it is the whole package of the experience - so whether some find the prices more suited to corporate budgets or not, whether some dishes are made better elsewhere or whether it reminds one of eating in a bunked down recreation of old London under the German war bombings, it really does not matter.  The experience is one of uniqueness, of a performance and of a surprise.   It reminds us of fusion, of a bazaar and of all our comfort food Christmases apparently coming all at once, but also in unusual combinations. The use of ingredients like foie gras on prawn toast may seem a mismatch, but any full blooded Caucasian back packer or jet-setting business person or ex-Singaporean would stay loyal to an offering like the Singapore styled mud crab stir fried on a wok with black pepper.

Somehow the ubiquitous fish tanks of typical Chinese restaurants was mostly empty that evening.
Fresh fruits are parked ready not for diners but to use in cocktails.

The den of Mr Wong's is really not hard to locate - just stand in front of the rail station exit, at the corner of Hunter and George Streets in the Wynyard precinct of Sydney CBD.  If you had been a past patron of the now defunct Tank Nightclub, when the set of pedestrian lights turn green, you would then naturally walk down the slope of Hunter Street  on the right hand side and turn on the first lane.  This short, unassuming and often darkish lane leads to your food cabaret, a theatre of southern Chinese cuisine mixed with 20th century notions of Shanghai and an experiment of fusing ambiance with an all night bar - whether of tea, alcohol or trendiness.

Would I return?  Maybe to tickle my palate with yumcha creations such as pork and pumpkin dumplings.  Or the intriguing char siu fish and the abalone shui mai, as my latest visit there was for dinner. I hear that No upright connoisseur of food in Hong Kong would dare to have dim sim dishes after 2pm, just as any full blooded Napoli resident would not even think of latte after 11am.
Outstanding must tries I am told by mates are the deep fried aromatic duck spring rolls and eggplant made with a dash of Chef Dan Hong's magic from Ms G's.  Most of all, I would return to soak in a comfortable and relaxed time.

Shanghai Revisited

On a Saturday evening on the autumn equinox,there was a festive air in Sydney's little Shanghai. I had not been there for months, and yet it was all familiar to me, the parade of brightly lit restaurants and cafes packed with engaged diners and busy staff. Lunar New Year and Valentines were over, but Ching Ming, a day of ancestral worship, was coming in two weeks' time. The night air was not cold and the day had been hot.

We expected, and looked forward to, the dumplings with hot soup steamed inside with pork meat balls. This time the pastry was thin and melted nicely into the inner ingredients. The cook must have been happy that day making these - it showed in the results. Prawns lightly sauteed and eaten with a dash of chili oil turned out to be appetising. We did not order noodles but relied on the basics - steamed white rice. The rice blended better with the plain looking salted duck cuts, a speciality of the central Chinese coast.

Alex remarked that the better ingredients available in Australia - and the fact that a generation of older chefs in Shanghai had been lost to past political turmoil and emigration - had contributed to his observation that Shanghai food tasted even better here than in its original birth place. For example, the pickled stir-fried vegetable slices reminded me more of Japanese food than my perceptions of Chinese, but when using Australian produce, moved me to another dimension in the mouth.

Chicken giblets, pig ears and duck tongues were cooked in variety of ways and displayed at the entrance, where waiting customers could stare longingly at such dishes. My eyes were drawn to the roast duck - the Shanghai version looked more dry but still delicious, the culinary creation achieved in a very different way from its northern and southern competing cuisines in Beijing and Guangzhou.

We were surrounded by fair skinned diners with sharp features and contrasting dark eyebrows, eyes and hair. Shanghai has a language of its own, apart from Mandarin, and its locals also look slightly different from southern Chinese. They can be the most commercial-minded people in the variety that is China. As Shanghai is not the national capital, perhaps its denizens and culture have the instinctive hunger to be the best, just like New York to Washington D.C., or Milan to Rome.