MALAYSIAN/SINGAPOREAN CUISINE

This week we went for some Malaysian and Singaporean cuisine in the heart of London’s Chinatown. This type of food is by no means alien to us, but is certainly not as common as it should be in the UK. Malaysian and Singaporean food is delicious and our experience in trying the food meant that the restaurant we’d be heading to Rasa Sayang, would have to perform highly to satisfy us!

The beauty of the food from this part of the world is the eclectic mix of flavours and textures. The native tribes of Malaysia and Singapore already possess distinctive cooking traits, but the large swathes of migration throughout history have led to the formulation of fantastic food today. 

Arab traders were operating in the Malay Archipelago from as early as the 7th century, bringing with them different foods and introducing the region to Islam. If we fast forward to the colonial era, we see the Dutch and and the British were active in this region for colonial endeavours. During 1900–27, the country’s tin and rubber industries boomed, working hand in hand with a sharp increase in the construction of supporting infrastructure, this paved the way for the entry of thousands of migrant workers for labour.

Between 1881 – 1939, which was one of many phases of immigration, the region of Malay (Malaysia and Singapore peninsula) witnessed the highest immigration rate (immigrants per 1000 population) in the world. During this period Chinese, Indian and Indonesians had free and unrestricted access to the region. Today, you will see large communities in Malaysia from all over the world, ranging from Portugal to South Korea to Iran. The huge communities from other Asian countries living in Malaysia paved the way for the popular saying ‘Malaysia, truly Asia.’

It is precisely this concoction of different cultures and ethnicities which makes Malaysian/Singaporean cuisine so explosive on the taste buds with such wide ranging spices and flavours are varied textures. 

RASA BBQ PLATTER – £17.95 

Consisting of chicken wings, beef satay, chicken satay and satay prawns, this is a platter not to be messed with! All meats were cooked in a similar sauce but the natural flavours of the meats produced a difference in taste across the board. The wings has a perfect char and had a sweet chilli taste. The beef and chicken were delicious but the prawns were on another level, It was my first time tasting a prawn satay and certainly won’t be my last. The beauty of the Satay marinate is its sweet taste and thick consistency courtesy of the dried peanuts. This sauce, equipped with any form of meat, skewered, and then slowly grilled is almost always guaranteed to be delicious. 

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Served on the side with all these incredible barbecued goodies was the legendary sambal sauce. This is one of my favourite sauces, made from a variety of chillies. Garlic, ginger, shallots, spring onions, palm sugar, lime juice and all added to crushed chillies before the most important ingredient – shrimp paste is added. This fermented shrimp paste adds a beautiful potency and aroma to the sauce ensuring it will always be distinct from any sauce you’ve tasted.

SAMBAL STINGRAY – £9.95 

We were very pleasantly surprised when we were told we’d be trying stingray. No one from our team had ever tried this and so we were excited to see how our taste buds would react. When we thought of stingray, we had immediate thoughts of a dangerous fish that is responsible for the death of legend Steve Irwin. The flat and slimy appearance of stingray in addition to this had us feeling pensive. But this certainly didn’t hold us back. The sambal stingray is very popular on the streets of Singapore, where once upon a time, stingray was deemed to be the poor mans alternative to the bourgeois scallops.

What was striking about this fish to me was its texture. Unlike any other fish I’ve tasted, the meat was very stringy, different to the usual thick flakey texture of fish more common to us. The fish also full of big, but softish bone. The fish itself is not very meaty. In terms of taste the stingray tasted very fishy to me, and had a good natural salt content, this natural salt content worked well with the amazing sambal sauce is was drowned in. I will certainly be trying this again! 

MEE GORENG – £9.90

This one might have been one of my favourite dishes on the table. The mee goreng was absolutely phenomenal. These fried noodles are the definition of comfort food. The main ingredient for this dish, where it owes its overriding thick and rich flavour to, is the kecap manis, a very special sweet soy sauce. This soy sauce is darker than the usual and has a very syrupy consistency, the flavour and texture both resemble a molasses courtesy of the heaps of palm sugar used to formulate the sauce. 

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This soy sauce is infused with noodles, eggs, fishcakes, squid, prawns and morning glory to produce an AMAZING dish. The seafood was chargrilled resulting is a wonderful flamy taste which worked brilliantly with the sweet noodles. This dish was delicious and very comforting. 

BEEF RENDANG – £9.90 

On to a dish which is the favourite dish in the world for two people in the Quizine family – the legendary beef rendang. Believed to have originated in western Sumatra in Indonesia, this dish is now a favourite around south east Asia. The cooking technique used to create the rendang is perhaps what sets it apart from any other curry dish. The cooking method flourished due to its crucial role in preserving meats in tropical climates prior to the days of refrigerators. The process involves slow cooking and braising beef for hours in coconut milk until the liquids evaporate. The meat becomes a beautiful dark brown colour and incredibly tender upon completion. 

A spoon full of this rendang with some fluffy rice is a gastronomical experience like no other. The Rendang is perhaps the king of all beef curries.

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ROTI CANAI – £4.60 

Perhaps one of the best snacks/ breakfast goods out there, we move on now to the roti canai. Brought to south east Asia by the ‘Mamaks’ of Muslim Indians, this flat bread is a variation of the Indian paratha. Don’t think the roti canai is the same as a paratha and don’t think you can find this in an Indian restaurant or on your next trip to the sub continent, because this dish is exclusive to south east Asia. The beauty of this bread is that it adapted to fit the Malaysian, Singaporean way and in doing so possesses special characteristics, for example, the dough in the subcontinent is rolled, whereas the roti canai is flipped and spun in the air, and thrown against the oiled work surface until paper thin. The layers make the bread wonderfully flaky on the outside and slightly chewy inside.

The roti canai is then served up with a sauce of your choice from chicken curry sauce and lentil sauce. We opted for the chicken curry sauce. The greasy and flaky bread soaks up the curry sauce with every dip to create a serotonin induced bite.

SINGAPOREAN LAKSA £11.90 

This was another dish we were very keen on trying. Laksa is a hugely popular dish across south east Asia. The story goes, specifically in Indonesia, this dish is the product of two cultures fusing when early waves of Chinese men who ventured to the Indonesian islands for trade married local Indonesian women. As these women began incorporating local spices and coconut milk into the traditional Chinese noodle soup the Laksa was born, as was a new hybrid culture, called the Peranakan culture [Chinese + local (Malay/Javanese)]. Some say the Malaysians had a similar experience in terms of creating the Laksa and the Singaporean Laksa is a product of further cultural fusion as the Peranakan merged with local Singaporeans of the day. As the major trading ports around south east Asia bustled with business, the intensive trade link facilitated the exchange of recipes and ideas. 

And so, it may be difficult to determine who exactly created the Laksa, but what is certain is that this dish exists in numerous forms around this part of the world. This would be our first time trying Singaporean Laksa, the main difference with this Laksa from a standardised Malaysian Laksa is that the stew is sweet and savoury as opposed to sour. This change in flavour was noticeable but was equally delicious. The Laksa for me is the ULTIMATE noodle soup. It is packed with so much ingredients and is so hearty, warm and comforting. The coconut curry based stew makes the dish so exciting in ways other soups simply can’t compare. Inside Rasa Sayang’s Laksa was fish cakes, boiled eggs, fried tofu, prawns and garnished with shredded cucumbers. Try this bad boy on a cold winters day in the UK, you will not regret it!

NASI LEMAK – £9.90 

We had almost forgot to try a national dish of Malaysia before we left the restaurant! So silly of us and what a loss it would have been. The nasi lemak is so popular in Malaysia that it can even be found across McDonalds fast food joints around the country. This dish is such an incredible mix of so many different flavours. On the plate at Rasa Sayang, you’ll find a bowl of succulent chicken curry cooked in coconut milk, fluffy aromatic rice, nuts, boiled egg, cucumbers, a medley of pickled vegetable including pineapple, the all important sambal sauce and fried anchovies! 

You can imagine the sheer explosion of flavours when you put all of this in your mouth. The fermented fish taste from the samba along side the crunch from the anchovies, the nutty taste from the nuts plus the juicy pineapple and the sweet coconut based chicken curry with a dose of rice all come together in PERFECT harmony to create the ultimate bite. The Nasi Lemak, an absolute must have dish for everyone!

MALAYSIAN TEA/COFFEE – TEH PENG (COLD TEA) £3.70 / TEH TARIK (HOT TEA) £4.50 / KOPI PENG (COLD COFFEE) £3.70 

To finish off this fantastic meal, we washed everything down with some authentic Malaysian tea and coffee. We tried a hot and cold version of Rasa’s phenomenal tea. The iced version was thick in texture and very sweet as its made with condensed milk. As the brewed tea and milk cools, it thicken substantially. The hot version is less thick but just as tasty. The tea used in very strong and is brewed well for a truly flavoursome brew. The coffee was also very tasty, nice sweet and thick and resembled much of the iced coffee that the streets of Vietnam are home to. A truly wonderful way to wrap up the meal!

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ADDRESS

Rasa Sayang Restaurant,
15 Frith St, 
Soho, 
London, 
W1D 4RE

HALAL INDEX

Everything is halal, the restaurant does serve alcohol.