From Kuala lumpur to Penang, Ankita Jain lists the delicacies one should try at Jom Jom Malay, the city’s first Malaysian restaurant apparently
Don’t rush past. Take a moment, or you might just miss it. Nestled between restaurants in Ansal Plaza is the cheery-looking Jom Jom Malay. The replica of a Malaysian-style street rickshaw welcomes us as we enter the restaurant. The use of pinewood in the interiors helps give the space an open, expansive look and giant butterflies with Malay antecedents on the wall add to the finishing touch.
The aroma of lemon grass and coconut milk — two important ingredients in Malay cuisine — fill the restaurant as we settle in one of the well-lit corners. We start our meal with a bowl of steaming Nyonya laksa soup, which has a right mix of spice and tanginess. One can taste the zesty flavour of lemon grass in the soup. As we listen to a steady flow of peppy songs in the background, the waiter brings a palette full of spices and delightfully asks us to indulge in making our very own spice mix ‘Sambal’ with fresh ingredients. Sambal is a hot sauce typically made from a mixture of variety of chili peppers with secondary ingredients such as shrimp paste, fish sauce, garlic, ginger, shallot, scallion, palm sugar, lime juice, and rice vinegar or other vinegars.
The monochrome wall filled with murals of reassuringly familiar things — the Petronas Towers, the Jamek mosque, a Malay dancer — catches our attention as we wait for Nasi lemak, essentially translated as ‘rice with fat’. The mildly sweetish rice cooked in coconut milk and pandan leaves is served with fried dried anchovies, roasted peanuts and sambal tumis, a type of fiery chutney made of shrimp paste, chillies, lime, sugar and salt. It is uncomplicated, ubiquitous and hence hard to miss; it will serve as a perfect introduction to the street food of Malaysia, if it’s your first time with the cuisine. This is followed by murtabak chicken, a version of stuffed parantha, served with a vegetable curry, the unmistakable coriander-red chilli-turmeric union, first cousin of sambar.
The helpful staff recommends satay, grinning from ear to ear. Malaysians eat meat in various forms — steamed, roasted, skewered or boiled. But when the chef skewers chicken satay on long, slender bamboo sticks, grills on charcoal and serves with a spicy peanut sauce, the meat acquires a new meaning. While the satay is a tad dry, the accompanying peanut sauce with a dash of red chilli oil is full of flavour. The customary satay comes with karimee, the rice lover in me rejoices, as I dig into the cuisine, spicy fried rice with fried egg and pickled vegetables. “Malaysian food experience is incomplete without the customary satay and grilled chicken dipped in sweet peanut sauce served hot,” says the chef, who initially started his career with Fatty Bao, loves to add a contemporary touch to the food presentation without compromising on its authenticity.
Next on our table is roti canai and roti jala. Simple yet indulgent roti canai is crisp and leaves our taste buds tickling for more when topped with honey, condensed milk and chocolate sauce; use of cutlery is strictly not recommended for this dish.
Despite protests on being stuffed, we manage banoffee that has slices of ripe banana folded into a square-shaped parotta. A smattering of sugar syrup is smeared on top, making this dish a dessert of sorts. Now, that’s an interesting finish to a meal.