Malacca Straits on Broadway

The Strait of Malacca was a prominent passageway for spice traders from the Middle East and South Asia in their economy-generating travels to South-East Asia and East Asia. This stretch of water between the Malay Peninsular and the Indonesian island of Sumatra was globally known, especially during the glory days of the Malacca Sultanate, after which it is named.

As Malaysians, how would a restaurant named after such prominence (especially after we have all the Malacca-related stuff drilled into our heads during our high school days of History) not catch our attention? However, I would have to admit that the restaurant is rather hidden. But since it is located within The Quadrant which partly houses UTS students and partly office quarters, I suppose the problem of crowd flow is not big.

Cosy in ambience, patrons to the restaurant are welcomed by an "Alamak!" sign on the wall. 'Alamak' is the Malaysian equivalent of 'Oh no', 'Oh gosh', 'Darn' or 'Bugger'. I wonder why they have it there, though.

We giggled ourselves silly upon hearing the broken Manglish sprinkled with Hokkien words coming from the kitchen. Ah, Malaysian feel from the lingo, check! After browsing through their purple and green menu, we decided on having pulut panggang ($10.50) for starters. Wrapped in fragrant banana leaf and grilled, a roll of spiced glutinous rice with dried shrimp awaited.

Okay, I admit this is a poor photo of the inside. It so does not reflect the fragrance and spiciness of the dried shrimp and the 'just right' texture of the glutinous rice hot off the grill.

The Hainanese chicken rice ($9.50), on the other hand, was less impressive. The steamed chicken was far from the succulent, the rice too dry and not sufficiently fragrant. Their home-made chilli sauce made up for it, though.

No complains on the wat tan hor ($11.00), though! The generous serving of wok-seared flat rice noodles immersed in a creamish egg sauce with chicken and mixed (real) seafood deserved two thumbs up. Of course, best eaten with them pickled green chilli!

The meal was capped off with a bowl of ais kacang ($5.00), which they called air batu campur instead.

Hm, I still prefer those they make up at Sambal. However, not too bad a job by Chef Tan, the person behind this set up. The ex-chef of two other famous Malaysian restaurants in Sydney - The Malaya and Neptune Palace, he is also formerly the Executive Chef of Malaysia Airlines (MAS), the national carrier of Malaysia.

If you are breaking fast during this soon-to-end Ramadhan, pay Chef Tan a visit at this halal joint of his.

Malacca Straits on Broadway
66 Mountain Street, Broadway, NSW 2007
Tel: +61 2 8021 7069
E-mail: malaccastraitsbroadway@yahoo.com
Monday to Saturday: 11:00am to 10:00pm
Cards welcome but with a minimum spend of $15