Mamak Village Chinatown

Located strategically along the busiest stretch of Chinatown and adjacent from Mamak is Mamak Village. No, not the same. At all.

Other than the set up of the place, everything else did not hit the right note for me.

I ordered a plate of nasi lemak and when it arrived, I spot a few misses. Since when nasi lemak comes with carrots? Also, does that look like authentic sambal to you? More like sambal out of a jar! Disappointed much.

Rachel's roti canai also had the same sambal. The roti itself was too oily and too thin. The curry and dahl did not look very inviting and were quite bland. Gosh, disappointed much again.

Okay, drinks are pretty straight forward so they should taste better, or so we assumed. The cold teh tarik did not taste like it was properly 'pulled' in any way. The warm Milo, too sweet.

The waitstaff were apologetic for the long wait for the food, which perhaps triggered my 'this place is not as good as the establishment across the road' radar. To top that off, we witnessed how a waitress dropped a trayful of food and drinks on the floor, causing a loud crashing sound to reverberate through the whole place. I felt sorry for her but also for myself for the sub-standard food.

Argh. And when I checked-in on Facebook, a friend immediately commented: Oh no! You should have told me you were going. Too late to warn you not to go!

At least someone else shared the same sentiments.



Malay Village Chinatown
Ground Floor, No. 1 Dixon Building, 1 Dixon Street (corner Goulburn Street), Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia
Tel: +61 2 9264 4780
Sunday to Thursday & Public Holidays: 11:30am to 10:30pm
Friday & Saturday: 11:30am to late

Mamak Village

Seems like the Malaysian food scene in Sydney is really growing. Relatively new on the scene is Mamak Village in Glebe, which will turn one in January.

At first, we thought it was a branch of Mamak. But wait, they only have a branch in Chatswood and Glebe is too near to their main branch in Chinatown. So, this must be an entirely different one.

I ordered a signature dish of theirs, a plate of nasi lemak with chicken curry ($10.00 during lunch time).

The acar was really spicy and was the best component on the entire plate. The curry could have used a little more santan. Xin Wen had mee goreng ($13.90), which translates into wok fried yellow noodles, normally in mamak style.

She felt that it lacked the wok taste. Just like how good char kuey teow has some wok taste. I am unable to recall who ordered the plate of roti kaya ($5.50). Too hard, too little kaya.

Hm... but we all agreed that Mamak makes better rotis. Michael had dessert, too. He had a serving of sago gula melaka ($5.00).

Too sweet, even for the sweet-toothed Michael. Boey had a glass of iced More More Tea ($3.50), which essentially is just triple layered tea.

Hm, maybe we had our hopes too high, which had us leaving in a tad of a disappointment. At least, they had good service.

Unfortunately, for us it is a case of been there, done that.

Mamak Village
25 Glebe Point Road, Glebe, NSW 2037
Tel: +61 414 675 880, +61 433 074 299
Monday to Friday: 11:15am to 3:00pm, 5:30pm to 9:45pm
Friday to Saturday: 11:15am to 10:00pm
Sunday: 11:15am to 9:30pm

There's an artist in the house!

This might sound silly but one reason why we chose to go to The Boathouse was because we thought it would live up to an artist's expectations. We are glad that we did not let him down. More on this funky place soon.

To digest our hearty brekkies, we went for a stroll on Palm Beach. The combination of bright sunshine and clear blue skies with cooling sea breeze was just perfect for a day out on the beach for families.

Ah, of course, how can the young lads miss out on a good stand up paddle surf?

Mister traveling artist, Boey, took his time to stroll.

And he really enjoyed his beach-combing.

He was in search of 'stars and stripes'. "They have to be perfect", he said to Xin Wen and I. To him, everything has to be perfect, just like him. *smirk*

As we headed back to the car, he found a gigantic emergency phone. Well, you know what it is from the photo so, yea.

From the beach, we went to the colourful Glebe Markets, where we met another world traveller. Unlike Boey, Alvaro travels using his trusted bicycle and is a biciclown. Read all about his meaningful work here.

Lunch was calling out to us and so we headed over to Mamak Village. Boey complained that we spoiled it for him, as he was heading back to Malaysia after this stop, where he could have the REAL thing. Oops, sorry.

After a fun day out and a meal of student-style steamboat, it was crunch time. We got to watch the artist in full action, from his draft to the actual template to scanning and uploading onto his blog.

I got to keep the draft *yes!* of the blog post. It has his signature at the bottom so maybe I could sell it for a good price when he makes it really big.


I enjoyed myself heaps that weekend. A feeling that I have not had in a long time. The egoistic and sarcastic part of him definitely left an impression in all of us, but not as much as the serious part of him, which I managed to capture for a bit.