It’s been a while since I last wrote about any movie on the blog, and even longer since I watched any local movie on the big screen, but last night I went to the cinema and caught Nasi Lemak 2.0, and you should too.
Nasi Lemak 2.0 is directed by Namewee, a name that should be familiar with every youtube generation that resides in Malaysia, his is (in)famous for quite a few music videos – Negaraku-ku being the more prominent one.
I’ve always thought about Namewee as a person who has a talent and definitely passionate about the country. However, he also struck me as a person who sometimes uses his talent in not a particularly great way to voice out what he has to say.
This movie changes some of that perception for me.
Firstly, the plot (pulled from wikipidia, skip if you do not want/need any potential spoilers)
A young chef, Huang Da Xia (played by Wee Meng Chee) struggles to get his restaurant business going. The reason his restaurants rarely gets customers is because he cannot adapt to the “localized” cooking his patrons are looking for. However, contradicting his unpopular cuisine, he is also well-known as “Hero Huang” in the local neighborhood where he carries out good deeds in helping the community (e.g: Filming videos and putting them on his Youtube account.) until he met Xiao K (played byKaren Kong) who asked for his help. Xiao K’s father, owner of a famous chinese restaurant, is fighting with her aunt for the ownership of the restaurant. After some complicated discussions, they decided to hold a contest to see who can cook the best chinese dish. Desperate to get his life and the restaurant business back on track, Chef Huang decided to help Xiao K. Huang seeks help from a mysterious hawker stall lady (played by Adibah Noor), who summons him to embark on an extraordinary journey of his life. During this self-enlightening experience, he will also meet many “local heroes” each lending their support to help him re-discover his roots and the real hidden message of “Nasi Lemak”.
Nasi Lemak 2.0 is a comedy on the surface, but the heart of the movie touches on lives in Malaysia that most Malaysians can relate to. This is truly a 1Malaysia movie that is undoubtedly Malaysian and sends a strong message about our identity.
There were at least half a dozen languages used in the movie, and I’m quite sure that most everyone will have to read the subtitles somewhere along the way, so don’t feel bad if you don’t speak/understand Cantonese, Tamil, or even Malay, you will still get (most of) the jokes. Knowledge of current affair and political landscape of the country helps too (like the hidden meaning of “diam lah”).
Certain direction of the movie, such as the repeated “funny” actions of certain characters could have been done without, but otherwise Nasi Lemak 2.0 hits the spot pretty good, even with it’s ultra low budget and crap quality special effects.
If you haven’t catch the show yet, go watch it! I genuinely enjoy the movie and I believe most of you will too!
Hai Peng kopitiam is no stranger to the beach goers and divers alike who frequent the beautiful islands at the East Coast of Malaysia – Redang, Tenggol, Lang Tengah, and Perhentian alike.
The kopitiam is strategically located at Cukai, at the Southern tip of Terengganu; which means it is about the end of trunk roads before heading to Karak Highway. The perfect place for a rest stop after a nice weekend dive trip before continuing the journey back to Klang Valley.
Hai Peng Kopitiam at Kemaman
On my recent dive trip to Lang Tengah island, that was precisely what we did.
The kopitiam was established 3 generations ago (1940), and the old owner can still be seen hanging around while the younger generations run things.
Hai Peng serves quite a good variety of different foods, and they are the truly 1Malaysia restaurant before 1Malaysia was hip. You can find nasi lemak, nasi dagang, toast, meehun goreng, tapai, half boiled eggs, and a host of other things suitable for any race or religion to consume.
curry puff, tapai, prawn crackers, toast with banana and peanut butter
To start, we had some of their curry puff, prawn crackers (very light and flavorful), and tapai. The tapai comes wrapped in some leaves and were really good, I wished there were some cendol to with.
Their packet nasi lemak came soon after and we grabbed a few packets too, it was oily, spicy, and an absolute must try to those who love things wholesome and not in a diet.
half boiled egg, nasi lemak, special curry toast, garlic bread
The half boiled egg at Hai Peng is a little tricky, they serve the eggs in a jar of boiling water, and it’s up to you to know when the eggs are ready. As a rule of thumb, 5 mins is about half boiled, and 7-8 mins 3/4 boiled, and so forth. The one in the photo was about 7 minutes.
Horng ordered this curious toast that had banana and peanut butter in them. While the description might be a bit gross, it actually tasted very good and the dude ended up ordering a second portion.
For those who love things spicy, the special curry toast is a must order. The set comes with a sunny side top, a big piece of toast, and curry chicken with potato that is very, very spicy. Not for the faint hearted.
special coffee breeze, pina colada, kopi ice
Then of course, there’s the coffees. I love their iced coffee (tho not enjoying the plastic cup), and probably should have ordered the hot coffee instead.
The special coffee breeze was sort of a local version of those Starbucks ice blended on steroid, a bit too much flavor going on I thought. The pina colada, on the other hand, was a disappointment, overly sweet and of course, no alcohol.
Food at Hai Peng had more hits than misses, and definitely a decent stopover place on return trips. They are opening up branches here in KL soon, but it remains to be seen if the quality suffers.
Address:
Hai Peng Kopitiam
K-3753, Jalan Sulaimani,Chukai,Kemaman
Terengganu, 24000, Malaysia
GPS: 4.2351, 103.4225
Tel: 09-859 7810
While walking to our original intended target – the pork free food court between Wisma Cosway and Wisma Genting, a few colleagues and I chanced upon this new little restaurant by the name of Siamese Cafe located just behind the interesting Yashi-no-mi Japanese cafe.
the glorious siamese nasi lemak with chicken, squid, petai & prawn
The restaurant has only some 10 tables that sits 2-3 people each, and on the menu there are less than 10 items on offer. This is fine by me, the bigger the menu usually only means the bigger the confusion and time taken to order.
The choices are simple, you can either have nasi lemak, or Siamese mee hun to go with fried chicken, Kristan chicken (a type of thick curry), ikan kembung, assam squid, sambal petai prawn, or kerang (cockles).
there’s siamese mee hun too, and those anchovies are darn good
Everything is priced at RM 8, except for Nasi Lemak (or meehun) special that comes with squid, petai assam prawn, and fried chicken, that is at RM 10. The set comes with an ice lemon tea, and the sides that includes half a hard boiled egg, peanuts, some potato + onion thing, and fried anchovies.
and here is winnie, as your eye candy
While the meehun tends to be a little on the dry side, the nasi lemak was fragrant and full of santan flavor. The chicken, petai, and squid were all very good too, and I particularly love the sweet and spicy fried anchovies they serve at the side.
The special set is really value for money at RM 10 with drinks. Business seems to be quite brisk at this new place, and I certainly hope this cafe is here to stay.
Address:
Siamese Cafe
Ground Floor
Wisma Cosway
Jalan Sultan Ismail
50540 Kuala Lumpur
GPS: 3.150875, 101.711812
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By now, many of you are probably familiar with MilkADeal, a local discount site where you often find incredible deals on all sorts of stuff, like food, spa, travel packages, adventure activities, photo album, car tinting, and more.
Do check out the site for stuff that you need and many that you want for a steep discount.
And while discounts are neat, I want to highlight what that MilkADeal is also using their site as a vehicle to do good. There is a TLC Promise Me campagin that is running right now, and you can buy the “deal” at RM 20 with 100% of the money going to Rumah Aman Children Home, an orphanage that needs their electrical wiring and lightning protection upgraded.
For those who donate over RM 100, you can even request a receipt for tax exemption too.
p/s: this is not the first time MilkADeal runs community service “deals”, I remember there was one for Japan earthquake too.
A few months ago Haze and I were at Segambut looking for an ATM machine, we arrived at RHB bank at Jalan Segambut Tengah and parked the car just in front of Kedai Makanan Hoi Kee.
Sitting just outside the kopitiam there was an uncle busy deep frying some sort of meat with irresistible aroma. I walked over to find out what he was doing, it was a Sunday.
restaurant Hoi Kee at Segambut
“Oh, this pork belly, for nasi lemak and we’re open from Monday to Saturday for breakfast and lunch”
And the good uncle gave us each a piece of that pork belly to chew on. The memory of that piece of pork belly deep fried with 5 spice (from what I can tell) and god knows what other spices was so awesome I knew I just had to visit the stall to taste the nasi lemak for sure.
glorious nasi lemak with pork belly
I’ve since been to the same kopitiam 2 more times but missed out the nasi lemak (finished, had very curry mee instead, will blog about that eventually). But last week, on the 3rd try, I finally got it!
The nasi lemak with pork “set” comes with 2 pieces of the pork belly, some silver fish (instead of ikan bilis), a quarter hard boiled egg, kang kung, sambal with shallots, cucumber, and of course, that fragrant coconut rice. The whole thing was about RM 5 or so.
and I finished everything, clean
Was it good? Absolutely.
Would I go back again? For sure!
Another pork nasi lemak can be found at PJ’s 6-10 Nasi Lemak and Grill, but they are very different though.
Address:
Kedai Kopi & Makanan Hoi Kee
No. 2, Jalan Segambut Tengah,
Segambut, 51200 Kuala Lumpur
GPS: 3.18564, 101.67633
Cheng Leong of xes.cx, avid wall climber, the original Melbourne shuffler, and lawyer extraordinaire only goes to several places for food. Village Park, Pappa Rich, Yut Kee, restaurant O&S, and maybe Cristang.
So when we met up for breakfast a couple weeks ago, it was over one of these handful of restaurants.
Village Park at Damansara Uptown
This wasn’t my first time to Village Park, but to be honest it isn’t exactly one of my favorite places due to the fact that it is always packed on the weekends, and parking is a bit of a nightmare at Uptown.
They do, however, serves very good nasi lemak and really awesome roti bakar (toast bread).
nasi lemak – chicken drumstick, cuttle fish, sambal, peanuts and anchovies
The claim of fame for this place is their nasi lemak. A full set of this signature Malaysian original comes with beef, cuttle fish, chicken rendang, sambal prawns, and all the other typical nasi lemak ingredients such as sambal, fresh cucumber, anchovies, peanuts, hard boiled egg, and of course, fragrant rice cooked with coconut milk.
The ful set costs RM 15, but if you don’t include all the main ingredients, they do come a bit cheaper. While a tad on the pricier side, it is really one of the best high end nasi lemak you can get.
nasi lemak, half boiled eggs, soto ayam, roti bakar
The other absolute must-try dish from Village Park is their roti bakar (RM 2). The difference between their toast bread and those you get from other places is simple – the bread here is sliced twice as thin as typically done. Extra crunchy, and of couse twice the amount of kaya and butter over amount of bread.
Cheng Leong & Angeline, Haze & KY
I’ve tried their Soto Ayam (RM 5.70) and it turned out to be pretty decent. The restaurant also serves prawn mee, ipoh hor fun, curry mee, asam laksa, and other local dishes. Try those at your own risk, I’ve not heard very good things about them though.
Other notable nasi lemak include the one with minced pork at 6-10, the triangle nasi lemak at 223, the seapark nasi lemak with awesome fried chicken, and nasi lemak tangling.
Address:
5, Jalan SS21/37, Damansara Utama,
47400 Petaling Jaya, Selangor
GPS: 3.137784,101.623358
Tel: 03-7710 7860
