If you enjoy queuing up for lunch at KLCC during the 12:30-2pm rush-lunch hour, there are two places you can absolutely count on – Little Penang Cafe and Madam Kwan. Both serves pretty decent local dishes at a clean and comfortable environment, with Little Penang Cafe being the slightly cheaper option.
Little Penang Cafe at KLCC
Having based at KLCC for the better part of my working life, it is no surprise that I have been to Little Penang Cafe on numerous occasions. While the purists might argue that there is no substitute for actual Penang hawker foods, I often am willing to compromise and pay a little bit more to have something not far from the original, and as a bonus, it’s located just right downstairs from where I work.
The menu at this place is quite small, but essentially covers all the bases when it comes to Penang foods. There’s char kueh teow, curry mee, prawn mee, loh bak, nasi lemak, mee goreng, chendol, otak-otak, fish ball soup, and so on.
curry mee and Penang style steamed otak-otak
I almost always order the curry mee and otak-otak whenever I pay a visit. The curry mee is almost as Penang as one can get (sans the coagulated pork’s blood though), with traditional ingredients like prawns, cuttle fish, tau pok (deep fried tofu), cockles, and mint leaves. The coconut milk based soup with unlimited sambal on the side is pretty fragrant too, I actually enjoy it quite a bit.
The otak-otak served at Little Penang Cafe is of the Penang style, steamed, and slightly bigger in portion. I find that the steamed otak-otak here is better than those from Otak-otak Place.
nasi lemak with fish, and chicken; curry mee
My colleagues ordered the nasi lemak, one asked for fish, and the other chicken, or was it a curry fish rice? Anyway, both were happy with their food and they certainly looked pretty appetizing. The sambal with the fish packs a kick too, and the drumstick from nasi lemak was reported to be very flavorful.
KY, Was, and Chew at Little Penang Cafe, KLCC
Main dishes are priced from RM 8.90 onwards, with drinks a few ringgit each, just slightly above the asking price for similar items at the food court. Not a bad place to get my Penang fix.
Oh, I wouldn’t order their loh bak if I were you though.
Address:
Little Penang Cafe
4th Floor, KLCC
50088, Kuala Lumpur
GPS: 3.157581, 101.712102
And I said what about “Breakfast at Tiffany’s?
She said, “I think I remember the film,
And as I recall, I think, we both kinda liked it.”
And I said, “Well, that’s the one thing we’ve got.”
As they say, breakfast is the most important meal of the day, it gives you the jolt of energy you need for the rest of the day. Breakfast, as they say, gives you brain fuel.
tapao my nasi lemak with tupperware at Taman Bahagia LRT station
Since everyone knows that nasi lemak makes you sleepy, but breakfast gives you energy, that makes having nasi lemak in the morning a perfect timing. The extra jolt and the sleepiness cancel each other out, and you are left with just the right amount of dopiness at the office so that nobody will accuse you of being too lazy, or too hardworking. Balance is important.
One of my favorite nasi lemak places is conveniently located at the Taman Bahagia LRT station, which happen to be the station I go to every workday. This nasi lemak stall doesn’t have any accompanying tables or chairs, everything is to-go.
very microwave friendly, this Tupperware box!
So instead of having the nasi lemak wrapped in newspaper (or worse still, foam container), this time I brought along my newly acquired lunch box – the Tupperware Reheatable Divided Lunch Box. Canggih!
For RM 3, the pakcik at nasi lemak stall give me a good portion of that fragrant rice, cucumber, 1/4 hard boiled egg anchovies and peanuts in one side of the lunch box, plenty of sambal and beef rendang on the other two smaller sections.
At the office, I popped the little vent cap up and put this into the microwave for a minute. The result – envy of the entire pantry. hohohooho!
reduce the use of disposable packagings, and start recycle!
After breakfast, I filled up the Commuter Mug with some cafe latte. East meets West. I kinda like the mug, the design is very different from the other heat retaining flasks you see from anywhere, and I think this one is a lot tougher too.
However, the real message of this advertorial is not about how tasty the nasi lemak was, or how the tidy container keeps your coffee warm. It is about reducing the usage of disposable packaging materials such as PET bottles, foam containers, or even newspaper that ultimately end up in the landfill rather than being recycled.
I got all these, thank you Tupperware!
From now on I’ll tapao only with the lunch box, it is actually quite a lot less messy and I think the pakcik actually gave me more ingredients!
Do your bit for the environment, and potentially even profit from it! Did you know that 85 million PET bottles ended up in the landfill yearly just from Malaysia, Singapore, and Brunei alone?
Go to Reuse, Reduce site, fill up the pledge to mother nature and stand a change to win daily Tupperware prizes too. Give mother nature a chance!
p/s: there’s a video on Tupperware’s ECO range product that you can view here.
Nasi Lemak is, of course, one of the most well known national dishes of Malaysia. Other dishes that I would consider representative of our beloved country would be satay, roti telur, char kueh teow, and of course, bak kut teh. But today, lets concentrate on nasi lemak.
glorious nasi lemak with egg, ikan bilis, peanuts, chicken, and sambal
The last nasi lemak I had was the in flight meal at Air Asia X from KL to Melbourne just a little over 2 days ago. While most things Air Asia isn’t exactly awesome (flight was delayed for almost 2 hours, seats aren’t exactly recline-able), I must say that their nasi lemak is one of the bests out there.
AAX meal with nasi lemak and water – RM 15
Ikan bilis and peanuts come in separate container to ensure freshness and especially the crunchiness, with fragrance rice, curry chicken, half a hard boiled egg, and sambal that isn’t exactly spicy but carries all the flavor you’d expect. This nasi lemak isn’t just good compared to other in flight meal from any airlines, it is good even when you put it next to any good nasi lemak you get.
It is so good that Mellissa wanted to order one for the 1.5 hour flight from KL to Krabi. The RM 15 meal used to come with the nasi lemak, a bottle of water, and a Chunky Kit Kat the last time I had it, but it seems like the Kit Kat is gone now. Bad economy calls for cost reduction perhaps?
If you’re flying Air Asia, be sure to choose the nasi lemak. I’ve tried 1-2 other meals, they are not exactly very palatable (can’t remember what I had, but I didn’t finish it)
feels like you’re 2075 meter high, Air Asia in flight portable entertainment
The flight from KL to Melbourne takes about 7.5 hours, genius ol’ me forgot to bring a book for the journey and only had an hour’s worth of videos on the blackberry. So I bit the bullet and ordered the RM 30 in flight entertainment since they have Watchmen on it, among a few other films.
Turns out, the portable entertainment module is actually just a customized version of Archos 705 media player. A free al cheapo version of earphones is provided (and for you to take home), but I used my own since I had brought a better one anyway.
The player worked pretty well and I watched almost 2 movies on it. Battery’s supposed to last 6 hours but mine somehow went flat after 3, luckily the stewardess provided a replacement after some explanations from my part. Time goes by so much quicker with there’s an interesting movie or two to watch.
This is the ultimate unlikely combination when it comes to Asian food. An plate of oxymoron of traditional Malay (and hence, usually halal) food with a Chinese/Nyonya twist to it. Ladies and gentlemen, please meet the star of the day – nasi lemak with mince pork sambal.
mince pork sambal, curry chicken, and that fragrant rice
I’m not sure where else is this combination available, but 6 to 10 Nasi Lemak and Grill at seksyen 17 is one of those very rare places that serves non-halal nasi lemak. I have previously blogged about their Western Food in this post (pretty tasty and rather economical), but it actually took me a while to try their famous nasi lemak. I didn’t know what I had missed for so long.
suan, horng, and “aunty” enjoying their nasi lemak
The standard nasi lemak comes with rice, fried ikan bilis (anchovies) and peanuts, sambal with onion, a few slices of cucumber, and half a hard boiled egg. You can then choose to add a number of extra ingredients, including mince pork sambal, cuttle fish, beef rendang, or curry chicken.
The mince pork sambal is the must-order, if only for the “I’ve had it too” factor. The pork and sambal combination works well, and made perfect with the fresh lime juice squeezed on it. Spicy and a tad tangy, flavorful, and that unmistakable taste of delicious pork. You just have to try it.
cuttle fish and beef rendang too
The cuttle fish is one of their most ordered ingredients too, with it’s perfect texture and spicy strong flavor, it is not hard to see why. I also tried a chunk of the pretty tasty beef rendang without being disappointed, and the curry chicken too, received positive feedback from my lunch buddies.
A plate of standard nasi lemak with one extra ingredient goes for RM 7.00, two for RM 10.50, and three for RM 13.50 or RM 14. Definitely not among the cheapest nasi lemak around town, but you do pay for quality and taste I suppose, and I just went there twice in the last two weeks.
a slightly hidden location, but well worth the drive
6 to 10 Grill & Nasi Lemak opens for lunch (12-2:30) and dinner (6-10), they are closed on every Monday and Tuesday.
Address:
6 to 10 Grill & Nasi Lemak
BG-1, Block B,
Happy Mansion
Jalan 17/13, PJ
GPS: 3.123268, 101.634489
Tel: 03 7955 4993
Being a true blue Malaysian, I love my nasi lemak. When my futsal buddy decided that we should head down to Kampung Baru from PJ after our game at 11pm on a weekday, I didn’t think it was a bad idea at all. I will happily trade a little bit of sleep for a good session of nasi lemak anytime.
There are several famous nasi lemak places around the area. The nasi lemak RA few hundred meters away, and nasi lemak antarabangsa that is even closer (I’ve yet to try) to this nasi lemak CT Garden situated right at Kampung Baru.
plenty off add-ons to go with your nasi lemak
The actual nasi lemak packets are rather small and pretty basic. A quarter of an egg, a small cup of rice, and plenty of very tasty sambal. The difference at this place is the availability of the huge variety of lauk (side dishes). Chicken cooked in half a dozen methods, fish, eggs, vegetable, squid, cuttle fish, cockles, beef, lamb, liver, lung, and more.
we didn’t leave anything behind
We had 2-3 packets of nasi lemak (RM 1) per person to go with some ayam madu (honey chicken), cockles, potato, and cuttle fish. Chicken and cockles were pretty good, but the cuttle fish was the one that caught my attention. The texture was just right, a little bit like biting down well cooked cartilage and went very well with the sambal. Personally I am not a huge fan of spicy soggy potato chips, but the other two dudes seemed to love it though.
The nasi lemak with lauk and drinks costs us about RM 6-8 per person. I guess nasi lemak isn’t exactly the cheapest meal these days, but it was worth it at this place though.
Nasi lemak CT Garden opens from 6pm to around 5am, parking is not too difficult. The place is also pretty clean and comfortable. Now I’ll have to try antarabangsa and see what the fuss is all about.
Address:
Jalan Dewan Sultan Sulaiman
Kampung Baru, Kuala Lumpur
GPS: 3.16246, 101.70113
Others:
masak-masak
