It's time for another food adventure and tonight we are headed to Guildford, a suburb that we are visiting for the first time. Laura and I are here for Malaysian night markets for Malaysian street food and a nighttime hawker experience!
"Is this it?" Laura and I ask each other. We are standing opposite Guildford train station and there's an area with a small cluster of food stalls. There are only 4 stalls here tonight but there's a whole section that is cordoned off so I don't know if there are usually more. It's around 8pm and it's fairly busy with families and friend groups eating while another couple is clearly on a date. The vibe is friendly and casual.
With just four stalls to choose from it makes things easy and we get some from all of them. There's one stand that has pictures of Nasi Lemak displayed but no stall holder. When they see us looking, a man comes over - he was nearby chatting to his friends. We order a Nasi Lemak with chicken and he goes about making it. When he hands it over we go to pay him but he says. "Don't worry, eat first and then pay later," with a smile. There's a large chicken drumstick and a delicious rice blanketed in spicy sambal. The sambal is too hot for Laura but it's fine for me so if you're not a chilli freak this may be too hot but I really enjoy this dish.
We wash our food down with some drinks. We ordered a sweet milky rose falooda drink and a milky but strong teh tarik ($5 each). It's at this stand that we see the roti menu too although the tea guy tells us that the roti guy will be back in 20 minutes but he'll let us know when he is back. The stallholders all work together to serve customers and to collect plates.
One stall has a wide range of Malaysian items. They recommend the Kampung fried rice which is a dish we haven't seen much of along with a few other items and we pay and take a buzzer to our table. The fried rice is salty and full of dried anchovies and has a good amount of seafood. If you love fishy flavours you will probably enjoy this.
We saw another table with this pandan chicken and it looked good so couldn't resist ordering it. I really loved how juicy the chicken was and it gets a light pandan flavour from being wrapped in a pandan leaf.
We try the scallop char kway teow. A few minutes latter I had my hands full of chicken and the buzzer went off and Laura was busy. Hearing the buzzer a lovely customer sitting near us offers to grab my plate for me. "I saw you panicking," he says smiling. I mean how nice are the people here? The picture shows large scallops which is obviously not going to happen given the price. It's a perfectly nice noodle dish but it doesn't quite hot the spot if you're looking for char kway teow with tis wok hei or wok char and sweet caramelisation. Also the scallops themselves don't have much flavour at all.
I look over at Laura and she's clearly not satisfied. She grew up living in Malaysia and loves Malaysian food but while the food here is nice we are still looking for a "killer" dish. One of the most popular stalls is the satay stall. At first we do a double take as it is housed in a burger truck but they just haven't changed the branding. There are two types of satay - chicken and beef and we order a couple of each and the friendly woman here brings it over and tells us that we can pay once we've finished. The satay is tender and delicious and so full of flavour even without dipping in the cup of satay sauce but the cup of satay sauce with its strong lemongrass flavour is moreish. In fact we use the sauce to dip pretty much everything.
By now the tea guy lets us know that the roti guy is back so we order a savoury and sweet roti. The egg and onion roti comes chopped up and with a lentil curry broth. The broth is very lightly flavoured and while it is nice we both prefer the sweet roti.
I was tossing up between the roti pisang (banana), the roti tissu (condensed milk) or the kaya (coconut jam) roti and the latter won out because kaya is a clever idea for roti. There are dabs or splotches of Kaya or Malaysian coconut jam inside the roti so that every pull you get of the roti ends up with some of that sweet, rich and eggy jam.
Tonight there's no trace of the fried chicken stall that we had seen on TikTok and while the food was nice and everyone was so friendly there was also a sense that our itches for Malaysian food weren't quite scratched.
Walking back to the car we decided to go to the Mina One manoosh pizza shop next door. It was there that we bought a refreshing mint and lemon drink as well as a za'atar pizza. While the wait was long (there were people ordering 12 pizzas at a time) the hot za'atar dusted pizza was delicious and we ate it in the car for a post dinner car snack!
So tell me Dear Reader, do you have a favourite Malaysian dish? Do you visit a lot of different suburbs in your city or area?
All food was independently paid for.
Malaysian Street Food Night Market
316 Railway Terrace, opposite Guildford Train Station. Look for the Mamu Penang Coffee stall or the Yummy Village sign.
Open 5pm-midnight 7 days a week (but I've read that sometimes they just don't open).
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