Lunch in an Urban Village

In Kuala Lumpur, you don't have to leave the big city to eat in a village.

Kampung Baru ('New Village') is a hodgepodge of old Malay-style wooden houses and open-air snackin' shacks offering everything from ikan bakar (grilled fish) and spit-roasted chicken to nasi lemak and traditional Malay kueh (sweets). Sitting just across the Klang River from the high-end shopping mall, gleaming office towers, and fast-rising luxury accomodations that are Kuala Lumpur's Golden Triangle, it's limited maze of lost-in-time lanes is hemmed in by slowly but surely encroaching unattractive concrete apartment blocks and ever-widening roadways.

Known previuosly for its lively Sunday market (the building burned down two years ago) and presently for its unparalleled Ramadan bazaar, Kampung Baru (KB) was established in 1900 as a 'Malay Agricultural Settlement' (MAS), under a British plan to attract rural Malays to the country's big towns. Settlers under the MAS scheme were encouraged to replicate their rural lifestyles by planting rice and other crops.**

These days you'd be lucky to find a blade of grass, let alone a patch of paddy, in KB. But the area does possess a distinctly different flavor to most of the rest of KL - more relaxed and small town-ish. On a scorching Saturday mid-afternoon its main (two-lane) drag is surprisingly busy; parking lots are doing a steady business and (mostly Malay) families, couples, and groups of same-sex friends are strolling and chatting, eyeing the  goods on display at eateries lining the road. Probably less than half of the businesses in the area are open, leading us to suspect that KB really comes alive at night.

 

After surveying the landscape (and sweating buckets in the process), we settle on a sweet, spotless little eatery with bright blue checked cloth-covered tables and the most welcoming staff on this restaurant row. An Nur Nasi specializes in briani gam Johor (rice cooked with lamb, chicken, or beef  in the style of Malaysia's Johor state), but in this heat we can't imagine tucking into a steaming pot of anything, so we opt instead for a couple of noodle dishes that hail from Muar, a town in Johor.

Mee rebus, thick yellow noodles swimming in a smooth, yellowish gravy thickened with sweet potato, arrives first.  I'm a self-confessed chili head, but still I find much to love in this mild, slightly sweet dish. The not-too-starchy gravy is complex (if I hadn't known sweet potato, I might've guessed coconut milk), with a hint of tomato and the barest whiff of fishiness. Tender, assertively flavored chunks of mutton lurking beneath the gravy are the first of their kind that I've encountered in a Malaysian noodle dish.

Crunch comes in the form of fresh bean sprouts and prawn cracker shards covering the surface, optional heat in the form of fresh green chili sliced thick and large enough to be easily visible - and thus easily avoided if spice isn't desired. A squeeze of kalamansi juice is all that's needed to bring this plate of disparate parts together.

Mee bandung - same yellow noodles, radically different gravy - is yin to mee rebus' yang. Made with pounded dried shrimp and chili, this sauce speaks of the sea (though not as loudly as versions we've sampled elsewhere in KL) and is characterized by a slowly creeping heat that only makes itself known after three or four bites, in the form of tingling lips and a burn at the back of the throat.

Here, flavorful beef stands in for rebus' lamb, and a perfectly poached - that is, plenty runny - egg centers the dish, which also includes small rectangles of firm tofu and shreds of an unidentifiable sturdy and extremely delicious green vegetable.

In addition to mees rebus and bandung (and briani Johor), An Nur offers laksa Johor (unavailable this day). Satay is served in the evening, bubur (rice porridge) in the morning.

An Nur Nasi, Kampung Baru, Kuala Lumpur. (Street name is forthcoming).

**For more on the history of Kampung Baru and the rest of Kuala Lumpur, see the excellent 'Insider's Kuala Lumpur' by Sam Seng Fatt.

Comments

[Matt]

I've been reading for a few months now but haven't commented before. I visited Malaysia in January and honestly thought I had done a good job of discovering the food, obviously not!!

Thank you so much for your diary and please keep up the good work. I thoroughly enjoy reading about what you've been eating (even if it does make me really hungry!!) and look forward to making another, more educated, trip to Malaysia in the future!

[Susan]

Ditto Matt.. you teach Malaysians about Malaysia. I swear your blog is better than any travel guide, food magazine, newspaper liftout (you name it) I've ever seen. More! More!

(PS would love a follow up post on Kg. Baru by nite...)

[Robyn]

Matt and Susan - whoa there, pls stop with the compliments as I can feel my head swelling as I write! Seriously - thanks very much. We always like to hear that folks enjoy the blog.

Susan - don't know that I teach Malaysians aobut Malaysia, but I do know I see and experience Malaysia differently than they do (obviously). What's second nature/everyday to a Malaysian can be something fascinating (and worth writing about) to me ... by the same token, I would *love* to read a food blog written my a new (preferably Asian) immigrant to the US. I'm sure I'd learn all sorts of interesting things about my own country, things that I'm very familiar with but have never given a second thought to.

Kg Baru by night - we'll get on it!

[Matt]

ha ha, the praise is well deserved belive me. It is hard to write abotu food as well as you do.

I do have a question as well if you can can give me some pointers. I've tried to cook Kari Kambing a couple of times since I cam back and I just can't seem to get it right. The results have not been disappointing but I haven't managed to achieve the spicy, red coloured curry I got used to eating in kL. Any tips??

[Ben]

Hi: Grew up in Malaysia and still very much a Malaysian at heart. The thing I missed the most was the food! Great blog!
Ben

[RST]

I adore the Malaysian posts as I loved the foodfirst posts on Thailand (specially that post on Pai!) and Szechuan etc in the old days on the Chowhound International Board. But I can't wait to see what Robyn/Dave will come up with once they start dipping their toes into Indonesia and the Philippines!

RST
Fanclub member #1 ;0)
[email protected]

[Robyn]

Matt - a bit hard to advise w/out seeing the recipe you're using, but my (limited) experience cooking Malaysian curries suggests that you're not using 'chili boh' (ground chilies) ... or enough of it. Here in Malaysia you can find plastic containers of chili boh in the grocery store, but the do-it-yourself kind is infinitely superior in taste. It's very simple ... dried red chilies (preferably the Malaysian kind; they are skinny like Thai red chilies, up to about 5 inches long, and dried but not completely 'dry' .... they bend without breaking and they don't crackle), take a big handful and cover them with hot water, let sit for 30 minutes or so to soften. Drain (save some of the water) and mortar and pestle them to a coarse paste .... or, if you're a bit lazy (like me) whack 'em in a blender and add chili water bit by bit, just enough to enable them to grind. Add enough chili boh to your kari kambing and I guarantee it will be plenty red and super spicy!

[Robyn]

RST - ;-) Sumatra just around the corner!

[Matt]

Robyn,

Thanks for your advice. I definitely haven't been doing what you suggest but I will next time.

Red and super spicy is the way I like it 80)

[Susan]

Echo Robin, I do agree you pack a lot of info into each post, it's virtually professional writing. Seriously, you are doing Malaysian food a real service!