Singapore-Malaysia Trip: Red Door Nyonya Cuisine

On my last full day in Malaysia, I brought my niece and nephews for brunch in the neighborhood shopping mall. It was only about a 5 minutes drive to the Jusco shopping mall in Kepong. There were a lot of choices at the mall and it took us a while to decide where to eat.

We came across the Red Door. What enticed us was the big poster of their menu. They serve mainly traditional Malaysian food, specifically Nyonya cuisine.

Oh yeah, I had always wanted to say this. In Malaysia, the standard cutleries is a spoon and a fork for almost all food except for noodles. When I first came to Canada, it took me a while to get used the cutleries issued, which is just a fork and knife. We got to ask for a spoon. Canadians used a fork even for rice where in Malaysia, the spoon is used to scoop up the rice and the fork is to push food onto the spoon.

I ordered the Sambal Fish Rice. This dish came with two fish about 8 inches long. Don’t know what type of fish this is though. The chilli sauce is a bit sourish and certainly spicy. The okra (known better as ladies fingers in Malaysia) and eggplant (or Brinjal) adds a good balance to the spicy-sourish taste to the chilli.

The Sambal Fish Rice came with prawn crackers, fried peanuts, eggs and the sambal. I like mixing it all up before diving in. This dish costs RM9.80 (less than USD $3)

I can’t remember who ordered what but here are the rest of the dishes we had. Below is the fried rice. It’s a simple dish served uniquely on a small wok. This one costs RM5.80 (about USD $1.50).

Theirry ordered the Asam Laksa which is a sour fish based soup noodles quite popular in Malaysia. I think this one is very spicy because I think Thierry was struggling to finish the entire bowl. This dish costs RM5.80 (about USD $1.50).

Sambal Prawn Rice came with a choice of steam rice or Nasi Kerabu. We had a mix. Nasi Kerabu is the blue colour rice. The prawns in the sambal was quite small. Looks really good.

For appertizers we ordered something called Top Hats. It came with fried cups and filled with shredded vegetables. The dipping chilli sauce was great — really hot. This is about RM3.50 (USD $1 only).

We liked the Golden Money Bags. It is basically the same as the Top Hats, just packaged differently. I was thinking that this type of food would be great in picnics or parties — good conversation pieces.

My favourite niece, Tracy, ordered the Hainanese Chicken Chop. It looked very delicious — with fried potato wedges and carmelized onions on gravy.

This is what I had for drinks — cendol. I had so much shaved ice dessert the past few days. I can’t get enough of them. I am gonna miss these type of shaved ice dessert when I get back to Canada.

The ABC … looked awesome except that I hate red beans in the ABC.

This is the penultimate posting on my series on my trip to Singapore and Malaysia. I have been posting for the past three weeks. After this series, Suanne will take over and post her recipes. She had quite a bit lined up already. I had a few emails from people saying that they miss Suanne’s recipes … so stay tuned.