The best on upper Cuba Street
A mini murtabak, curry and fruit jubes
This is another one of those posts where I tell you about a place I really like to eat at, rather than tell a story, even though I'm always at pains to say that the whole point of this Substack is stories.
Anyway. Here I go.
I've never thought there's very much to go to the upper end of Cuba Street for, other than my very good hairdresser Tokki. Yes, there's Ekim Burgers, but recently I've come to the conclusion that it's just a bit grubby there, even though their $8 Becky cheeseburger with beetroot relish is kind of great. And yes there's Hana Akari, the Japanese massage therapist everyone raves about, but she has a really strict bookings policy that I once mistakenly failed to adhere to and so I have somehow ended up on her bookings blacklist forever. Sure, there's a fish shop, but Moore Wilson's sells fish and so does the shop across the road from my office. Of course there was Laundry, but that closed (RIP) and ever since, that little stretch from Vivian Street up has felt like a bit of a no man's land to me.
But then I found Satay Malaysia, thanks to good advice from friends more in the know than me.
Satay Malaysia has been round for a really long time. It's just that it feels so new because for ages it was shut while the building it's in was having earthquake repairs done.
When I find a place I like I have this tendency to absolutely thrash it for a few weeks. It drives Phil mad. But there's just something about my personality that means I go back to places I think are good several times in a matter of weeks, to work my way through as much of the menu as I can. Then I'll move onto my next spot du jour. I'm slightly obsessive, a bit of a maniac. But also quite fickle?
Satay Malaysia is the place that's getting my regular business right now. We've been twice for dinner in the past fortnight, and I got a delivery of their mee goreng for lunch when I worked from home on Thursday and realised at 1pm that my plan to go for a walk between my 8.45am and 10am meetings had been thwarted and that I still hadn't made it out of my leisure wear and into the shower. I resisted the temptation to buy takeaways to bring out to the small cabin in Castlepoint that I'm writing this post on my phone from right now.
There's a lot I like about SM. I like that it's mostly full of older couples there for dinner after seeing a film at the cinema round the corner, rather than being full of cool hip young things. Who make me feel anything but. I like that it's always busy but never so busy you can’t get in if you don’t have a booking. Which sort of makes it feel like it's still a bit of a hidden gem. I like that it's BYO, but it's never full of drunk hip young things screeching their heads off while drinking Jacob's Creek prosecco (me once, though perhaps not the hip bit). And I like that if you don't BYO you can get a perfectly adequate glass of wine for about nine bucks. I like that the young woman who serves tables is so polite and friendly and always says, "Enjoy your dinner" as she puts your food down. Even when her eyes are full of tears because as well as serving plates of nonya chicken and roti she's been chopping onions. I also like that everyone who goes always seems to order both an entree to share and a main. I like that because every time we go I always think shit we've ordered too much food, but actually it doesn't matter because so has everyone else. I like how generous the portions are. And I really like that there's a little bowl of sugar coated fruit jube lollies at the counter that I always, no matter how full I am, will help myself to when I pay.
I also really like how they describe certain dishes on the menu. For example:
"Squid tubes flambeed in spices, capsicum and onion to capture the smokey spicy flavours from the pan." (Flambeed, great word).
"Traditional chicken curry with plenty of sauce to dip your roti or drown you [sic] rice or both."
"A pot luck soup filled to the brim with goodies including noodles, chicken pieces, fish ball and egg. All this is served in a beautiful creamy and lemon grass infused soup."
Poetic.
But most of all, I love the food. It's just so, so good. And all made by a mum and dad Malaysian couple, whose young boy sometimes sits at the table next to the counter, aimlessly eating bowls of their marmite chicken while he plays video games and occasionally grunts/shows signs of life when things go wrong.
You must start with the mini murtabak - an entree you don't need but you do need. You could order the murtabak as a main, but you may as well order the mini version for starters so you can try something else on the menu. The murtabak - a parcel of spiced chicken or lamb and potatoes wrapped in roti and then fried - is really delicious, and I'm sure it never takes the full 10 minutes the menu says it will to arrive.
The rojak is also very good, and also a dish you can order a mini version of to begin with. It's a salad of shredded vegetables (sometimes a little apple, it's not as problematic as you might think, and that's coming from someone who doesn't like fruit in savoury dishes all that much) with little fried doughboys and pieces of tofu and a really good rich, dark peanut satay sauce. It's not the prettiest dish, but don't judge this book by its cover.
On the mains front, it's hard to go past the nasi lemak with chicken rendang. I've worked my way through a few of Wellington's nasi lemaks now, and I reckon Satay Malaysia's is the very best one in town. The pickled vegetables and sambal are exceptionally good. So is the rendang. Just make sure you get the boiled egg half, which is the essential part of a good nasi lemak. Once they forgot mine, were absolutely mortified, and delivered it quickly in its own little silver bowl. Which felt like it elevated the egg to an even more important position than it already has on a plate of nasi lemak.
The hainanese chicken rice is very good here too. The little bowl of broth is excellent, though it's mostly the chicken that makes this dish great: it's boneless, which I'll confess to preferring. The wee chilli sauce on the side packs a massive punch, which of course is something to like. Good for winter sniffles.
The laksa - filled to the brim with goodies - is good, and so are the mee goreng noodles. And I definitely rate the roti. But I think the best dishes on the menu might just be the curries. I tried the chicken curry on ANZAC Day evening, when I saw a geeky group of brass band musicians at the table next to us order it (there was a lot of debriefing on the Last Post going on - which I naturally interrupted to politely ask what they were eating). It was really, really good. Spicy enough, and so full of flavour. And yes, there was plenty of "sauce to drown in".
What you must try, though, is the green chicken curry. I'll confess that until recently it struck me as slightly odd that a Malaysian restaurant had a green curry on the menu. Seemed more of a Thai restaurant menu thing to me. But (there's a theme emerging here), I saw someone order it one night, thought it looked incredible and so decided I had to go back a week later to try it myself. It was incredible. And absolutely deserves to be on this Malaysian menu. It's such a herby, flavoursome curry that's equal parts sweet, sour, salty, spiced and bitter. And it's not just the laksa that's "packed with goodies"; this curry is too, with loads of chicken and heaps of green vegetables, including okra which I thought I didn't like (texture a bit like mucus?) but turns out I do.
When we were there just last week (I had nasi lemak, Phil had the green curry, we shared the mini rojak, I finished with a lemon shaped fruit jube) we sat next to three elderly folk who'd just been at the movies. They raved about the food as they ate - the kind of people who spoke so loudly you may as well have been part of their dinnertime conversation. But I didn't mind, because thanks to them I now know that the fish curry is "utterly divine". It looked it too. And I'll be back next week to find out for myself.