Food Fling in Malaysia: Day 4

This is part four of my multi-day food binge in Kuala Lumpur.  You can read part one here, part two here  and part three here. 

Day four started out just like the previous three before it: with the King Burger chicken breakfast. The quality and consistency remained the same and provided just enough filling until lunch.  

On my way out of the hotel, I stopped at Ali's food corner to have a teh terik.  I'm really digging this way of serving tea and it's slowly converting me away from coffee.  Maybe my opinion will change once I get back to my Saeco machine in Brussels, but for the time being, I'm loving the tea here. 

Lunch

Initially, we wanted to go to a Mexican restaurant for lunch. Due to a couple of administrative tasks, we were late out the door.  Getting there proved to be a bit of an adventure as we had to take the monorail two spots and then make two changes on the metro.  By the time we arrived at the restaurant, aptly named "La Mexicana," we were told the kitchen was closed between 03:00 p.m. and 05:00 p.m.  We had gotten to the front door at 03:12 pm.  Google had told me that the kitchen was open non-stop but as it would turn out, we had been lied to by the internet.  Frustrated and hungry, we quickly needed an alternative.

We headed back towards our part of town, this time on foot and began looking for options.  Back when we were in KL a month ago, we had lunch at a Lebanese restaurant that was in the direction of our hotel.  I'm a huge fan of Lebanese food (Mont Liban in Brussels is a fantastic restaurant)  and as it was already nearing 04:00 p.m., we decided to stop at Al-Amar Express near Lot 10 and Pavilion shopping center. 

Chicken shawarma sandwich at Al-Amar Express

I ordered the chicken shawarma sandwich with a side of fries and coke light.  The sandwich came with a few slices of tomato and two pickles along with a tahini sauce to dip it in,  One bite in and I had completely forgotten about getting turned around at the Mexican restaurant.  The chicken, which had been slow-cooking on a kebab rotisserie grill, was moist, tender and full of flavor.  The pickled vegetables inside the sandwich added necessary tang to the chicken and the grilled bread scooped up the tahini sauce with ease.   

Even though my appetite was rapacious by this point, I took the time to slowly enjoy each bite.  After all, it had taken me nearly three hours to finally eat , all I wanted to do was to blissfully revel in the meal in front of me.  Satisfied that I had met this goal, we headed back to the hotel to rest up and to slowly refocus our minds into dinner mode. 

Dinner 

Seeing as we had a late lunch, we delayed dinner until after 10:00 p.m.  While this would've been a major issue in Vietnam or the Philippines, it posed no problem here as most restaurants that aren't in a shopping mall are open late.  However, according to my phone's pedometer, we had logged a cool 10.5 Km/6.5 miles walking during the afternoon and had no motivation to go on another long adventure just to eat. 

We settled on going back to Ali's Food Corner near the hotel to have another delicious, cheap meal.  I ordered the mee goreng and Nathalie took a chicken biryani.  As was the case before, both dishes came fast and were delectable. 

Mee Goreng at Ali's Food Corner

While we were eating, I watched the staff at work and became curious about this style of restaurant.  Throughout my stay here in KL, I've noticed that these types of establishments are quite common (open air, serving food quickly).  They've all mentioned the phrase "Nasi Kandar" in their title.  After we finished eating, I did a little research and found that the term comes from the name describing a street food vendor who would carry around two large dishes of food, one with rice, the other with meats and vegetables, strung from a long pole.  He would sell the food to whoever stopped him as it was a quick meal. 

This style evolved into the open air, 'fast-food' eatery like Ali's Food Corner and has become vastly popular in Malaysia.  Interestingly enough, we've seen food peddlers throughout our travels selling food this way in every country we've been to so far, making it uniquely southeast Asian.   Here in KL, it's been refined to an open-air restaurant serving hundreds an hour.  Now you know!