Rasa Sayang

Ooh, my 40th post!  Not an outstandingly prolific record for the just-over-two years I have been keeping this blog, but given that 2011 saw just four posts, 2012 had 21 and this will be the 15th for 2013, at least I'm getting better...

I also decided that, as spring seems finally to have arrived, a seasonal make-over was in order.  I don't understand Blogger's interface or its mysterious back-end (oo-er) well enough to do a completely custom look, but, inspired partly by the hues of the cherry-blossom patterns I saw appearing in Japan last month (where they know how to do seasonal better than just about anywhere else), I have picked some springy colours to redecorate in, and a fun springy font to go with them.  Well, at least I think it's fun and springy.  Other people may think it's just annoying... feel free to tell me so!  Google Stats tells me that a few people (other than me looking up my own recipes!) have been to my blog -- hello dear readers! -- though I don't know if any of them are repeat visitors, but anyway, maybe someone will notice the change.

I have quite a lot of posts-waiting-to-be-written, mostly about restaurants I've visited, and a stack of photos and notes by way of supporting materials.  Currently I'm in the Tristram Shandy-esque position that in the time it takes me to get round to writing up my experiences at one place, I'll have accumulated two or more visits to other places and so the waiting list is growing!  Clearly I need to up my rate of posting -- and also perhaps learn the art of the quick-and-dirty blog post instead of waiting until I have time and leisure to do an extensive write-up.  (And to learn to get to the point.)  In the meantime though, let's travel back in time to last November, when I was in London for a rare pleasure rather than business visit.

I've made my thoughts on Malaysian food and its relative scarcity in the UK known before, so it should be no surprise that I followed up some blog tips (from local authorities Mr Noodles, The Catty Life and Tamarind and Thyme, all of whom certainly seem to know what they are talking about!) to seek it out while I was in London.  First impressions of Rasa Sayang were promising: its bright, cheerful, no-frills appearance was easy to locate on Macclesfield St in London's Chinatown, and the restaurant (at 3pm on a Sunday) was just full enough that I had to wait a wholly acceptable 5 minutes for a table.  This gave me time to peruse the menu, which revealed some of the more unusual Malaysian favourites such as otak-otak (fish steamed in banana leaves with a coconut spice paste, though literally I think the name means 'brains'!) and chee cheong fun (flat rice noodle rolls sliced into strips, with a sweet prawn paste and chilli sauce, garnished with fried shallots and sesame seeds) -- a good sign of potentially authentic food.

Something rarely found outside of Malaysia, and therefore one of the dishes I always eat when I visit, is rojak.  This could be described as a sort of salad, except that to do so would both be misleading and fail to do justice to this unique dish.  Penang rojak starts off like a fruit salad, with chunks of pineapple, green mango, guava, cucumber (technically a fruit, right?), a starchy fruit that I think is jicama, and pieces of a crunchy, juicy, slightly tart, red-skinned, translucent white-fleshed small fruit called jambu air (water-something; my Malay isn't good enough to know what).  So far, so ordinary -- except that it then adds pungent, treacly, salty-sweet prawn paste; hot chilli powder; and chopped peanuts and sesame seeds to make a sticky black spicy-sweet sauce in which the whole mix gets tossed.  Sounds bizarre but tastes delicious!  Another version is pasembur or Indian rojak, which consists of various fried goodies such as tofu puffs, deep-fried eggs, soy bean cakes, prawn fritters and potato chunks drenched in a thick, orange, slightly spicy, slightly sweet chilli sauce and tossed together with beansprouts for crunch.  The only real common feature between the two versions is that they are both assorted things tossed together with other things, which is, as far as I understand it, more or less what the word 'rojak' means.

The rojak at Rasa Sayang is the pasembur variety, although limited in its ingredients to what I think are prawn fritters and fresh cucumber.  The fritters are delightfully crisp, fresh and crunchy and clearly straight from the fryer; the sauce could have had more zing, particularly by way of acidity and chilli heat (though I am a self-confessed chilli-head and native pasembur sauce usually isn't hot enough for me either).  This was a LARGE serve, especially at £4.80; I could easily have been satisfied with this as a main course, though it might eventually have become a tad monotonous.  As it was I had to leave a few fritters uneaten to leave room for...

... curry laksa, or curry mee if you are in Penang.  This is always a bit of a yardstick dish for me at Malaysian restaurants, since most of them feature it on the menu but there's a wide variety in what you actually get.  In Rasa Sayang's take on it, the broth is deeply flavoured with a distinct prawn savouriness, rich but not too coconutty.  Mint is a somewhat unusual inclusion in my book but worked well to give a novel freshness.  The generous bowlful also contained tofu puffs, a portion of hard-boiled egg, tender squid and decent prawns; in Penang, curry mee is often served with cubes of congealed pigs' blood, but I wasn't bothered by their absence here.  My only slight quibble was that the menu offers a choice of egg noodles or bee hoon (rice vermicelli); I think a proper curry mee should come with both, but despite asking for the combination and my waitress apparently understanding and approving of what I'd asked for, there were only egg noodles.  Perhaps just a mistake in the kitchen?

On my next visit (for make no mistake there will be a next visit) I am looking forward to sampling their other offerings, including the Penang-style hokkien mee (known elsewhere as har mee, prawn noodle soup), the roti chanai, and the rarities mentioned above.  But for now, Rasa Sayang gets a thumbs-up from me!