When I had first heard about Pasar Malam, I thought it was an actual night market complete with stalls and I got really excited. So I was a bit disappointed when it turned out that it was just a Malaysian restaurant that was decorated to have the feeling of a night market. So not quite the same thing. But I was still excited to try it since there aren't a lot of Malaysian restaurants in the city and it's literally right across the street from the movie theater which was where I was going to end up for the night.
The restaurant is owned by the same people as Laut so it comes from some pretty legit SE Asian backers. The menu is quite extensive with a full roti station, salads, appetizers, soups, entrees, fish market, soup noodles, fried rice dishes and noodle dishes. It was extremely overwhelming and I had a really hard time deciding between the famous Malaysian dish of chicken rice, fish grilled in banana leaf, or udon noodles. I ended up going with the banana leaf dish ($18) and Aarti got the Char Kway Teow ($10) and we split the roti telur ($8). The roti telur came with egg, hot pepper, onion and it was served with a spicy curry sauce. I generally prefer my roti to be slightly crispy on the outside but the middle still a bit chewy. I'm not sure if it was the egg but the roti itself was a bit soggy - which made it twice as hard to use it as a vehicle to soak up the curry sauce. But no matter, Aarti and I ate all of it because the curry sauce was delicious and if we could have, we would have drank the whole thing with or without the roti. Next came my banana leaf dish. It was described as fish wrapped in a banana leaf, grilled and served with curry salsa and coconut rice. Everything about it sounded great! They never really said what kind of fish they would be using but it turned out to be some basic white fish which makes sense given the curry salsa topping. My first impression was that there was WAY too much curry salsa. I could barely see and taste the fish - I really had to dig through the salsa. The fish itself was cooked well but I generally prefer my fish to be a bit more simple and this was a bit too overdressed for me. The coconut rice definitely had hints of coconut but it didn't have the stickiness to it that a coconut rice should. While I polished off my entire dish, I kind of wished that I had chosen the chicken rice or udon noodles instead. Although I did have a bite of Aarti's noodle dish which was a broad noodle with soy sauce, chili sauce and vegetables and it didn't have too much flavor to it. Or actually what I should say is that you could only taste the soy sauce and not the chili flavor or anything else. It was fairly heavy on the noodles and light on the vegetables.
All in all, my meal didn't wow me but I feel like there were so many other options on the menu that sounded good that I'm still willing and up for trying it out again. The price points were reasonable and it's close enough to the movie theater that it's worth another pre-movie meal visit. Total bill with tip, tax and a Thai ice tea: $26/pp
Photo Credit: Yelp
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