Over the past couple of months I have been review­ing Malay­si­an res­taur­ants all around Wel­ling­ton for Malay­sia Kit­chen (full dis­clos­ure – I got refun­ded some of the costs). It’s time to share the reviews!

Today’s Malay­si­an quest takes us out of the CBD to New­town, but luck­ily park­ing is easy at New­town Mall and we can do the super­mar­ket shop­ping after­wards. Kopi Tiam (195 Rid­di­ford St) is an unas­sum­ing little place, but the food is sur­pris­ingly good.

My friend orders a laksa and is over­whelmed by the size of the bowl. It’s loaded with shred­ded chick­en, tofu, egg, fish­balls and crab­stick. I steal a spoon­ful and dis­cov­er the gravy is a good com­bin­a­tion of coconut rich­ness and curry fla­vour. She gets nowhere near the bot­tom of the bowl before she gives up, which means it’s excel­lent value for $9.50. The two of us prob­ably could have shared the bowl for lunch, along with the roti, which in this case is served as a whole square and is noth­ing spe­cial.

But in order to try more things on the menu, I order the beef ren­dang. If we ignore the lettuce and car­rot gar­nish – which I do – this is actu­ally one of the best ren­dangs I’ve had in Wel­ling­ton. It’s not as dry as is tra­di­tion­al, but it’s per­fectly bal­anced. The meat falls apart at the touch of the fork, and the coconut is prom­in­ent. The por­tion size is gen­er­ous for $12.50 as well.

We don’t need them at all, but we also order half a dozen wontons ($8) – for research pur­poses, obvi­ously. They’re glor­i­ously crisp, and the filling has a tex­ture like the pork equi­val­ent of a fish cake.

As well as serving Malay­si­an, Kopi Tiam has a whole ‘noth­er black­board full of deep fried West­ern-style food and toasted sand­wiches, so it could be a good com­prom­ise spot for a couple with dif­fer­ent tastes. We notice it’s full of New World staff on their lunch­breaks, and there are plenty of magazines which makes it a good spot to eat in by your­self.