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!

The Malaysia Kitchen Pro­gramme has done its best to keep me sober by con­tin­u­ing to send me to unli­censed restau­rants, but final­ly I found a way to out­smart it — head­ing to KK Restau­rant (Ghuznee Street, Welling­ton) with some friends after a pub quiz so we did­n’t need any more drinks.

We were pleased to find the nor­mal­ly packed restau­rant had a table for us, giv­en that it was around 9.30pm. In fact, they were get­ting close to clos­ing up, so we were asked to order quick­ly, and pay as soon as we’d ordered. That and the some­what brusque ser­vice were OK by us, because we under­stand want­i­ng to get home at night, and at $39 for five dish­es, it’s not like we were exact­ly break­ing the bank.

The deep fried tofu appe­tis­er was large and tasty, piled with cruchy veg­eta­bles and sprin­kled with ground peanuts.  “I liked that it had heaps of mung beans but also had a bit too much sweet chili,” said my friend. Indeed, the plate was pret­ty much swim­ming in sweet chili, but still man­aged to be a deli­cious sal­ad. The crunch of the raw car­rots and cab­bage was a great off­set to the chewy tofu.

Anoth­er friend who orders seafood Mee Goreng every­where she goes says KK’s ver­sion was deli­cious, “def­i­nite­ly one of the bet­ter flavour­some ones and not swim­ming in oil”.

Also pleas­ant­ly lack­ing in oil, com­pared to many oth­er cheap Malaysian restau­rants, was the roti, even if it was­n’t made in-house. The chick­en roti chenai was pleas­ant enough, but could have done with more spice. It’s hard to com­plain at $6.50 a dish though.

My nasi lemak, how­ev­er, was served with the tra­di­tion­al sam­bal on the side, mean­ing I could spice up my beef ren­dang as much as I liked. The coconut rice could have been a lit­tle more coconu­ty, and the beef a lit­tle more ten­der, but for $9.50, it was good eat­ing.

We round­ed out our meal with a plate of super crunchy won­tons, unusu­al­ly made with chick­en instead of pork, although that — and KK’s lack of liquor license — may be in def­er­ence to Malaysi­a’s large Mus­lim pop­u­la­tion.

In the past I’ve over­looked KK to go to Satay Vil­lage next door, pure­ly because they’re BYO, but KK’s menu is so inter­est­ing and flavour­some, I might have to do some rethink­ing on that…