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!

A freez­ing souther­ly was blow­ing around Welling­ton when I met with a group of friends at Rasa Malaysia on Upper Cuba Street, push­ing all thoughts of try­ing some­thing new out of my mind. The weath­er meant I had to have my favourite lak­sa.

But first, we have starters to try! We order beef satay to com­pare it to Satay Village’s. The peanut sauce is less sweet, which we like, but the beef lacks the smokey charred taste. The cur­ry puffs are home­made, stuffed with spiced kumara. The coconut chut­ney with the pop­padoms is tasty, but at $8 for six pop­padoms which nor­mal­ly cost 50 cents each in Indi­an restau­rants, this seems over­priced.

entrees at Rasa
Rasa is small, but the ser­vice was excep­tion­al — when it became appar­ent we were all going to taste each other’s dish­es, small plates appeared, and my lak­sa was deliv­ered with a big stack of very nec­es­sary nap­kins. I had no shame in tuck­ing one into my shirt so I didn’t spill any of the thick yel­low coconu­ty gravy down my front as I maneu­vered slip­pery egg noo­dles into my mouth.

Laksa at Rasa

I’ve had this lak­sa a lot, and it can vary in qual­i­ty, but in this occa­sion it was per­fect, full of veg­eta­bles as well as chick­en and tofu, and loaded with top­pings of bean sprouts, spring onions and fried shal­lots. I was so engrossed in it, I almost for­got I was sup­posed to be try­ing my friends’ food as well. Luck­i­ly, I was able to sam­ple suc­cu­lent Mut­ton Varu­vaal, with meat full of flavour that melt­ed in my mouth, and a dense murtabak — a par­cel of lamb cur­ry wrapped in roti served with gravy.

The oth­er high­light, apart from my lak­sa, was the Lamb Dosai, a crispy pan­cake enclos­ing fill­ing, with a range of dip­ping sauces. Many review­ers rate Rasa’s dosai as the best in town, and you’ll hear no argu­ments from me.

Masala dosai

With mains hov­ring around the $17 mark, Rasa is up there in the price scale when it comes to Malaysian restau­rants, but it’s worth the trek.