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…