Kampong Ah Lee, Edinburgh - Restaurants in Edinburgh | s1play.com

Malay high

Review published on 27/05/2008 © Sunday Herald

Financial jitters are hitting the eating out market.

The manager of one restaurant in a prosperous urban location reports that, while 90% of the venue's take used to be on credit cards and only 10% was in cash or by debit card, that ratio has now reversed.

Astute restaurateurs are offering "credit crunch specials" before the country concludes that it can no longer afford to eat out.But it's business as usual at Kampong Ah Lee, the newish Malaysian restaurant in Edinburgh where you would struggle to pay more than £10 a head, or perhaps £15 if you over-ordered, as you probably will, or added on a whole fresh fish.

Malaysian cuisine is extraordinary, a captivating hybrid of native Malay (a bit like Indonesian) grafted with Indian and regional Chinese cooking. The last time I feasted on it was in a street market off Macalister Road in Georgetown, Penang, celebrated for the diversity and complexity of its hawker food.

Most of the time I hadn't a clue what I was eating. You just point to what you want, pay, then find a table on the pavement and your food comes right along. Sizzling, splendid and exotic.

I hadn't dared hope that the Kampong Ah Lee would come anywhere close: the pressure to dumb down Asian menus so that locals can recognise something is powerful. But one look at the clientele - mainly Malaysian medical students - and the menu, which is uncompromisingly mainstream Malaysian, and the penny dropped that Kampong Ah Lee is surprisingly authentic.

The place is, too, right down to the glitzy models of Kuala Lumpur's iconic Petronas Towers and the gaudy carmine and ochre-painted exterior.

It's a difficult menu, with next to no explanation. Expect to falter over bitter melon with salted egg or kang kung belacan, which translates as water convolvulus fried with fermented shrimp paste. But the fundamental distinction between noodle dishes - mee - and rice dishes - nasi - is clear enough, and fairly familiar laksas and curries are represented. Persevere and you'll end up with something very good to eat.

We began with a roti canai, Malaysia's beloved snack flatbread, which is served with a mellow coconut milk curry sauce. It was perfectly fresh, hot and blistered. We cut its carbs and fat doughiness with a plate of achar: that's slices of crunchy vegetables (carrot, cucumber, radish and more) with sweet pineapple in a salty-sour fresh chilli pickle dressing, sprinkled with ground peanuts.

To get the measure of any Malaysian enterprise, you must taste its nasi lemak, the all-day national breakfast. It was executed reasonably well, a steaming mound of fragrant rice with a mild chicken curry, accompanied by fresh pickles, roasted peanuts and crisp-fried salted anchovies (ikan bilis). The curry, however, wasn't hot enough and underlines a problem with the kitchen, which is that it can't seem to reheat dishes thoroughly. The same problem afflicted a rendang lamb curry.

Everything else that is cooked to order is piping hot and fresh, something to bear in mind while ordering. Our stir-fried mee goreng were a case in point. The right sort of thick, bouncy noodles had been used, not the thin egg noodles that clog too many Asian menus, and they had acquired a crunchy fried veneer.

The mee were thick with curls of squid and plump prawns, and perfumed with aromatics. Badly made dishes like this are just a stodgy, claggy mess. This one suggested mastery of the ratio of ingredients and total confidence behind a searing wok, something that is terribly hard to master for occidentals, however willing to learn.

Kampong Ah Lee offers no desserts but, after typically voluminous savoury dishes, a glass of pearl milk tea slips down a treat. This is an intriguing drink, Taiwanese in origin, a sort of milk shake with ice. Here it comes in lots of flavours (from fruit juices and pulps) such as honeydew, lychee and lime. Also known as bubble tea, you drink it with unusually broad straws through which you suck up little gummy balls made from tapioca starch. Sounds weird? Our pink watermelon one was fab, but the docs at the next table were adamant that the lilaccoloured yam variation is the original and best.

I'll definitely be back to try it.

© Sunday Herald