Everyone I know who's been to Malaysia's capital, Kuala Lumpur—or for that matter, any of peninsular Malaysia's great food cities, such as Ipoh, Penang or Melaka—is hooked on Hainan chicken rice; curry laksa, a spicy, seafood noodle soup; or even rojak; a fruit and vegetable salad traditionally drizzled with ketjap manis, a thick, sticky, black soy sauce.
I often long for murtabak, meat-stuffed pancakes sold on the street by Malaysian hawkers of Indian ancestry; or a nice bowl of bakut teh, a steamy spare-rib soup stocked with tree-ear mushrooms, bamboo shoots and chili—dishes hard to find in this country.
Red 8, the casual Chinese place at Wynn Las Vegas, offers a couple of good Malaysian dishes since the chef, Hisham Johari, is a native. But until about two months ago, Vegas did not have a full-fledged Malaysian restaurant. Now, at long last, it does.
That would be Satay Malaysian Grille, named for that country's signature dish: meat on skewers cooked over a charcoal brazier. Satay is often, and wrongly, considered Thai, but it is, in fact, either Malay or Indonesian, as the use of coriander, galangal and garlic, three of the ingredients that season the meats, imply.
The new restaurant does glorious things with satay, but is less confident with other Malaysian dishes because the kitchen slants heavily toward the Chinese palate. The slant makes good business sense, as the restaurant skirts the outer edge of Chinatown and the owners are Malaysian Chinese. But far too many dishes come across as tame, as if the chefs were holding back something or two. Regardless, they've made a good start.
A few things do manage to be brilliant. Roti canai is one of the least expensive things on the menu and one of the hardest to resist. Picture a grilled flat-bread folded into soft, pliable triangles, served with a mild peanut-curry dipping sauce. And rendang, a simmered beef dish, is the very essence of slow cooking.
Rendang, also popular in Indonesia, is the ultimate Asian Crock-Pot dish, and has as many variants as Indonesia has islands. Ingredients such as coconut milk, coriander, cumin and turmeric make it exotic. It can be wet with sauce or dry, in a thick paste, but either way, it is one of the most seductive accompaniments to white rice in the Asian repertory. This version is meltingly tender: a thick gravy redolent of lemon grass, curry powder and coconut, in which huge chunks of beef reside.
I like other things on the menu, as well. One is char kueh teow, flat rice noodles stir-fried with chicken, shrimp, bean sprouts, egg and too much sweet soy sauce. The dish is eaten obsessively in Malaysia in stalls and night markets, and just fine here.
Satay comes in two varieties, beef and chicken, though in Malaysia, shrimp, lamb and even goat are usually around. Here, both are outstanding, accompanied by peanut sauce, sweet onion and sliced cucumber.
Nasi lemak is the ideal plate lunch, a mound of coconut-infused rice surrounded by mini portions of curry chicken, boiled egg, sambal (chili) anchovies, onion, cucumber and roasted peanuts. Mix, match and enjoy. One other dish not to miss is the bean sprouts, sautéed Ipoh style with salted fish and scallions. It's really a Chinese dish and is quite wonderful.
I'd like to say everything is as good, but the restaurant is a work in progress. Nasi goreng, normally one of the glories of the region, is boring here. A hearty fried rice dish ("nasi" is the Malay word for rice), the menu refers to the dish as Indian, and botches it further by omitting the traditional spices.
Indian rojak gets peanut sauce to go along with components such as pineapple, jicama, bean sprouts, cucumber and fried tofu, instead of the expected sweet soy sauce, making it more like the Indonesian salad gado-gado than actual rojak. The biggest disappointment of all is Hainan chicken rice, with bland, steamed chicken sitting in a pool of soy sauce that stands in for the glorious oil-and-garlic hacked chicken that is a near-religion in South Asia.
I can still taste the rice balls steeped in chicken broth and spices that came with the platter of Hainan-style chicken I ate in a tiny dive in Melaka, Malaysia. Compared to that experience, this version is Chicken McNuggets to a Southern grandmother's home-fried chicken.
I don't mean to be harsh. This is quite a handsome place, thanks to black table tops, attractive wooden chairs and semi-private booths swathed in curtains. A number of lights hang from the ceiling, and there is a nice private room for families to feast in.
The truth is that because I am especially fond of this cuisine, my expectations may be unreasonably high. In time, we may see this restaurant realize its potential, as Las Vegans become more familiar with these unusual, highly addictive dishes.