Chinatown: C&R Restaurant

Cendol. In London. I'm all over it like orange on a carrot.

... Wait, what?

It was tough to get the whole restaurant in this shot. See the white sign at the top right of this photo? The wall pretty much began at the right hand side of that sign and my back was against it.

Where?

Chinatown, London, 4-5 Rupert Court, Nearest station is Leicester Square or Piccadilly Circus. Rupert Court is a narrow little alleyway that runs from Rupert Street right through to Wardour Street and is pretty easy to miss.

What?

A café offering a selection of Malaysian food, a bit like Rasa Sayang. And like my visit to Rasa Sayang, I chose nasi lemak.

Nasi lemak consists of coconut rice, yellow chicken curry, boiled egg, peanuts, little fried fishies (ikan bilis/ anchovies), archar (picked vegetables) and sambal (mind-blowingly hot chili sauce). Often cucumbers too, to cool off.

As I was eating this, I thought to myself, 'This isn't as hot as Rasa Sayang's... I wish it were hotter.'

Be careful what you wish for.

The heat from C&R's nasi lemak is like a ninja- you don't notice it until it's too late. The heat from Rasa Sayang's hit me instantly and without mercy, but it stayed constant. I don't know what sort of chilies they used at C&R, but I didn't notice how hot it was until I was about a third of the way through- then *WHAM*. It didn't stop there though: it got steadily worse and worse. Well played, C&R, well played.

I liked it. Oh, and if you think you're not a pickles person, you'll find that you're going to need the archar: the sweet vinegar-y-ness will help to balance out the heat of the curry and sambal. Which speaks volumes, because archar has chili in it, too.

Flavour-wise, the curry was weaker than Rasa Sayang's, which was a shame. It certainly wasn't bad- far from it. In fact, I found the coconut rice more fragrant and generally tasty at C&R, whereas it was a bit dry at Rasa Sayang. I can certainly in no way fault the portion size: I could only eat half of the mountain of rice, and only a bit of the sambal sauce... although I admit that in the case of the sauce, it was the chili that defeated me. Next time I'll order the Hainanese chicken rice, which I've heard is pretty good- and devoid of chili.

Now, onto the main reason why I came here: the cendol.

How beautiful is that? (I can hear some people going 'err....')

I've written about cendol before in one of my Australiafiles entries. Just to recap, cendol are green pasta-like noodles made from rice, tapioca or mung bean flour, and coloured and flavoured with pandan extract. Pandan is a plant who's leaves are used to make the green extract, and it's used in Southeast Asia like we use vanilla in the West.

See the green things? That's cendol.

Cendol-The-Drink, also spelled Chendol, consists of these green wormy things, with lots of shaved ice and coconut milk, and sweetened with gula melaka (palm sugar) syrup- which is the brown stuff you see in the picture. It's a bit like dark muscavado sugar in taste, and is very, very yummy.

This is the first time I've seen cendol served like this in the UK, if at all: it's sort of hard to come by, here. Before I'd only ever seen it used with ice kacang in a bowl as a dessert, or has red beans and other things added to it- again more like ice kacang. At C&R, they serve it just how I like it in Malaysia: green worms, ice, coconut milk and palm sugar, in a tall glass with a straw.

C&R put cendol on their dessert menu rather than with the drinks in the main menu, but since it's common in Malaysia to have it alongside or instead of a main meal, the waitress didn't bat an eyelid when I ordered it with my nasi lemak. In fact she seemed mildly impressed that I didn't treat it like a dessert.

The cendol was most definitely my favourite part of the meal: it had just the right amount of actual cendol, plenty of ice and not so much gula melaka syrup that it was sickly. Two thumbs up. As a nice little bonus, the ice and coconut milk helped put out the flames from the nasi lemak, so all was well.

I look forward to coming here again, especially to order the cendol (although apparently they do a pretty mean ice red bean drink too, which I'm also quite fond of- which to chose??) C&R is a great little place for affordable food- and a good portion of it too- in London.

They also seemed to have a bar area directly opposite the café, also named C&R. It was closed, but apparently in the evening when it gets busy you get sat in there. I noticed they also had quite a lot of another one of my favourite drinks too, also popular in Malaysia:

Now that's a lot of Milo.

Chinatown: Rasa Sayang

If you didn't already know, I'm half-Chinese, and my Chinese family lives in Malaysia.

Where?

Chinatown London, 5 Macclesfield Street. Nearest tube station is Leicester Square.

What?

As you can see, it's a Malaysian/ Singaporean restaurant-slash-café. Malaysian eateries are harder to find in London than Chinese, Thai and Japanese places for instance- quite sad for me, since one of this things I love most about visiting Malaysia- aside from seeing my family of course- is the food.

Enter Rasa Sayang. It kills two birds with one stone for me: it offers popular Malay dishes, and scores points on affordability too (a much-prized quality when it comes to eating out in London).

For the main course, I had nasi lemak:

Chicken curry, coconut rice, peanuts, peanut sauce, various veggies and little fried fishies.

This was delicious. It was also really, really spicy. The kind of hot and spicy that makes your nose run and your face steadily go red. In other words, it was perfect. The chicken curry was just like what I remember from previous visits to Malaysia, and the portion size was quite generous- that potato in the far right doesn't look like much, but in real life it was almost the size of my fist (I have really small hands, in case you think this is a bit far-fetched).

For dessert, I had ice kacang (possibly an obvious choice, given that ice kacang is partially known for its colourfulness):

Ice kacang is ice shaved so fine it's like snow, and it usually has all sorts of flavoured syrups and toppings. Rasa Sayang's ice kacang is flavoured with rose syrup and evaporated milk, and also has a rainbow of toppings (well, not really 'toppings'- more like 'bottomings'): creamed sweetcorn, palm seeds in syrup, grass jelly, red beans and cendol (read more about cendol in my Australiafiles post).

Just to recap briefly, cendol is a bit like pasta, flavoured and made green with pandan leaf extract, and often looking a little bit like green worms. It can also be served as its own dessert with ice, coconut cream and syrup.

Rasa Sayang, along with Longji, is definitely one of my go-to places for a cheapish meal when I'm about in the area. Something I keep meaning to try is a drink called a 'Milo dinosaur', made with the malted chocolate Milo drink- anything associated with dinosaurs has to be good, right?