Ranajit Dam
Hanglipo Malaysian Fine Cuisine is as much of a tourism advert as it is an eatery. Located on the first underground floor of Central Walk mall, the restaurant is adorned with Malaysian flags and plays native Malaysian music, with the waitresses also dressed in Malay garb to add a touch of authenticity. Yet despite the continuous refrain of "Malaysia, Truly Asia" that you will hear while you eat, it is not for the tourism promotion that you will return to Hanglipo repeatedly, it is the food, which apart from being authentic, is also very good.
There were two native Singaporeans in our group the night we went to Hanglipo, and as they had more experience with Malaysian cuisine than we did, we invited them to do the ordering. One of the popular Malaysian dishes they ordered was the kangkung belacan, which is kangkung (also known as water spinach in English and yongcai or 蕹菜 in Mandarin) fried in a wok with a pungent sauce of shrimp paste (belacan) and hot chilli peppers. The taste of the shrimp paste takes over the water spinach, making it an interesting choice to try.
Hanglipo is, while not prohibitively expensive, not very cheap either, and so to ensure you get to eat many different kinds of dishes, it might be a good idea to take one of their set meals, easily good enough for two or more. The restaurant offers three kinds of set meals, priced at 138 yuan (US$), 158 yuan and 168 yuan. As our group had six people, we decided to go for the 138-yuan meal and order other dishes to go with it. This meal comprises daging soup, which is made by cooking shredded beef in light coconut milk, appetizers and main courses.
Malaysian cuisine comprises a variety of influences, most notably Chinese, Indian, Indian Muslim and of course the local Malay. For this reason it is only fitting that the meal has a combination of nearly all of them. We started with the eu char kway (油炸鬼 or youzhagui in Mandarin), a Cantonese-style doughnut eaten either with coffee, or as a condiment for congee. Its name is also interesting, as it translates roughly to "greasy fried ghosts."
No Malaysian meal would have been complete without satay chicken, which is fact is the national dish of Malaysia. The dish, now known the world over, comprises grilled chicken with a peanut and coconut milk sauce. Apart from the aforementioned kankung belacan, the meal also comprised a plate of ikan bakar (literally, "burnt fish"), which consisted of a flat fish charcoal-grilled and served with a turmeric-based sauce. Rounding off the meal was the Indian-influenced coconut milk-based curry chicken.
Outside the set meals, of course, the menu carries a wide range of Malaysian dishes, and describing even a few of them is both beyond the space limit of this column, and the Malay skills of this writer (what's the difference between nasi lemak and nasi dagang, anyway?). But of the other dishes that we ordered, I'd like to recommend the char kway teow (chaoguotiao or 炒粿条 in Mandarin), made from flat rice noodles fried over very high heat with light and dark soy sauce, chilli, prawns, cockles, egg, bean sprouts and Chinese chives. The noodles are fried in pork fat, with crisp croutons of pork lard, which give it its characteristic taste.
Regardless of whether or not you do decide to visit Malaysia after facing the relentless promotional assault at Hanglipo, you should certain make a trip to the restaurant itself. And as they say in Malay, "Selamat menjamu selera!" (Please treat your appetite!)
