KUALA LUMPUR, July 19 — As I spent most of my life in Europe, coming to Malaysia required quite a few revisions to the way I normally do things — and some adjustments were learnt the hard way.
As I am staying in the Brickfields area (deceivingly named Sentral), I often venture out to dine locally, for I am fearless (or stupid) when it comes to food.
But I had to reconcile my old dining habits with eating out in Brickfields and hence I thought other people may find it useful if I spelt out some of the differences between Europe and my current local haunts, especially in the critical area of dining etiquette.
Distance between mouth and food: In Europe, if one is dining in good company, the correct distance between your mouth and the centre of your plate of food is approximately 16 to 28 inches (depending on table height and neck size), and your back should be straight, arching forward only ever so slightly to allow your head to meet an item of food perched tremulously on your fork.
This applies to everything — no exceptions — even pasta; that is, if you wish to observe proper dining etiquette.
In Brickfields, I found that that the above technique guarantees a liberal splashing of sauces, curries, soups and not a few ingredients such as mee, vegetables and the occasional lump of meat on your shirt and trousers.
A lot of people will also stare at you rather oddly and children will laugh.
No, in Brickfields, the correct etiquette is to perch your mouth no more than three to five inches above the dish, head and back arched fully forward and attempt to slurp in the food without splashing any on yourself.
Note that it is OK to splash food on the table though, as the cleaners will just flick it off with a greasy rag, but be careful as that is how bits of food can also land in your lap.
Discussing the menu: Often in the West, the waiters are trained to explain the finer aspects of the ingredients in the dishes; for example, the fish in the escabeche or the stuffing in the encornets farcis, usually accompanied by a suggestion of a matching Sauvignon Blanc or Chardonnay.
This practice, however, is not conducted with quite the same diligence in Brickfields. They may not laugh out loud when you ask for the menu but you feel that they might or at least, want to.
Sometimes the lady of the establishment will come over and recite blandly a list of meaningless dishes, fully requiring you to know not only Cantonese but also the precise dialect spoken in some small village near the Thai border.
Anyway, in the end, one can usually get some food by randomly gesturing at the pictures on the walls (if any) or at the individual stalls or at the food on the tables next to you.
By the way, in Brickfields, it is perfectly OK to point at the food on other people’s table but it is not OK to point at other people, especially as you would by then be wearing a frown and an irritated, hungry look on your face.
Returning food: Once in a while, one has to return an undercooked dish or a dish that is unpalatable for some reason. This normally results in the manager of the establishment rushing over and enquiring as to the reasons and apologising profusely for the deficiency in the kitchen, followed by a replacement dish and perhaps a little complimentary glass of wine to make up for the disappointment.
At least, this happens in the places where I am fond of dining abroad.
Not so here. I can conclusively say that customer care is not the highest concern in a Brickfields restaurant, especially in traditional Chinese establishments.
What usually happens when one questions the provenance of a dish is a series of shrugs, frequently accompanied by colloquial Cantonese expressions comparing your intelligence with certain parts of the female human anatomy.
So it is usually better to just order another dish instead and pay for everything, which then results in beaming smiles from the restaurant management.
Chatting with restaurant staff: There are several places I frequent where it is common for the maître d’ or head waiter to welcome one into the dining hall, politely enquiring about one’s health and the dining preference for the evening.
And it is certainly not unusual for the cook to pop out to shake hands and tell you about the dishes planned for the week. And of course, during the meal, the staff come over to gently enquire about the dishes served so far.
This happens, I stress, in certain establishments outside Brickfields and possibly Malaysia.
In Brickfields, even if you go to the same place a hundred times, the only acknowledgement you will get is perhaps a nod from the manager sitting behind the small counter or mildly bewildered looks from the tea ladies, wondering why you returned in the first place.
And if any staff ever come up to you, that will be only because they want you to order a sugary drink, not discuss the plat du jour.
The only other people who will approach you when eating are either beggars or lottery ticket sellers reminding you of the millions you are missing out on by not buying a ticket, at which point I politely tell them I wouldn’t want to rob them of their millions.
Actually, for some reason I got to find out that the owner of an economy rice stall has been serving in the same location for 30 years, of which I suspect only two or three were happy years, because his mournful expression nearly put me off the rather excellent food in the trays.
But as I said, I am fearless (or stupid) when it comes to food, and now I eat there reasonably often, while doing my best to avoid his sad eye.
Attracting staff attention: Of course, everyone knows that in proper establishments, one only has to nod ever so slightly or raise an index finger discreetly at the waiting staff and they will glide to your table eventually to inquire about they may help you.
The same delicate gestures do not seem to work here. Often one has to bark rather gruffly at staff to get their focus — and actually, they seem to attend you better the more brusquely you snap at them.
This is something which I am still rather uncomfortable with as I am rather shy and diffident in nature so I tend to have to wait a bit before ordering my glass of over-sugared burnt coffee.
Tableware: Of course, everyone knows that one uses the cutlery from the outside going inwards towards the china when dining. And the large wine glass is for reds, the medium is for whites and the flute is for sparkling. It is sort of logical, if one thinks about it.
In Brickfields, let us just say it is all much more egalitarian — everything arrives on cheap colour-coded plastic plates with flimsy tin spoons and forks or scratched chopsticks.
The recent great innovation seems to be unbreakable plastic glasses for the sugary coffees, which people drink with their food, rather than after the meal. Saying that, they do serve a very popular and pretty 3-colour coffee, with thick layers of condensed milk, coffee cream and black coffee (drinks like this are probably what keep the Malaysian Dental Association, the Malaysian Diabetic Society, not to mention the Malaysian Good Heart Foundation awake at night).
Oddly though, one can get used to the idea of having a tooth-numbingly sweet drink with say, a plate of savoury fried kwey teow or assam laksa. I am not proud of it, I have to confess, so I seldom mention it to anyone and never to my doctor.
Attire: In top European establishments, Gucci loafers may be considered just about acceptable and certainly one has to wear a tie and jacket.
This is one serious downside about dining in top European restaurants, where they often have a dress code which they enforce with sniffy looks and strained smiles — trust me, unless one is a cultural pachyderm, one will never underdress twice to the same snooty establishment.
Fortunately, this is an issue which does not apply at all in Brickfields restaurants. In fact, one would feel rather silly wearing Hugo Boss sitting on a greasy stool around a plastic table where the floor gets splashed intermittently with water as waiters sweep away the droppings from previous diners.
As an experiment, I have tried to dress down to a level which may provoke some concern to restaurant staff but as yet, nothing I have managed to wear (or not wear) seemed to faze them. So, in my opinion, this is a great positive about Brickfields establishments.
The other great positive, of course, is the really good and inexpensive food here — but only if you know the right places. Otherwise, I have to confess that generally it is not a good idea to make random selections for dining in this area — regrettable, but true.
I have had several dire meals here, usually at places run by jolly restaurateurs, oddly enough. A smiling cook’s face is definitely not necessarily a sign of culinary competence here.
Culinary competence, of various kinds, can however be experienced in these Brickfields establishments:
Money’s Corner, a hidden food court behind corner of Jalan Vivekananda and Jalan Thambypillai (don’t blame me if your GPS cannot locate this place): The best breakfast and lunch pork noodles in Kuala Lumpur, and possibly the world. Also a great prawn mee stall, a delicious banana leaf rice Indian stall, and a not-at-all-bad char kway teow as well.
Restoran Hing Ang, Jalan Thambypillay: The char kway teow man (usually wearing a black cap) in the little stall at the front fries up a sensational dish of flat rice noodles for breakfast and lunch. The other stalls are so-so but definitely not the worst in KL and they do offer a good variety.
Restoran Happy, Jalan Thambipillay, Brickfields: Delicious and wide range of steamed paus (but not so brilliant dim sum) on the left side and a wide tasty selection of self-serve Chinese dishes (which changes most days) on the right side to top up your plate of white rice or bowl of porridge at lunch and teatime.
Nagas, 3339 Jalan Tun Sambanthan, Brickfields: Martha Stewart was taken here to sample local Indian cuisine after she was released from jail, and that’s good enough for me. The rotis here are great, the tandoori is tender and this is the only Indian restaurant I know which is open 24 hours. So if you urgently need a putu mayam and lamb curry to finish off your drinking session at 3am, now you know where to go.
