It’s always fun when the arrival of dessert is attended with whoops and gasps of childlike glee. At Med Salleh, a Malaysian café in London’s Bayswater, the whoops may well come from the staff. The iced kacang atas, the waiter tells us, was his favourite dessert when he was growing up in Penang. Looking at his broad grin as he delivers it, I think it might still be. Quite right, too. The version here is truly magnificent and deserves to be less served than unveiled. There should be trumpets and bunting, perhaps a Rockettes kick line.
At its heart is a veritable Devil’s Tower of shaved ice. It’s flavoured with fruity syrups. There are roasted peanuts on the outside and kernels of fresh sweetcorn that pop in your mouth. Hidden at the bottom are various nutty red beans and cubes of jelly. There’s a balanced waft of rose syrup, fat dribbles of evaporated milk and, finally, poured over the top from a height, a light caramel sauce. Did it need to be framed by a rushing cumulonimbus of dry ice, as if it was a stage set for a Bonnie Tyler performance on Top of the Pops circa 1983? Perhaps not. Then again with a dish like this we are far beyond any notion of need and nipple-deep into “want” territory.
It reads overly sweet and cloying, doesn’t it, this carnival of syrups and sauces. But these venerable shaved ice desserts are engineered for steamy, tropical climes, both to cool you down and to refresh you. Yes, there’s a big hit of sugar, but there’s a lightness, too, as it all melts away to little more than the gentlest of perfume-counter fragrance. At the end you’re spooning away at a bowl of a fruity, chilled soup as the last tendrils of dry ice snake away. It’s £9.80 worth of huge fun. And if anybody now wants to tell me that you can get the same dish for thrupence ha’penny in, say, Seberang Perai, please first study a little comparative economics. Also, I’m not in Malaysia.
I’m in a dark-wood floored, white-walled restaurant space, with an edge of the post-colonial about it. It’s attached to the Malaysian-owned Berjaya Eden Hotel, a functional establishment perhaps prized more for its location than its looks. If you need the loo, it will be a trudge down slightly tired corridors carpeted in something deep red that doubtless hides a multitude of sins. Med Salleh Kopitiam opened a year ago and says it offers “Malaysian Multicultural Streetfood”. It’s a fair description of a culinary tradition drawing on so many of the influences surrounding it.
If you’re used to the repertoire, a lot of the menu will be familiar. There’s a laksa and a Malaysian chicken curry, nasi lemak and noodles mee goreng. I am bereft that they have run out of the sardine curry puffs, those patties of flaky, buttery pastry that should leave your front looking like a beach of golden crumbs. The good ones are like small Cornish pasties that left home a very long time ago and now speak three intricate languages. Still, they do have the chicken satay, made with big chunks of spiced, turmeric-yellow grilled thigh, with a coarse-cut sweet and oily sauce. Finish that satay sauce off with thick batons of cucumber. None of it can be allowed to go to waste.
The Hainanese chicken rice, a classic adaptation of a dish brought to the region by immigrants from Hainan in southern China, is an engrossing part-work. The timbale of rice here is cooked with turmeric and a little chicken fat to give it a luscious sheen. There is a poached and chopped chicken leg, served at room temperature and falling away from the bone, alongside sauces many and various: a sweet soy, some puréed ginger, a vigorous red chilli sauce and a sweet, hot and thick sambal tumis, the glossy colour of conkers. Your job is to put these elements together; to dip and to spoon and to mix. Occasionally, you should break off to take a sip of the hugely peppery, clear chicken broth on the side.
Beef rendang is offered here both as a main dish or as a smaller “extra side add on”. It’s a dense bowl of tender beef in a desiccated coconut sauce that has been cooked down to form a dry spiced crust. When the beef has gone, smear what’s left of that sauce on the chicken. We have crisp green vegetables, stir fried in belacan (shrimp paste), which is both fresh and funky at the same time. The menu kicks off with a list of chunkily priced grilled fish dishes, including stingray for £30.90 and “gigantic tiger prawns” at £20.90 each. The application of the word gigantic there is faintly intimidating. Six of them will set you back £108, which might work if you have a lot of friends who aren’t scared of their lunch looking like it might eat you rather than the other way round.
Instead, we have a plate of eight shell-on prawns, grilled and then swamped in more sambal tumis. They bring napkins, bowls and wet wipes; so many wet wipes. It would help if they wheeled a field shower tableside, because sauce gets everywhere, napkins get massacred and bowls get filled. But it’s one those good messes; the sort you look upon at the end with the warm sense that good things happened here.
There are various milky drinks, turned vivid colours courtesy of syrups, and often bobbing with cubes of jelly, all of which are served in dimpled pint tankards of the sort I used to neck shandy from when I was kid. There’s a couple of shelves of Malaysian food to buy at the back and, this being the restaurant of a hotel, they also serve a Malaysian breakfast from 8am to 10am. It includes flaky roti canai with curry for £6.90, and a classic nasi lemak with fried chicken for £8.90. This would be a good start to any day. A couple of months ago the same team also opened Med Salleh Viet in Westbourne Grove, with a menu of summer rolls, Vietnamese grills, rice dishes and pho.
Finally, credit where it’s due. Med Salleh was recommended to me in glowing terms by Henry Taylor, a restaurant PR who doesn’t represent them, but just loves what they do. Henry is renowned in our business for starting every email to journalists with a quick summary of the day’s weather. I am delighted to say that his forecast was spot on.
News bites
Chef Paul Foster of Salt in Stratford-Upon-Avon is opening his first London restaurant later this month. GrassFed will feature an open kitchen with a coal fired grill, for the barbecuing of (grass fed) beef on the bone, whole fish with smoked seaweed butter and a beef hotdog with truffle mayonnaise and both crispy and pickled onions. It will occupy a site in Camden’s Hawley Wharf development (grassfedrestaurant.co.uk).
In Edinburgh, Timberyard is to get a sibling. Montrose House, on Montrose Terrace in Abbeyhill, opens this autumn and will be a small wine bar and restaurant. The downstairs wine bar will have space for a couple of dozen, a menu of European-focused small plates and, like the mothership, a wine list built around small producers. The upstairs dining room will seat 15 and serve a set menu.
And financial news. The ever-expanding San Carlo group of Italian restaurants, originally founded in Birmingham in 1992, has seen turnover rise by nearly 140% to £68.9m, up from £29.1m. They recorded a profit before tax of £3.5m. During that period, they opened two new London restaurants, and have recently refurbished a site in Alderley Edge. Meanwhile Diverse Dining, the company behind the 14-strong Shake Shack brand in the UK, has seen losses grow from £2.5m to £4.6m. Despite this the directors say they have confidence ‘in the future growth of the company’ (shakeshack.co.uk).
Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk or follow him on Twitter @jayrayner1
