Malaya Corner

I am in a love/hate relationship with Malaya Corner, when its good the food is fantastic, I dream about it, I've gone here for my birthday and my sister's, it arrives in huge proportions and with such a great price. When its bad, its given me food poisoning in the past, I've been left unsatisfied, the proportions have still been huge but mostly untouched and the price makes me give up my hard earned cash bitterly. 

This time was one of those hate times.

We went here the night my mum came home from Vietnam, one of my aunts came with us too. It was a very busy Thursday night so please excuse the lack of photos, the interior is laid out like a numbered dining hall with the tables in straight lines and all square tables too. There are menus up as decorations. There are help yourself utensils and the water and tea are self service for your own convenience. Its crowded, very noisy and the waiters swoop down on you like hawks. I love it.

Here are the menus. I don't think anyone has blogged a photo of them before, and no wonder because they're your typical Asian diner laminated sticky menus. They reflect light like a pale girls legs in summer and look just as good in a photo. I mean, unless you like that sort of thing.

I was keen for the salt and pepper white bait as a starter but I was a bit reluctant since I've been harassed before, on many occasions, about being greedy and a fattie. My family are never keen for entrees, they just want to get stuck in with eating mains, all business you see. They generously allowed me to order an entrée, a separate main for myself as well as our stock standard plate of crispy brown gravy vegetarian noodles. Really generous of them since I was paying and all.

So delicious

Anyway the salt and pepper white bait was the pick of the day. They were light, crispy while still being soft in the centre and there was a really good salty tang in the batter.The fish used were quite large which was a nice change. There were massive chunks of chilli for garnish though and they were really hot, my aunt accidentally picked one up and was quietly choking on it and downed several glasses of tea to drown the flavour.

My aunt and mum chose the vegetarian spring rolls for their entrée. They told me it was delicious and they had it on several other occasions. It was terrible, my mum makes a better vegetarian spring roll by far. It was really hard to get a good picture of it as it was steaming hot and fogging up. The filling was mostly molten vermicilli noodles with a bit of seaweed, mushroom and carrot mixed in so I felt the filling was terrible. On the other hand, they were crunchy, perfectly proportioned and served with a really good sweet and sour sauce.

So perfect looking

So soggy looking bleh

The char kway teow here, my beloved char kway teow, you were a mistake. There were lap cheong sausage, small prawns, bean sprouts, pork fat, garlic chives, egg, garlic and onion.There was no fragrance, the colour was very pale, it was very bland in texture, the two noodles were confusing for me and I think it should just be rice noodles none of this hokkien noodle stuff. I was very disappointed with this meal.

Blehhhhhhhhhhhh

We always order crispy vegetarian gravy noodles. Always. It first started when my sister, VGirl, came with us, and now its just our standard filler meal. Its a slippery mess of crunchy vegetables, large oyster mushrooms, bok choy, bean curd skin, black cloud fungus, carrot, broccoli, bean sprouts and onion. Its a pretty solid meal, its freaking huge and we nearly always bring home a takeaway container of the stuff with us. When everything else is shit here, the vegetarian noodles are always the same, solid.

Glistening with gravy, thick, unctuous gravy

So even on this bitter note, I still love you Malaya Corner and I'll go visit you again sometime in the future. Be good to me next time.

Malaya Corner
Atmosphere: 8, loud, messy Asian place with help yourself everything, my perfect restaurant for cheap eats.
Service: 6, prompt menus and orders. Really long wait in between meals with the noodles arriving almost 20 minutes behind everything else when we were crazy full with no apology or anything.
Food: 3, it was terrible this time around. I regret wasting my time eating here this time.