Roti Chenai - Emporium

Yass was back in town so it was time to feed her up with halal meats to temporarily boost up her iron levels before she departs to the rigs again and becomes a lethargic vegetarian! Well as lethargic as someone as super charged as Yass is, can possibly be. I decided that we should go to this place in the Valley called Roti Chenai! A mix of South Indian foods with a Malaysian twist, Malaysian is near and dear to our hearts, mine because its delicious, hers because of the time she spent over there eating halal nasi lemak every day for breakfast.

Parking is ample . . . depending on what time of day you get there. It can be difficult to find a park on most days though, you should always try your luck I guess? It's right beside the Ginga restaurant.

Thar she blows!

The interior is nothing much to speak up, vinyl? table cloths and surprisingly heavy chairs. We had a bit of a chat with the owners and this is actually a franchise? Or rather an originally New Zealand restaurant that jumped across the ditch, apparently they won New Zealand's best roti chenai award, are one of the oldest Malaysian/South Indian restaurants over there and are widely featured in NZ guide books. Quite the pedigree!  

Also right beside a pharmacy?

Here is their menu! Yass and I were a bit brainless about ordering and so we ordering a lot of pancake/crepe like things. In our defense, they're often the most delicious of all foods and they all had vastly different meats and textures too!

We got the restaurant's namesake of the roti chenai with a dish of chicken curry, we both loved the roti the best out of all our pancakey/crepe like foods. The buttery, flakey layers of roti burnt our fingers and tongues, they were so hot coming fresh off the grill. Ahhh but it was such a wonderful flavour! I'm drooling just thinking about it. This was Yass's favourite!

Those char marks are beautiful!

We got the chicken murtabak, basically a roti stuffed with chicken pieces, onion and egg pieces. We also burnt our fingers eating this because why use cutlery when you can use your hands? Also why do we have just one slice of cucumber there? I mostly ignored this in favour of our roti and the last dish we opted to choose!

Still ate it all though

The mighty beef dosai! I've always been intrigued by the idea of it since its a fermented rice flour crepe basically, so like an Indian version of Vietnam's banh xeo? It gives me that same feeling with the super crunchy exterior and how it has pieces of onion and beef mince studded on the inside. I also enjoyed the slightly sour taste of the pancake. It came with two dipping sauces, the darker one I can't recall but the white one was a coconut cream based and I ate all of it. Yes, we also burnt our hands eating this one.

So many pancakes

It's kinda like looking at a meat surf wave

Roti Chenai - Emporium
Atmosphere: 5, nothing special.
Service: 7, super friendly people who rescued my fallen cutlery from the floor and replaced it more times than they had to, considering I'm a grown woman. My knife fell on the floor accidentally so many times, I might as well have been throwing it on the ground.
Food: 7, wonderful food! We left absolutely stuffed and were very happy with our choices considering we only got three types of pancakes/crepes.