MAMAK - SYDNEY CBD

Mamak
15 Goulburn St
Haymarket, Sydney CBD

Everyone who's anyone in Sydney has either been to Mamak or at least seen the long winding queues there and marvelled at how popular the place is.

We've of course been here before - several times - but it's always nice to revisit. Of course the best time to go there is either lunch or very early for dinner - when the queue is shortest.

We do tend to look closely at all the prawn dishes when we're perusing the menu at most Malaysian restaurants - well in fact most other restaurants too.

We love sambal - it has great flavours and of course a huge kick to it.

The sambal udang was a hot and tangy serving of stir-fried tiger prawns in a fiery sambal sauce.

We quickly discovered that when they say fiery they really mean fiery.

These prawns had a real punch to them - in fact a few of our group found them a bit to hot, but the rest of us absolutely loved them!

Do you find it hard to resist satay chicken skewers when you eat out at a Malaysian restaurant?

Well we certainly grab them almost every time - but at Mamak they are a must. They just seem a little different to other places. Perhaps it's the slightly thinner appearance, or the fact that they come in servings of either six or twelve, or is it the tangy crunchy peanut satay sauce?

Who knows - but the combination of textures and flavours really works so well.

This time it was a mere six skewers - and they disappeared very quickly.

Whenever we order six we always wished we'd ordered twelve - and this was the case again.

A good curry is another essential for any Malaysian meal.

At Mamak they have several, but we chose the Kari kambing - a lamb curry with plenty of spice.

The lamb was slow cooked so it literally fell apart and the curry was rich, fragrant and very tangy.

We normally have beef rendang or chicken curries but we certainly didn't regret ordering this.

Another must order at any Malaysian restaurant is of course plenty of roti.

Mamak is famous for its roti - which many regard as the best in Sydney.

If you stand outside (or while you're queueing) you get to watch the show as the roti is prepared and cooked. It's an interesting experience. It's swirled and stretched until it's paper thin then gently laid onto their big round cooktop. It's then lightly fried and folded, adding layers and depth, till the light and flaky end product is delivered.

It's quite hypnotic standing outside the front window watching all this unfold - and almost everyone does it on the way in and the way out.

We added a good sized serving of the tasty and tangy Malaysian rice dish - nasi goreng. It's like a combination fried rice in many respects but with a bit more tang.

Our final main course was the beautifully stacked Rojak. The description in the menu was enough to get us to order it - a Malaysian-style salad of prawn and coconut fritters, fried tofu, hard boiled eggs, freshly shredded yambean and cucumber all topped with a thick and spicy peanut sauce. It was such a pretty dish.

We then spied this interesting treat on another table and just had to try it. The first thing though was to find out what it was. The other table had the dish after their mains so we established pretty quickly that this was a dessert - some kind of sweet roti. It turned out to be roti tisu - extremely thin and crisp roti served high in a conical shape. If you like palmiere's or other flaky sweet pastry then you'll love this. It's different but lovely.

Sir and Mlady's visit was supported by the Malaysian Kitchen Programme.