Roti canai/Roti chana

Despite the fact that Malaysians love food, talk about food, and have food stalls all over the place, I haven’t found the food here any better than the food I love to eat at home. Don’t get me wrong, Malaysian food is tasty with all the varied spices that come from the Malay, Indian, and Chinese cultures. But I think I am less impressed with Malaysian foods because: I am a foodie, I have developed sophisticated tastes by eating at a wide variety of restaurants from around the world, and much of my food is fresh, organic, and locally produced. I have it better than most people around the world.      

One unexpected outcome related to food is that Joe and I have both lost some weight since coming here. I think it must be a combination of eating less because of the humidity and eating less ice cream and alcohol because they are so expensive ($10 for a pint of Haagen Daz and $14 for a 6 pack of Carlsburg beer). But interestingly, we are both eating much more meat (chicken, for the most part) which seems counterintuitive to losing weight!

Yesterday, after a good hour trekking up and down hills, a Malaysian friend took me to an Indian open air restaurant where she introduced me to one of the locals’ favorite, cheap snacks, roti canai. I fell in love. roti chana is an Indian flatbread that is fried in ghee (purified butter) and then covered in whatever variety of sauces you deem appetizing. At this restaurant, there was fish curry, dal, a yogurt mixture, and a couple of other spicy sauces. We also ordered Teh ginger, which is hot ginger tea with milk and sugar (the normal way of ordering). There is a trick to eating the roti to get the most bang for your buck! You pour the sauce on the bread and then use a spoon and fork (the normal eating implements used when not using fingers to eat) to eat the sauce and a little bit of the bread whereby you are able to keep pouring delicious sauces on the roti and eat to your heart’s content. Not only that, for 4 good sized pieces of bread and as much sauce as we desired plus 2 teas, the total was less than $3!!! Delicious and a bargain!!! What could be better for a bargain girl like me?!?

roti chana w/sauces & tea