06 Best Foods to Try Out in Malaysia – The Best Jalan Bites

This is rice noodles served in a fish soup. A lovely comfort food, the noodle soup dish offers a lovely sour taste accomplished with tamarind. The rest of the ingredients include ginger flowers, spicy birds eye chillies, and matchsticks created from cucumber. There are some popular Assam Laksa stalls in George Town where many a motorcyclist can be seen riding up to order a dish to go.

Ever hear of fruit and vegetable salad? That is exactly what Rojak is. Cut up bits of fruit and vegetable are smothered in thick sugary syrup and layered with shrimp paste, sounds like a combination to run away from? Don't. Not until you try Rojak and discover the dish is really awesome and packed with flavour.

Roti Canai is a flatbread that is eaten with curry or even lathered in hot ghee. It is a favourite accompaniment to order with a spicy dish of seafood, if you are at a Sepang restaurant while enjoying a holiday at local resorts the likes of AVANI Sepang Goldcoast Resort. Roti Canai is also loved at breakfast and goes down well with a glass of Nescafe made with thick condensed milk.

A cold dessert – soup, Chendul or Cendol is another quirky Malaysian street food that is surprisingly delicious. Chendul resembles a noodle like greenish jelly squiggle that's made from mung-bean flour. The green colour is achieved by staining the Chendul with pandan leaves, a tropical plant which exudes a vanilla-like flavour. These noodle-like strips, together with red beans are added to a soup of coconut cream and palm sugar. The 'soup' is poured over a lump of ice, to which a liberal dose of milkmaid is added. Yup! It's one for the sweet-tooth and a pretty 'feel-good' type of dish one should try, throwing all precaution and resolves of a diet out the window.

Malaysia does have a pretty neat line-up of quirky street food, aimed at the adventurous foodie. Apom Balik is a sticky rice flour pancake stuffed with creamed corn. As the batter cooks in a pan, a good dollop of creamed corn is served into the batter, the cooked pancake is then folded over, so you have a chance of tasting the crispy edge of the pancake together with a portion of the creamed corn cooked inside. A definite must try dish!

Satay is a very popular street food in Malaysia, with a variety of grilled meat varieties roasting on open grills, permeating the air with delicious aromas. Batu Maung satay consists of pork, beef or chicken grilled on bamboo skewers together with large cubes of cucumber and raw onion. The traditional peanut sauce is not an accompaniment to this dish since the meat is well seasoned with sauce before being grilled and served.