Mamak Village, Glebe

I swear that Mamak Village has opened up near my work just to fuel my obsession with Roti Bread. If I don’t end up here for lunch every other day it will be a miracle of epic proportions.

Miss Chicken and I met up at this new Malaysian Restaurant on Glebe Point Rd for lunch today so I could debrief her on my tummy’s exploits in Hawaii.

Funnily enough Mamak Village actually offers a Hawaiian Roti (maybe just to rub it in that I’m back at work now), but I give it a miss in favour of my old favourite Roti Canai. Plus I find cooked pineapple wrong on so many levels.

The Roti Canai at Mamak Village is only $4.00 at lunch, and $5.00 at dinner which is incredibly cheap. I can imagine this place being inundated with uni students looking for a cheap eat once the new semester starts – all more reason to go as often as I can before the end of February.

The Roti Canai comes with two dipping sauces – a not-too-hot curry sauce, and a deliciously sweet dahl sauce. There is also a blob of chilli paste – almost like jam – which I find mildy hot, but also quite sweet tasting. The amount of sauce is plentiful, and I probably could’ve done with two pieces of Roti as I had sauce left over which seemed such a shame.

The Roti itself is thick and square and not as fluffly or flaky as other Roti’s I’ve had around the traps. This may be be because they are cooking the Roti on a make-shift hot plate, rather than flat grill. I did enjoy unfolding the layers of roti pastry however to make myself one huge long piece of Roti.

I’ve always been intrigued, and slightly scared, of food that comes wrapped up like a birthday present. Often I’ll give this sort of food a wide berth as I’m always slightly sceptical of what could be inside. I think this may hark back to the days when my mother used to wrap perfectly good savoury mince inside a cabbage leaf and boil it until everything tasted like an old sock. Blech.

That said I feel like I’ve become much more “food-brave” and adventurous since starting my blog, plus I’ve already heard good things about Mamak Village’s Pandan Chicken ($6.00) even though the place has only been open for a few weeks.

I’m quite excited to unwrap the pandan leaf and find a juicy morsel of boneless chicken inside, with some charred crispy pieces to give things a bit of crunch. The chicken doesn’t have a strong flavour of pandan (or socks - phew) which I was expecting, but then my sole experience with pandan was in gelato form at Gelato Messina, so I guess I wasn’t really sure what to expect? Maybe I was expecting this dish to taste like Coconut and Pandan Gelato?

Miss Chicken orders the Penang Char Koay Teow ($9.50 at lunch, $12.50 at dinner). Her dish looks absolutely divine with plump juicy prawns and fat slices of fish cake.  I have a slight moment of food envy, but it only lasted until I took my first mouthful of Pandan Chicken.

The service at Mamak Village is really great, the overly attentive service that you’d find at most new establishments. That said, the staff were genuinely nice guys and I think being cheery and customer friendly might just be in their nature.  I really hope this place sticks around and doesn't suffer the same fate as the two restaurants that came before it in this same spot.

Mamak Village is at 25 Glebe Point Road, Glebe.