Gourmets gather to taste the best of Malaysian food from hawker stalls to first-class hotels

EATING six to eight meals a day isn't something I normally do, but time constraints on a recent trip to Kuala Lumpur demanded this sacrifice. Friends familiar with the Malaysian capital gave me an extensive list of 'must try' dishes. As I have an insatiable appetite for delicious food, I did my best to taste everything on the list.

Fortunately for my waistline, I did a lot of walking in two and a half days and, even better for my bank account, much of the excellent food is to be found in the so-called 'hawker centres'. These covered open-air food courts are dotted throughout the city. Customers go to each stand to order what they want, then sit on plastic chairs at formica tables in the centre of the room. Each hawker specialises in only two or three dishes but, because there are so many cooks under one roof, the choice is extensive.

I went for a walk on my first morning, and wasn't two minutes away from my hotel, the Ritz-Carlton Kuala Lumpur, when I chanced upon the hawker centre at the junction of Jalan Padang and Jalan Gading. For breakfast, I had a steaming bowl of assam laksa. In the broth, fragrant with chillies, tamarind, herbs and spices, were thick white rice noodles, shreds of red onion, cucumber and fresh mint. It cost only three ringgit (about HK$6) and was so delicious I went back to the same hawker the next morning, for a bowl of prawn mee: fish cake, prawns, hard-boiled egg, and egg noodles in a spicy broth made from the prawn shells.

The stalls also offer pork, prawn or fishball mee (noodles) in soup, nasi lemak (coconut milk-flavoured rice served with stewed meat or seafood, fried tiny fish, hard-boiled egg and vegetables), Hainan chicken rice, and several varieties of laksas, not just the Nonya laksa we are most familiar with in Hong Kong.

It's easy to find good food throughout Kuala Lumpur. Almost everything I tasted was delicious, from the popiah (vegetables and meat wrapped in thin, soft rice paper) and rojak (a pungent fruit and vegetable salad) I ate in Chinatown (but it's available at street stalls everywhere) to a refreshing soursop and guava ice I found at the Kopitiam (literally, coffee shop) in the cacophonous labyrinth that is the Sungei Wang Plaza shopping centre. The nearby Bintang Walk is home to many upscale restaurants, and seemingly hundreds of trendy cafes.

The enormous mall at the Suria KLCC (near the Petronas Twin Towers) houses several food courts, the largest of which is on the third level. This is the place to come if you're afraid of eating street food (although you shouldn't be - the hawker centres are regularly inspected and licensed by the Government).