For my sins, 'what do Malaysian people eat for breakfast?' is not a question I've spent a lot of my life pondering. Cornflakes? Bit of toast? I've mostly been happy to have my gastronomic curiosity satisfied by a nasi lemak or a beef rendang. More often than not at Chinatown's Kaya.
Sat at the bottom of a short staircase between a massage parlour and a bookies, in Chinatown terms the Malaysian restaurant is still a baby. It has been in its Faulkner Street basement since around 2023, serving up a small and affordable menu of classic fare like char kuey teow fried rice and curry laksa noodles. It was - somewhat surprisingly - one of the area's first Malaysian spots when it landed.
In a part of the city where competition is fierce, the family-run spot wasted no time in becoming a favourite with both locals and ex-pats. As an M.E.N. colleague overheard when visiting shortly after it opened: 'Thank you for taking me to a home away from home'.
Expanded Breakfast Menu
More recently, Kaya has expanded its menu and extended its weekend opening hours to incorporate traditional Malaysian breakfasts - with set menus ranging from £9 to £11. Everything during my visit at 10.30am on a Saturday was reassuringly informal. My waiter, before I'd had my drinks, sat down to serve himself breakfast while happily chatting with a young Malaysian family on the table next to him.
It may have been frustrating anywhere else, but he used it as an excuse to bring over one of their meals, before they've even had a chance to take a bite, in order to explain what it was. They seemed more than happy to oblige, telling me I wouldn't be disappointed.
Roti Jala and Nasi Lemak
The dish in question was roti jala. A spider web of batter he told me is like fried 'like a net' before being rolled into tubes. The soft yellow cylinders are plain enough on their own, but came alongside a small pot of on-the-bone chicken curry. Warming and delicious, it carried a kick absent in most breakfasts on this side of the world.
I ordered it alongside Set Menu A, which for £11 comes with nasi lemak biasa - rice cooked in coconut milk with pandan leaf, served with cucumber, sambal chilli paste and ikan billis, which are crispy deep-fried anchovies. A small pile of roasted peanuts add a little bit of crunch.
Considered by many as Malaysia's national dish, it's wonderful. A light ying to the rich yang of the chicken curry, and - having never ventured further east than Moscow - unlike any breakfast I've had in my life.
Kaya Toast and Kopi Butter
Next was kaya toast, which I am told was invented in Singaporean coffee shops, known as kopitiam, founded by the descendants of Hainanese immigrants in the early 20th Century. Here, it is the breakfast's centrepiece - served with every set menu at Kaya.
Clearly a favourite, the simplicity of it seems indecent. Two slices of cheap toasted white bread, the kind that's best for bacon butties, are slathered with a coconut jam - the delicacy which gives the restaurant its name. Butter is then carved into inexplicably thick wedges, with a girth usually reserved for the more audacious of cheese sandwiches, and then slapped between the toast. It felt like the kind of thing you might ashamedly assemble in the kitchen under cover of darkness - where nobody can see how decadently you're slicing the dairy.
And if that sounds trashy, that's probably because by some standards - the ones that see us queue for hours for avocado eggs at Federal or Ezra and Gil - it is. But healthy eating this is not, and it is obvious why this is a Singaporean classic.
Washing it down, and included in the set menu, was a beautifully tart iced lime tea they call limau. Although this is not the drink anyone would be writing home about at Kaya. For that honour, they wheel out the butter again - for kopi butter. Or, coffee with butter.
Sweet and hot, the server told me to quickly stir a teaspoon through the drink, giving it a thick, luxurious texture. It's pretty weird, yes, but strong and delicious. The kind of sugary rocket fuel that could power the Malaysian space programme.
A Personal A&E Story
Disclaimer. Kaya was already a long-time personal favourite and had managed to remain so against odds created entirely by my own stupidity during a visit last summer. After spectacularly underestimating its heft, an unusually large and tough piece of beef - from a rendang - found itself stuck in limbo. Half way between my mouth and my stomach. Despite repeated attempts to clear my oesophagus with water, it wasn't budging.
I knew I'd made a mistake within seconds of swallowing. Although the scale of it wouldn't become clear for some time. It was intensely painful and I was forced to excuse myself to seek medical advice from a relative, who informed me, despite my embarrassment, it was quite common and sometimes could be cured by fizzy drinks or perhaps a bumpy car ride.
For the next two hours I toured the backstreets of the city centre chugging Coke Zero. Sadly, all attempts to dislodge my blockage proved futile, and it was apparent I'd have to seek real medical intervention. As it wound its way through Collyhurst and Harpurhey, the bouncing of the packed bus from town to North Manchester General Hospital did little to help clear the beef. What it did succeed in doing was agitating the litres of Coke Zero I'd consumed earlier.
With each bump of north Manchester's potholed roads, the intensity of the pain in my chest increased. It was like I could feel every bubble as it pressed itself against the wall of my gullet. Then, with the intensity you'd expect had someone unwrapped a tube of Mentos and poured them down my throat, the Coke Zero froth became too much for whatever had been holding it in place in my food system, and it exploded from my mouth with volcanic ferocity on the top deck of the 118.
Froth abounds, I could only apologise to fellow passengers for the bizarre spectacle they had been forced to witness. And yet, there it remained. My beefy enemy. Stuck fast in my oesophagus. It took until gone midnight nearly five hours later - thanks to a cocktail of muscle relaxing drugs and the expertise of those working in North Manchester Hospital's A&E - for the meat to continue its arrested journey.
By that time, I had made many vows to myself. None of them included never returning to Kaya. On my latest visit, the question I asked myself, was whether this is all truly sensational, or sensational only because it allows me to eat about ten tonnes of butter before 11am. Or because it allows me to eat curry for breakfast without being frowned upon. And the answer to those questions can only be: who cares? And anyway, what do they have for breakfast in Sumatra?
