Sugar Prawn

This place rocks! Was looking for a place with good food and drinks before the monthly magic show and I loved the predecessor Masak Masak (same head chef) so we decide to give this place a try. There were only 3 of us so we just ordered something from each part of the menu instead of the shared menu for $ 35pp. But every dish we ordered was awesome.
The fried chicken wings were so yummy, blink and they were gone. It was well complimented by the zesty lime and pickled spanish onion.
Next was the 12 hour cooked beef ribs on a layer of super smooth mashed potato, even my friend who doesn’t usually eat mash fought for the last bite.
The eggplant with punchy sauce was also a delight, gooey softness to go with the zingy sauce.
And who can go to a malaysian restaurant and not get fried noodles of some sort? The chow quay teow has so much «wok hei», nice smokey flavour, very authentic. Can’t wait to go back with more friends.
Did I mention $ 10 expresso martini during happy hour?

In an area where there is so much choice, I’d say choose better. Especially if you have an aversion to the colour pink.
This place is a ‘hipster take’ on malay food. It’s far from value for money; both food and drinks wise as the food is close to china town dirty but with a contemporary new age asian price tag. I think if you have a menu like this you need at least a couple of dirty drinks to wash the food down that won’t break the bank but instead you need to fork out $ 7 for 340ml of tap beer. Which was nice but it was $ 7.
The food. Well. It’s quite an ‘all over the place’ menu and don’t expect to feel fresh after. The Malaysian bacon is probably the most tasty fun weird thing that we tried and should probably fit in the ‘small plates’ section but it’s in no man’s land under the larger dishes. It’s also potentially fried, flavour spam but yolo. You can pretty much tell what’s going to be really small and potentially underwhelming by price.
The prawn curry comes out for around $ 27 and will earn you 5 large ish prawns in sauce with 5 mystery lychees in a coconut with lost rice that never arrives to the table. The shrimp and spinach dish is SALTY. Look over it. The Kai something with sausage is actually ok if you don’t eat the sausage bits as they taste a little ‘been in the fridge for too long’. The chicken wings were deep fried and alright I guess. The eggplant, which again, probably should have been in the small plates section, was also very salty and lacked finesse. The seafood tofu was awesome. But but that time our taste buds were shrivelled and crystalised with intense soy residue and regret.
Highlight: the boys toilet floor looks great.

Cultural appropriation at its finest.
If you’re looking for Malay food that tastes nothing like Malay food, this is the spot!
The food is heavily white washed. Not tasty, at all. Very small servies. I ordered an okra dish and it came with one single okra. Smothered in some lemon sauce, why lemons?! We also ordered sambal Khan kong (shrimpy river spinach) that didn’t actually have any sambal or belacan in it. Just covered on soy sauce and more lemon, really though, why lemons?
Keep in mind, this place is really expensive. 100% not worth it.
There are plenty of other good Malay owned restaurants out there, and especially more restaurants on Smith street to check out instead.