Sunday April 27th and I am strolling through the gritty, cool and somewhat industrial streets of North East London. My mind lies in the East. Memoirs of ginger, chilli, galangal and coconut, scented memories of shrimp paste, jasmine and lemongrass keep me company and I walk, remembering. But as well as remembering, I look ahead. Look ahead to my next trip North and East, across the river and up to dine with Norman Musa at his London based Malysian Supper Club, Ning London.
Norman Musa is the creator and executive chef for Ning restaurants in Manchester, York and, now, London. Born in Penang, his career as a chef has been nothing but illustrious so far; most notably he was featured on MasterChef Malaysia, was a finalist in the Malaysian National Achievement Awards for his cooking and in Manchester’s Chef & Restaurant of the Year Awards too. For a self-taught and fresh-facedly young chef, not bad. His aim is to make Malaysian food popular in the UK and, going by his food, he stands more than a chance and a half.
Presently, unlike his Manchester and York branches he doesn’t have a permanent restaurant venue in London and so has picked up on the current trend of Pop-Ups, hosting regularly out of cool venues across our capital. I’m not sure I’m allowed to spill the location of this one but, trust me, it was terribly trendy. There, there are no separate tables. Customers dine off a long table, family style and laden with fragrant East Asian treats. On my visit we began with Kerabu Nyonya, a salad of shrimp, bean sprout and curious ginger flower.
Norman Musa is the creator and executive chef for Ning restaurants in Manchester, York and, now, London. Born in Penang, his career as a chef has been nothing but illustrious so far; most notably he was featured on MasterChef Malaysia, was a finalist in the Malaysian National Achievement Awards for his cooking and in Manchester’s Chef & Restaurant of the Year Awards too. For a self-taught and fresh-facedly young chef, not bad. His aim is to make Malaysian food popular in the UK and, going by his food, he stands more than a chance and a half.
Presently, unlike his Manchester and York branches he doesn’t have a permanent restaurant venue in London and so has picked up on the current trend of Pop-Ups, hosting regularly out of cool venues across our capital. I’m not sure I’m allowed to spill the location of this one but, trust me, it was terribly trendy. There, there are no separate tables. Customers dine off a long table, family style and laden with fragrant East Asian treats. On my visit we began with Kerabu Nyonya, a salad of shrimp, bean sprout and curious ginger flower.
Next, Otak Otak, pungent fishcakes, spicy and powerful, steamed in a banana leaf. Texturally these are alien to Western style fishcakes. For one thing, potato comes nowhere near it. More like a moulded paste, they were delicious. I could have eaten a platter of them.
Next, more than a few curries. My favourite, a Kari Limau Udang, sweet and sour curry with prawns, lime and coconut milk. The Kari Kapitan Ayam with chicken was probably the most familiar to the Western palate; thicker in sauce, more like a North Indian, and rich. I’m probably not alone in being relatively unknowledgeable about Malaysian cuisine – it’s just not something I come across a lot and for this reason I was prepared to be intimidated by the fare and the, potentially more expert, clientele. Not so; Norman and his business partner Andy, explain each course in marvellous detail; for example, describing how the last curry used to be a favourite of captains in the ancient port of Malacca and even giving us tastes of the individual herbs & spices.
Dessert was perhaps the most adventurous course for me, exciting in its unfamiliarity. The first was Cendol, a somewhat strange dessert of crushed ice, mixed with coconut milk, palm sugar (akin to a more complex treacle) and pandan (a tropical leaf) flavoured strands of steamed rice, sort of like green noodles. Weird, sort of wonderful. It’s probably the only time I’ll describe a dessert I coined weird, as wonderful. Soak it in.
The second dessert? Seri Muka, sweet and stodgy layers of glutinuous rice topped with pandan (yes, that random leaf again) flavoured custard. Doubly weird, but interesting to eat.
In summary, everything I ate tasted great. More than that, much of it challenged me. Malaysian food is eaten too little in the UK, no doubt in Europe and America too, and it is great to find such an authentic and interesting source. All very reasonable too at £35. Mr Musa, I’m a fan and I’ll be back.
www.normanmusa.com
www.normanmusa.com
