- Hey everybody, we're in the Euston neighborhood
of London, just a hop, skip, and a jump from King's Cross
and we are headed to a place I'm super excited about
called Roti King
and they specialize in a dish called roti canai,
which is sort of an Indian-inspired flatbread
that is popular in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore.
They also do some other popular favorite dishes
from that region like nasi goreng, mie goreng,
and coconut curry laksa soup.
- Can I take your order?
- Yes, I would like an order of the roti canai.
- [Shannon] roti canai, yeah.
- Can I also have a nasi goreng?
- [Shannon] Nasi goreng.
- And then maybe the laksa.
- [Shannon] Curry laksa, yes.
- Is there anything else that you think is really good?
Or anything else that you recommend.
- Mee goreng mamak is quite nice.
That's one of my favorites.
- Okay, I'll try that.
Tell me about Malaysia.
Where in Malaysia do you live?
- In the city Kuala Lumpur.
- [Lucas] In Kuala Lumpur?
- Yeah.
- What are one or two things you love about it?
- The food, evidently.
The food is amazing.
- Breakfast, lunch, dinner in your house,
what kinds of things could you expect to eat?
- A typical Malaysian sort of meal might be like,
for breakfast you might have roti canai
or, I'm not sure they do it on the menu here,
but it's called nasi lemak, the national dish of Malaysia.
So it's like rice, with anchovies and peanuts.
Because I'm Indian
we usually have a lot more curries and stuff.
Like curries, and dahls, and chapatis.
- What's really interesting
is the different combination of influences.
- It's because of the three races,
Malays, Chinese, and Indian.
So this, for example, would be Indian.
And more the other noodle dishes would be more Chinese.
I think the nature of the people there as well.
Asian culture itself is quite unique
in that everyone is very friendly and loving.
There's a very, very relaxed culture there.
So you can find this in restaurants 24/7
after a night out, 3:00 AM.
- Oh, you can?
- Anywhere, yeah.
- There's a lot of great late night food?
- Yeah, a lot, you can literally find this
at a lot of stores at midnight.
- Malaysian/Indonesian/Singaporean feast,
I don't want to exclude anyone.
All of these dishes are under eight pounds, seven pounds.
It's all under ten dollars, all of it.
So why don't we start with a roti canai.
It's really just flour, water, and fat.
This looks super good.
It's like multilayered, super flaky.
I'm just going to dip this into the dahl,
consume it like that.
That is excellent.
This is a semi-spicy vegetarian lentil mixture.
I mean, it tastes like lentils.
It tastes a little like turmeric, a little like coriander,
it has that curry spice mixture.
If I get a little bit lower, you can see a little bit more
of sort of the legume action going on there.
Think like a spicier sort of Indian-inspired
version of lentil soup,
if you want to know what that dahl tastes like.
Let's move on to the Laksa.
Not all of them use coconut milk, this one does.
But this is just going to be like
a fiery, coconutty, curry experience.
That was great.
I kind of wish I had some chopsticks
but I don't know if they do that here.
My Malaysian and Indonesian friends,
do you eat with chopsticks?
This is something I should have researched, but did not.
I was busy researching other things.
If you know the answer, sound off in the comments.
Really good, really fiery.
It's like chili oil sets your mouth on fire
and then the coconut milk sort of cools it off.
The Indian influence comes through with the curry flavors.
Then you've got these wonderful, springy, chewy noodles.
I don't want to say it's like eating a bowl of ramen
because it doesn't taste like that at all.
Oh man, this is good food.
What is this?
Mie goreng, fried noodles.
This is going to be these pan-fried noodles,
spiced again with that sweet soy sauce,
bean sprouts, shrimp paste, chilli.
It's got like that acid from the lemon.
It's got a little sweetness,
almost like there's a tiny bit of tamarind in there maybe.
But it's also got these noodles that taste of soy,
chewy noodles.
Nasi goreng, popular in Malaysia, Singapore.
Nasi goreng is actually the national dish of Indonesia.
What makes this particular fried rice different
is they use a kind of sweet soy sauce called kecap manis.
It's also cooked with various meats,
shallot, and some hot peppers.
Very satisfying.
The fried shallots add a nice texture
and a nice, welcome crunch.
We've got some chicken, and we've got some prawns,
got a nice little prawn right here.
Hearty home comfort food, not necessarily to be fetishized
or made more than what it is.
This is like the food of a nation.
This is a food of hundreds of millions of people.
I'm getting full, folks.
I really hope you enjoyed this episode of Dining on a Dime
from the Roti King in London, UK.
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