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With three main ethnic groups of Malay, Chinese and Indian, you are guaranteed food that will enchant and enthral. In to this mix add the fusion of cross cultural cuisine from the Malay Muslims and the Nyonya communities.
Kuala Lumpur has an extraordinary number of hawker stalls, coffee shops and restaurants, most of them offering a high standard of cuisine and often at very cheap prices.
Many of these places serve Malay, Chinese or Indian food, though international cuisine is also becoming more popular, with Italian, Japanese, Thai, Korean and fast-food outlets. There is little distinction made by locals between eating at inexpensive hawker stalls and pricier restaurants - the quality of food at a stall is usually just as good, and many offer regional dishes which aren't available elsewhere.
For really special Malay cuisine you'll need to dine at one of the big hotel restaurants. During festivals many hotels put on excellent buffets, and at these times you'll also find imaginative Malay specialities throughout the city. Finding good Chinese, Tamil or North Indian food is never a problem; and is served in cafés and restaurants in both Chinatown and Little India. In Little India especially, the cafés and hawker stalls do a manic lunchtime trade in excellent banana-leaf curries, martabak, dosai and roti.
Local dishes that you should try before you leave Malaysia include satay - sweet marinated meat skewered on thin sticks and barbequed over charcoal. Satay is always eaten with deliciously sweet and spicy peanut sauce, mee rebus - fried noodles, ais kacang - an array of beans, peanuts and colourful jellies topped with shaven ice and filled with coconut milk and sweet syrup.
For breakfast there is nasi lemak - a breakfast fare made up of rice cooked with coconut milk, curry chicken or beef and sambal ikan bilis (fried chili anchovies).
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