Malaysian Authentic Kitchen (MAK)

Must try nasi lemak sambal sotong! Feels just like the one you eat at the nasi lemak stalls in Malaysia. The owner James is also very friendly, look forward for this to expand in Melbourne CBD ;)

Best nasi lemak in Melbourne!
Had rendang beef and nasi lemak, they are perfect!
Really good customer service!
Place is clean!
Feels like home!

Definitely worth a sus. The nasi lemak options are great and really does taste authentic. Reasonably priced as well. Try their cakes if you're into sweets

MAK's food is extremely flavourful and to top it off, the couple was super friendly and humble :)

Lovely shop with delicious nasi lemak. Great value and service too!

Great customer service. Delicious food. Thank you for extending your delivery area.

My go to nasi lemak place. Everyone needs to try it!

Great, authentic food. Couldn’t resist coming back for seconds!

good food, quick service and affordable.

Beautiful meal 😀

amazing authentic malaysian food! nasi lemak with beef rendang was so good 🥺🥺 sambal yummyyyyyyy!!

You can smell the nasi lemak from the street. We felt the portions to be a bit small but happy to swing by to support a small business. Service was friendly.

So we came here twice before I wrote this review.

First visit in September 2020 (picture below): we thought that they didn’t give enough Ikan bilis and peanuts. The rice was just okay. We enjoyed the sardin and chicken curry puffs and actually went back to get more. They were very spicy but I enjoyed that.

Second visit in February 2021 - we came at 11:30am because we thought that was the opening hours (online and on their store front). The lady told me that they “thought that there were no customers in the afternoon so they weren’t gonna open till later”. What?! If you were choosing to open later (due to stage 4 restrictions), please adjust your opening hours online. You can’t expect customers to know this. But she took our order anyway which we were appreciative of.

this time they were even less generous with Ikan bilis and peanuts. The rice was lukewarm and didn’t have sufficient coconut milk taste. The rendang chicken also didn’t taste as great - there was overpowering sweetness.

I would love to to keep supporting Malaysian restaurants but I think there’s a lot of room for improvement for this place.

There were two of us came to this Cafe for dinner. As a Malaysian, I was very looking forward to tasting the food from my home country at this Cafe.

We ordered three dishes to share.
1/ Seafood Laksa
2/ roti canai with beef rendang
3/ dry noodles with chicken rendang

In all honestly, I was disappointed with the food. Here's why:

1- the Laksa noodles wasn't the right type of noodles used. Missing hard boiled eggs, and the laksa soup was runny (thin) and lacking the balance of flavours. For a good laksa, I expect they nail the soup base and everything would come together. But the soup base was.out of blance and ruined everything else. I feel so sorry for the cook. It wasn't good enough.

2/ the roti canai (flat bread) were not toasted properly and lacking the crunch and flakiness that we were hoping for. The rendang beef had some good flavour but the portion size was small- we were questioning its Value of Money.

3/ dry noodles and chicken rendang (served with soup)- chicken rendang had good flavours but the noodles were lumpy. Forget about the soup..it was like sipping on warm water garnished in spring onions. The soup did more harm than good to the whole dish.

We are glad we gave it ago; However it would not be a place to rave about, take friends to, or recommend.

All the best to the owners. 🙏 Our aithentic Malaysian food adventure continues.