If there’s a neighbourhood in Kuala Lumpur with a higher ratio of fine eats per capita - or a populace that throws itself into weekend snacking with more gusto - than Overseas Union Garden, I don’t know it. On Saturday, Sunday, and public holiday mornings the air in OUG, a heavily Chinese ‘hood just off Old Klang Road, crackles with hungry anticipation. The central market is heaving; shoppers are five-deep in front of stalls displaying fish so fresh their scales glint in the overhead fluorescents and weekend kitchen warriors jostle in front of benches piled with perky-leafed greens. The streets are jammed, in front of the market with outdoor purveyors of roast pork and Nyonya kueh, yong tau foo, and various deep-fried treats, and elsewhere with pedestrians trolling for a wake-up nosh while drivers quietly and politely (most of the time) fume at their unhurried pace. And five-foot ways are nearly impassable, crammed with tables of enthusiastic eaters whose detritus litters curbs in the form of plastic bins piled with cooking oil-slicked plates and stacks of bowls dripping with laksa, pork noodle soup, and congee dregs.

To stand on the corner of Jalans Hujian Rahmat and Hujian Emas 5 on a Sunday morning around half past eight (and not too much before; OUGers seem not to be early risers) is to be transformed into the proverbial kid in a candy store. On one corner sits Restoran Sun Sea, where a vendor dishes up a version of pork noodles that residents (polled at random on a recent morning) point to as a local must-have. His clear but meaty broth floats unmistakeably hand-formed bobbles of rough-cut pork, while accompanying dry noodles exude the unmistakeable scent of lard. Though they’re not spoken of with the same reverent tone as his porcine specialty, this hawker’s seafood noodles are just as worthy of appreciation, packed with briny clams, tender squid rings, and plump toothsome prawns in a stock that’s most certainly built on a base of fresh fish trimmings.

Across the street at Restoran Hong Beng an even finer piscine specialty tempts, in the form of clay pot rice porridge cooked up at Hian’s Seafood Porridge stall. Arrive after 10 on a weekend and the big white Styrofoam cooler that takes pride of place on Richard Hian’s counter is likely to be more than two-thirds empty already but ‘making do’ with only garoupa and la-la is no hardship. Know that when, after a good fifteen-minute, stomach-growling wait, your porridge arrives its clams will be plump and sweet and its boneless chunks of snow-white garoupa firm and fresh. The unmistakeable sweet-and-slightly-boozy scent of hwa teow chiu (Chinese ‘yellow’ rice wine) will waft from the clay pot when your server lifts its lid; you may be so beguiled by the savour of its contents that you leave untouched the slender ginger matchsticks and sliced scallion greens served alongside. Hian has recently debuted a new item: turmeric-yellow pumpkin porridge, dotted with tender chunks of the vegetable and marked by an undercurrent of sweetness. Another item, the intriguingly named ‘claypot golden porridge’ (it eschews seafood in favour of pork and century egg), came about last year when Hian found seafood good enough to meet his lofty quality standards increasingly difficult to come by. Happily for fans of his biggest seller, these days he reports that ‘the situation is getting better now.’

Hian’s porridge isn’t the only reason to make your way to Hong Beng. The shop’s coffee is fantastically lush, with a hint of almost dark chocolaty bitterness that really stands up to ice. And the wonton mee vendor at its front proffers a mean serving of starch and pork. Brow wrinkled in concentration as she moves at warp speed over water boiler and chopping block, she delivers a plate pretty as a picture: squares of evenly roasted pork, alternating layers of fat and meat like a layer cake, nestle atop coils of dark soy and lard oil-dressed noodles twined around bottle green stems of blanched choy sum. The dish tastes as good as it looks. Even if it didn’t she’d win a gold star for presentation.

You’ll definitely need fortification (in the form of pork noodles, porridge, wonton mee, or perhaps a six-pack of Red Bull) to take on the rowdy queue (here I use the ‘Q’ word in the loosest possible sense) snaking from a pair of trucks parked in front of Sun Sea and Hong Beng, where the owner of the well-known Leong Hup roast duck truck, which haunts OUG’s roadways in the latter part of the day, teams with two women (his wife and daughter?) to proffer butter cake cut from restaurant-sized blocks. Butter cake is common enough in this baked goods-crazy town that its mention no doubt elicits a yawn, but these homemade (the maybe-daughter says) slabs of goodness, with their strong note of dairy cream and hint of salt, speak not of margarine but of the real deal. Coffee marble is the most popular flavour, but by the time you arrive much of it will already have been spoken for via phoned-in orders. Plain old butter is a more-than-decent consolation prize and the chocolate cake is even better: black as midnight, tasting of quality chocolate instead of low-grade cocao, not to sweet, and topped with the thinnest layer of moist crust that could pass for frosting. And here’s a bonus: as his maybe-wife and daughter dish slice and box up cake the duck truck man mans an appam balik griddle. His product is heavy on the peanuts and made with just enough sugar, and boasts an ethereal chew.

Speaking of sweet things worth making a trek across town for, on the lane that joins Jalans Hujian Rahmat and Hujian Rahmat 2 (the latter being the site of Steven’s Corner, one of KL’s better-known Mamak spots and the site of excellent roti tisu) and serves as an outdoor extensions to OUG’s wet market, an auntie rolls and pats dough at a stall under a sign bearing red Chinese characters that read Wang Ping An. Here she makes the best sugared donuts in KL, period. How she manages to turn out a ring of dough at once crispy and tender, fluffy and spongy, feather light and substantial enough to satisfy I’ll never know, but after circling back to make ‘just one more’ purchase from her stall three times over the course of a single morning I don’t much care. Walk away with less than a dozen doughnuts and you’ll regret it an hour later.

Her deep-fried sweet potato balls are nothing to sniff at either, but aren’t really a match for those offered by a husband-and-wife team working behind a nearby Chinese fry stall. Their banana balls, made with super-ripe fruit that possesses the sweet-tartness of pineapple and goes all squishy and syrupy in the heat of the fryer, deserve special kudos. Don’t miss their hottest-selling item: ‘Chinese cake’ consisting of thin planks of taro and sweet potato layered with slices of nian gao (glutinous rice cake sweetened with caramelized cane sugar), dipped in batter, and boiled in oil to a tawny crisp. Cloaked in a crackly net of delicate batter strands, the sandwich’s interior combines meltingly tender tubers and rice cake that oozes, and tastes, a bit like caramel.

Lest you get the impression that OUG is all is sweetness, light, and non-stop gluttony, know that there’s an undercurrent of enmity in this generally anodyne neighbourhood, in the form of a curry laksa face-off that between masters of the art operating on either side of Japan Hujian Emas 3. In one corner there’s the owner of a mobile cart set up in the dank alley next to TME Optima; his curry laksa is the colour of a flame-red tropical sunset, with a broth that beautifully straddles the meehoon-thin line between too-lemak and watery. It’s got much of what you’re looking for in a bowl of laksa (tofu pok and bean sprouts, shreds of kampung-tasting chicken, and wonderfully plump cockles) plus one surprise: thick slices of striated pork meat so sweet, so tender, so incredibly flavourful that they almost deserve to ditch the laksa and take star billing on a plate of roasted pork rice.

In the other corner there’s Ah Loy Restaurant. Its curry laksa - thicker, more coconuty, and overtly powder-‘curried’ - woos with tender chunks of bone-in chicken, fresh cockles, and an extremely generous amount of floppy pork skin. But eclipsing its curried specialty is Ah Loy’s assam laksa, heavy on the tamarind tang and loaded with so many fresh cucumber and pineapple shreds that you’re still fishing them out by the time you get to the end of the bowl. Mammoth, silky-skinned siu gao stuffed tight as a Chinese sausage with pork and carrot and water chestnut nubs are another specialty.

How to choose? Alley laksa and Ah Loy both boast ardent adherents who’ll argue the merits of one over the other till the cows come home, but the good news is that, since the one is a morning spot and the other opens at four in the afternoon, you don’t have to. In fact, between its sweets and fries, porky noodles and congee and mamak specialties, OUG is pretty much an anytime-of-the-day epicure’s dream destination.


Restoran Sun Sea, Restoran Hong Beng, and butter cakes, corner of Jalans Hujian Rahmat and Hujian Emas 5.

Steven’s Corner, Jalan Hujian Rahmat 2.

Sugared doughnuts, sweet potato balls, and other fried items, lane next to wet market, between Hujian Rahmat and Hujian Rahmat 2.

Chinese sandwiches and banana balls, Jalan Emas 3, corner Hujian Rahmat 2. 12 noon - 6pm, off Thursdays.

Curry laksa, alley next to TME Kopitiam on Jalan Emas 3. Mornings only.

Kedai Makanan Ah Loy 11-13, Jalan Hujan Rahmat 3. (03 7782-5001)