Flavours of Malaysia 2014 at The Grace Hotel

I've never been to Malaysia before but judging from Malaysians' passionate relationship with food, I think I'd fit right in. Malaysia's love of food was clearly evident at the launch of the Flavours of Malaysia buffet at The Grace Hotel, where there was an incredible spread of Malaysian food created by three Malaysian chefs who were specially flown in for the event.

Here's a taste of what was on offer:

Cold salads

DIY Rojak and Pasembor salads

The cold section held a number of salads, including a DIY Rojak (mixed fruit salad with a prawn paste sauce) and Pasembor (mixed vegetable salad with peanut sauce). There were also a few salads that I'd never seen before, like a glass noodle salad with coconut and prawn, and a tripe salad.

Beef and chicken satay skewers

Freshly cooked Beef and chicken satays were being pumped out from the kitchen throughout the night. You have to be quick because as soon as a fresh batch appears, they'll disappear in a flash! The beef satay was particularly tasty, especially with the peanut sauce.

Egg and onion omelette

Making roti jala

Around the middle of the buffet was a roti station where two chefs were continually churning out fresh roti jala (a rolled up, lacy crepe) and roti canai. These were super popular especially when they were still hot, and the chefs could barely keep up with the demand!

Roti station

There was so much to try that I knew I had to ration my portions of each item if I was to get through them all, so I tried to get a little bit of everything for my first plate.

Satay skewers with peanut sauce

Assortment of curries

There's a good range of hot dishes like sambal udang (prawn in chilli sauce), beef rendang, a vegetable and lentil curry, kari ayam (chicken curry), fish curry, chicken in soy sauce and even sambal pineapple which was something totally new to me!

Sambal Nanas (Pineapple in sambal sauce)

Beef Rendang

For noodle lovers, there is a har mee station where chefs will make a fresh bowl of har mee for you. You can also choose your toppings (fish cake, egg, prawns, bean sprouts) as well as the type of noodles that you want. The soup base was quite fragrant with prawn but the prawn taste itself was quite muted. It did have a decent amount of chilli in it though and packed quite a punch!

Har mee station

Fresh bowl of har mee

I had my eyes on the dessert section all night with the brightly coloured kueh and a selection of toppings for DIY Ais Kacang! These were definitely the highlight for me and we loaded up our plates with the layered kueh lapis, balls of onde onde which exploded with palm sugar syrup, and other coconutty kueh. There were also some hot desserts like fried banana and a fried yam and sweet potato cake, but I couldn't stop going back for more kueh.

Dessert station

Onde Onde

Kueh Lapis

Angkoo

Serimuka

Flavours of Malaysia is on at The Grace Hotel from September 25th to October 12th. Prices start from $38pp for lunch on Tuesday to Friday, and $48pp for Friday and Saturday dinner and Sunday lunch. Check out The Grace Hotel's website for more details.

Penguin says Feed Me dined at the Flavours of Malaysia buffet courtesy of The Grace Hotel

The Grace Hotel
77 York Street
Sydney NSW 2000
Ph: +61 2 9272 6670
Buffet Lunch: Tuesday to Friday 12pm-2m, Sunday 12.30pm-2.30pm
Buffet Dinner: Friday and Saturday 6pm-9pm