Location: Kedah House Restaurant and Cafe 
1652 Marine Dr. SE
Vancouver, BC
604-321-1114
Author: my husband
Isn’t it strange how the things we overlook usually happen to be right under our very noses? For me, such was the case with the Kedah House Restaurant. I drive by the place on the way to the office, but I have never given it more than a cursory glance. Certainly, it did not strike me as somewhere that I should eat at. Kedah House was more of a prop, a waypoint on the drive to work, a reminder that there is still 20 minutes of commute to go.
Happily, a confluence of recent events helped me to break out of this rather unthinking state of mind. It started when Christina and I watched an episode of Chua Lam’s “蔡澜逛菜栏” where he featured a popular rojak stall in Singapore. That got me thinking about scoring some rojak, which led me to google for places in Vancouver that served this particular dish. The search resulted in a hit on an eGullet article that mentioned Kedah House serving rojak. Armed with that information, as well as a positive review of the restaurant on Chowtimes, we made our way there…
The restaurant is located in a strip mall just off SE Marine Drive. We got there well after 6pm on a weeknight, which was great because the other businesses were closed for the day and parking was plentiful. Not having to deal with the challenge of finding parking, I strolled into the restaurant in a rather relaxed state of mind – hey, dinner was off to a good start already!
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The place was pretty quiet that evening, with two or three tables occupied. Several customers (regulars judging from their familiarity with the staff) came through while we were having our meal, but it never came close to being a full house. That’s all for the best then, because we counted only 1 cook in the kitchen and 1 staff for the front of house. I’m not sure if they could have handled any more customers that evening. The décor was pretty plain, and reminded me of any number of home-style Malay restaurants one would find in Singapore. But that said, the place was clean, the staff friendly, and most importantly, the customers that came through had Singaporean and/or Malaysian accents. That last point is almost as good as an iron-clad guarantee that the food at this place will be pretty authentic.
Every table was set up with a jug of water and two empty glasses. I suppose this reduced the need to have more front of house staff, and we didn’t mind it. Besides, it’s a good thing to have lots of water within easy reach when you are having spicy food.
We ordered three dishes to taste. Rojak (woohoo!), Beef rendang and Tahu goreng.
The rojak was first up and we were mighty pleased with it. While not as good as that which can be found in Singapore, Kedah House’s version is authentic enough. For those readers new to rojak, it is a salad made with (usually) jicama, cucumber, deep fried tofu, bean sprouts, pineapples, you-tiao and a full-bodied dressing. The dressing is a concoction of primarily balachan and tamarind paste, which gives it wonderful pungency and complexity. It isn’t much to look at, but when the whole works come together, it is a mélange of sweet, tart and savory flavours interspersed with many interesting textures. It just works. And we enjoyed it.
Next up, the rendang. This is one of Christina’s favourite SE Asian dishes, and we would never think of visiting a SE Asian restaurant without trying their version of it. For readers not familiar with it, rendang is a (usually) beef dish made with coconut milk and various spices. Conceptually, it is very much like a cooked-down stew. Kedah House’s rendang is drier than most, but the sauce really hit the spot with strong galangal and lemon grass flavours coming through. The beef is a little more chewy than we would have liked, but it was still a good dish.
So far so good then. The tahu goreng was served last. Tahu goreng is a deep friend tofu dish, dressed with cucumbers and bean sprouts, drenched in a chunky peanut sauce. As much as we tried, we didn’t enjoy this much. The tofu was too firm and the peanut sauce too runny – the whole affair tasted rather bland. Oh well.
We finished the meal with an ice kachang. Ice kachang is a dessert made with shaved ice (really important – the ice has to be shaved!) and flavoured with a mix of syrups. As far as we’re concerned, the one thing that makes or breaks ice kachang is gula melaka, or palm sugar. Gula melaka imparts a smoky caramel/coconut flavour that elevates the simple shaved ice (well… any dessert really) into something far more special. It’s almost like tasting the essence of coconut itself! We had high hopes for the ice kachang since the rojak and rendang were good. But alas, it was not to be. First, the ice wasn’t shaved – it was crushed in a blender, and not well enough because there were pretty big chunks of ice still in it. Second, there wasn’t much (if any) gula melaka in it, just a bunch of coloured syrup. In truth, it was more of a (poorly blended) smoothie than an ice kachang. Again, oh well.
Still, we quite enjoyed the food at Kedah House. On this visit, we did not find all the dishes to our liking, but what we did like more than made up for those that we didn’t. And well, just you try finding rojak someplace else in Vancouver….
