go straight to the restaurant review
O’Town Chinatown Adelaide
10 Moonta Street,
Adelaide,
South Australia 5000
CUISINE STYLE Malaysian
tel 61 8 8410 7134
Facebook click here
Dine in or take-away : no reservations
open
Monday to Friday 11.00 am – 4.00pm : 5.00 pm – 10.00 pm
Saturday and Sunday 11.00 am – 10.00 pm
Friends love to show me their favourite restaurant, especially if they have slipped past my attention. So last Sunday with friends who have also extensively travelled and eaten in Malaysia and a love of Malaysian food they dragged me into O’Town Chinatown Adelaide. Packed to the gills not a round eye in sight, plenty of families enjoying a Sunday lunch, lots of kids surprisingly well behaved and a good smattering of Aunties, Uncles and Grandparents. O’Town is a chain and has other restaurants throughout Australia, but it doesn’t have the chain feel about it.
We ordered Curry Chicken Nasi Lemak, Beef Rendang Nasi Lemak, Fried Rice with Beef and Sambal Kangkung. There is a mix of Malaysian and Chinese/Malaysian dishes, even a Thai dish and the menu is vast. There’s also that weird thing of dishes listed as vegetarian that don’t seem to be. This requires further investigation as they may be those bizarre vegetarian forms of meat that are made with gluten. I am not usually a fan of vast menus, but seeing so many favourites and the busyness of the restaurant I don’t see an issue of anything anguishing the fridge for long. Serves are generous and service is prompt despite being a full restaurant with tables turning at a rapid rate.
In-house prices are modest and as such you are clearly not welcome to hang around. This is an eat and go restaurant.
There’s plenty to satisfy the vegetarian and pescatarian.
Belechan Kangkung is one of my favourite vegetable dishes and the only other good version I have found in Adelaide is at Ding Hao. Whilst Sambal Kangkung is quite a different version it was utterly delicious, laced with garlic, mild chilli, red onion, and surprisingly little pieces of pork belly and crackle and a very silken tasty sauce thickened I think with pork fat. Sambal Kangkung and plain rice will be my next meal there, and maybe I’ll be cheeky enough to ask for a hefty dash of blachan.
I do have a benchmark for Nasi Lemak from the back streets of Kuala Lumpur and to be fair this version doesn’t come close. A newspaper wrapped pyramid of rice filled with a boiled egg and stringy lump of beef rendang moistened with an excellent sambal it is not. But it was still delicious, quite a good sambal, crispy ikan billis and the peanuts were roasted. I suspect nearly everyone has a favourite Nasi Lemak version and that none are exactly the same.
The Fried Rice Beef is probably better put with other dishes and the Chicken Nasi Lemak, was succulent thigh meat in a fragrant sauce with the same traditional accompaniments of the Beef Rendang Nasi Lemak.
We did eye the sweet treat of the fried bread, but we could finish the four dishes we ordered and took the left-overs home with us. Plenty to explore here.
"
ASIAN GOURMET
Don’t Only on Fridays Sarawak Laksa at the Asian Gourmet Adelaide Central Markets [immediately opposite the camera shop.
We have 42 years history at the highest level
in the food and wine industry and the passion for our craft remains undiminished…
read more