It was as easy as one, two and three.

One. The first KL 24 hour Food Crawl ^[1] began.
Two. It was just the two of us – plonkwonk ^[2] and Sharizal Shaarani ^[3].
Three. It ended after three places.

At the stroke of midnight April 1, we ended up at the burger stall near the Esso petrol pump in Jalan Kasah in Medan Damansara, a suburb of Kuala Lumpur. We ordered the Burger Special as we chatted with the burger boys about their business.

The burger special was a meat patty sliced through the centre and grilled on a hot plate, then wrapped in a fried egg with paprika powder before the usual condiments of onions and lettuce plus mayonnaise was added to the burger in a seeded bun.

Nice. They finished cooking it in five minutes and we took the equal amount of time to finish it off. Meanwhile, Hafiz had sent an email about some Laksa – noodles in either tamarind soup or curry – somewhere in Ampang but that suburb was just out of Kuala Lumpur city.

We then moved on in the light drizzle to the nearby suburb of Bangsar – across Medan Damansara – for some really good Mutton and Oxtail Soup stall in Lucky Gardens but the stall owner had shuttered for the rainy night.

With time to spare, we moved on to downtown Kuala Lumpur in search of Hokkien noodles but that stall had also closed for the night. We finally headed a couple of streets away to a Chicken Rice stall near an equally famous Chicken Rice shop.

The meal was simple – steamed chicken with steamed rice in chicken stock and some excellent blended fresh chillies and lime sauce. Barley water and hot Chinese tea provided an able complement to the meal.

We were already fquite full but pressed on in search of good food. A quick stroll through the Tung Shin area – a square of streets in the centre of the city filled with Asian cuisine popular with tourists – in search of something light to eat.

There was a lot of food but we gave it a miss.

Something light was the order of the night at two in the morning and we decided to head the northern edge of Kuala Lumpur for some Dimsum – steamed and fried bite-sized meat and vegetables – that probably inspired the Spanish tapas and Persian meze.

So we made to Jalan Ipoh where a row of shops served dimsum that were being steamed in giant wicker baskets as displayed in the photo or fried in giant woks. We ordered a few with some Chinese tea and struggled to start eating sharp at 2 am and finished most of it 30 minutes later.

That was that. We had enough. We went home with a promise to be hungry and try again in the weeks to come.

Apart from Hafiz’s suggestion, I guess I was wrong about Malaysian’s craze for food. Or maybe its just the people who are online surfing the blogs – maybe they are just used to 24 hour burger joints and Indian Muslim restaurants plus the Starbucks where WiFi is free.

But we will try again. This was just the test run.

By the way, more photos will be posted at plonkwonk ^[2] as soon as possible.