Rabiah Curry House @ Damai Plaza, Kota Kinabalu (Sabah, Malaysia)

Back in May, we went to Kuala Lumpur to attend my cousin's wedding and spend some time with family. After a few days in KL, we flew over to East Malaysia for a mini-vacation in Kota Kinabalu. My sister and I and our hubbies were eager to eat what the locals ate, and we got a few recommendations from the owner of the apartment we rented in KK. One of them was in the nearby Damai Plaza, a mamak stall called Rabiah Curry House. I remember the first time hubby got hooked onto murtabak at a mamak stall; since then, if there's murtabak on the menu, he'll almost always order it. There's a range of food on the wall menu at Rabiah, like mee (noodles), Maggi and IndoMee (wet and dry instant noodles) with a variety of toppings, nasi (rice) dishes and soto (soup dishes), but the specialty is the roti (Indian bread) and murtabak (stuffed pancake). The setting was very casual, with a number of ready-made food in the bain-marie, and two menu boards on the wall: one with pictures of their popular dishes, and another more extensive list in Malay. There were bags of pappadums on the table as well as plates of boiled eggs - charged only if you take them. Not much English is spoken, and even with our basic Malay knowledge, we couldn't avoid some minor misunderstanding with the staff. Still, it was an experience for the Caucasian hubbies to eat in a very typical mamak stall.

In my experience photographing roti chefs, they are always happy to show off their skills in front of the camera, and the one at Rabiah was no exception.

The roti chef doing his thing:

Making a chicken murtabak. Notice the mise-en-place set up of ingredients - balls of dough under a plastic sheet on one side, and a bowl of oil on the other. Other ingredients such as the meat and vegetables were also pre-prepared, but not in view of the photo:

Roti and murtabak cooking on the hot plate:

Roti canai which came pre-torn and accompanied with a bowl of dal curry. There was an extra bowl of lamb curry too (which was the result of the aforementioned misunderstanding). I enjoyed dipping the freshly made roti canai into the curries:

Beef murtabak - crispy crust, tasty filling - though hubby didn't like the taste of the margarine that was added liberally into the filling:

Chicken murtabak. We all liked the beef one better:

Hubby was disappointed with the use of margarine in the murtabak, but everyone else thought it was fine. Rabiah Curry House is a good spot for roti!

Rabiah Curry House
Damai Plaza
4 Lorong Damai Point
88450 Kota Kinabalu
Sabah, Malaysia