Illustration by Fig & Ginger, drawn from the review. The venue's own photo is on its way.
Modern Malaysian small plates and natural wine in Chinatown, Kuala Lumpur
Chocha Foodstore
Borneo Pantry on Petaling Street
Petaling Street sells fake watches by the kilo, so the last thing you expect behind a weathered shopfront is a kitchen fussing over pickled tuhau and wild ginger flower. Chocha has been doing exactly that since 2016. The house line is that it is not trying to be fine dining, it is trying to be honest. Fair enough. The room looks lived in, the plates are small, and everything is meant to be shared.
The menu leans hard on Malaysian produce, and on Borneo in particular, which most of the peninsula still treats as a rumour. Umai, the Sarawak raw fish dish, comes as citrus-cured snapper with laksa paste. Beef tongue turns up smoked on toast with sambal hitam. There is a noodle dressed with Borneo salted fish crackers, a nasi ulam heaped with smoked prawns and herbs, and a doughnut with roasted sweetcorn ice cream to close. If you hate choosing, the feed-me menu does it for you, minimum two people.
Chef Nazri also runs Hentam, a series of tasting dinners named after a phrase that roughly means careless, which in practice means fearless. The current one is seafood from coast, river and mangrove. Drinks run to specialty teas and a list heavy on natural and skin-contact wine, and corkage is posted plainly on the menu.
- Order this
- Umai of citrus-cured red snapper with laksa Sarawak paste, Beef tongue toast with sambal hitam, Nasi ulam udang salai, Salted sinsilog noodle, Cempiang with roasted sweetcorn ice cream
- The damage
- $$
- Go
- Any evening except Wednesday, from 5 p.m.; Saturday opens at noon
- Find it
- 156 Jalan Petaling, 50000 Kuala Lumpur
- Website
- chochafoodstore.com