W.A.W Restaurant

One of my favourite spots for dinner is located in the famous Jalan Alor night market street which is home to many local and international cuisine and street snacks. I visit Jalan Alor almost every year as I used to visit Kuala Lumpur very often and it used to be lined with street vendors and restaurants selling local Malaysian dishes

On my recent trip, I realised that at least 60% of the restaurants have been overtaken to sell Thai and Chinese cuisine which is more international than local flavours. Many street vendors are also peddling popularised TikTok snacks rather than localised items like Lok Lok or satay. There is only 1 Lok Lok stall left on the entire street. The local restaurant which remains popular is right at the end of the street; Wong Ah Wah a.k.a W.A.W

As you approach the restaurant, you will be assaulted by the smokey fumes lingering over the restaurant due to the open-air barbequing which is done at the far end of the restaurant. Your nose will also be introduced to the saliva-inducing smells of the various barbequed food

Whenever I visit W.A.W., I always try to get a table in one of their air-conditioned units. They have a total of 4 to 5 air-conditioned units but are snapped up very fast as most diners prefer to sit indoors and escape the smoke. Do note that each unit operates separately from one another so if one unit is full, just hop to the next one until you find a table. There is no centralised service where the staff will help you find a table. The tables can accommodate up to 8 diners comfortably, for bigger groups, the staff will need to add on a tabletop

The first item which is a definite order is the grilled chicken wings. While this can be found easily in most hawker stalls in Singapore, barbecue chicken wings at W.A.W. are a notch above others. The chicken wings were grilled perfectly with a charred crispy skin with juice from the meat bursting into your mouth with each bite. The flavour was well balanced with a savoury flavour and slight sweetness from the glazed skin. Eating the wings with the chilli is a different enjoyment as the spice adds a nice kick to the wings. You can tell that every table has chicken wings order and some customers even have a plate of 30 wings

The next item we ordered was the barbeque stingray fillet with sambal sauce, another dish very different from the ones served in Singapore. The fish looks more like a pan-fried version where the skin is brown and crispy compared to the Singapore version where the skin is still soft. The next biggest difference is this version, the sambal is served as a dipping sauce instead of laid generously on top of the fish. The fish was crispy with a soft tender inside which was simple yet delicious and the sauce was more like a belachan than the sambal version. I do find the fish very delicious and it reminds me of a home-cooked dish

We had a Kam Heong stir fry clam which is a sauce inspired by Chinese, Malay, and Indian cuisine. The sauce has soy sauce and oyster sauce and Malay and Indian ingredients like curry powder and curry leaves which works well with both meat and seafood. The outcome was savoury and slightly spicy with a strong fragrance. The clams are fresh but quite tiny in size but the flavours were delicious to eat with rice

One of my favourite dishes for the meal was this sambal squid which was so well done I nearly ate the entire plate myself. The quid was cooked perfectly as it was crunchy yet soft to bite and the sambal was spicy and sweet at the same time. As squid easily gets overcooked and turns rubbery, this dish was done so well, I wished I had ordered a 2nd helping

Using a similar but more pungent belachan sauce, the stir-fried kang kong ( morning glory) was fragrant and addictive. You can taste the strong shrimp flavours which gave the vegetables fantastic flavours. The vegetable was also cooked well with the crunch in the stem but without any raw taste

The last 2 dishes I ordered are dishes which is popular in Kuala Lumpur. One is the dark Hokkien noodles called Dai Loke Mee and the other is the jumbo prawns fried noodles which are called the Shang Ha Mee. Both dishes are available in some Singapore stores but the taste is very different due to the noodles used. This is not my favourite store for these 2 dishes as I feel that the wok hei is missing. The flavour was generally ok but missing the charred fried flavours which is important for KL Hokkien noodles

Overall, most of the dishes at W.A.W are satisfactory and the price is extremely affordable where we paid only MYR 205 for all the dishes we ordered. While the environment is not upscale, it is still pretty clean and comfortable with mostly locals and some tourist dining so you get a taste of what the locals enjoy in terms of flavour

Address: No 1, Jln Alor, Bukit Bintang, 50200 Kuala Lumpur, Federal Territory of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Operating hours: 4 pm to 2 am ( Closed on Mon and Tue)