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I’ve always thought of Malaysian as the comfort food of Asia. You’ve got rich, coconut-creamy, flavour-packed curries and soups. Charred skewers of meat with moreish peanut sauce. Melt-in-your-mouth Hainan chicken with flavourful, stock-soaked rice. At Albee’s, a popular Malaysian eatery in Campsie, you’ll find all of this and lots more on the seemingly never-ending menu. It’s a whole 37 pages jam-packed with colourful photos of food that make you want to lick the pictures. The worst part is you’ll want to order it all (at least the prices are affordable, by Sydney standards, so you can go to town).
We start with some drinks from the rainbow-hued pages of iced coffees, milkshakes, fresh juices, mocktails and hot drinks. We go with a Malaysian iced coffee (just the perfect amount of sugar mixed with milk and what’s unmistakably Nescafé), as well as a coconut milkshake, which is like a thick, creamy, snow-white frappe topped with a big scoop of vanilla ice-cream.
Then we pick some feel-good faves, starting with the chicken and lamb combo satay sticks. The chicken is decent, but it’s the lamb that I quickly reach back for before it’s all snapped up by my date. The little chunks of lamb have been cut with just the right amount of fat that a lick of flame has created a melt-in-your mouth caramel flavour. It pairs deliciously with the thick, slightly spicy peanut sauce that’s served on the side.
We have to try the laksa, but instead of going for the usual suspects (chicken or prawn), we pick the fried wonton curry laksa. Thick laksa with noodles and crisp dumplings, all served in the one huge bowl of curry-flavoured soup, sounds like all my comfort-food dreams come true at once. And it is. The $18.50 bowl is basically big enough to feed two people.
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We order the chicken curry featuring little Marylands of chicken with meat so tender that we peel it from the bone with our fingers. Instead of ordering it with rice, we go for the curry combo with Albee’s “signature” kolo mee – thin, chewy egg noodles marinated in a soy-forward sauce that’s turned them dark. I load some of the chicken, curry-soaked potato and sauce on top of the noodles – and it’s all good. But the curry sauce is the star. The thick coconuty soup is a golden colour due to a fragrant mix of turmeric, cumin and ginger, and there’s a rich depth of flavour thanks to little speckles of oil on top.
We’re ordering excessively, but we have to try the Hainan chicken – one of my date’s very favourite dishes.
Does Albee’s version live up to his expectations? Yes, he says – the deliciously soft slithers of gently poached chicken are served in a pool of soy-coloured masterstock with Hainan chicken rice that has loads of chickeny, gingery flavour you can see. On the side there’s a light and tangy chilli dressing, as well as chopped shallots and ginger soaked in oil, and even a seaweedy broth. It’s well above average, my date confirms.
While some places with photo-led menus can get your hopes up before the less-glossy-looking food lands on your table, Albee’s dishes somehow all look more than picture perfect, served fast yet carefully plated up on matching pale-jade-coloured crockery.
And Albee’s doesn’t just serve up comfort food – it’s also a comforting environment. It’s big enough – it moved up the road so now it's spread across two levels and there's room to fit the hordes of hungry diners. It’s beautifully tiled, and decorated with paintings of traditionally dressed women. It’s always sparkling clean despite the constant turnover of guests. There’s no sense of hustle or chaos in what is a perennially busy all-day restaurant.
We head to the payment counter, which is lined with a range of colourful sweets that you can take home – but there’s no way we have room for more. Instead we ask for some takeaway containers so we can enjoy round two of our delicious spread for dinner.
Time Out Sydney never writes starred reviews from hosted experiences – Time Out covers restaurant and bar bills for reviews so that readers can trust our critique.
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