“Malaysian food, it’s not like anything really.” That’s how Juliet Moo, a co-owner of Chinatown’s newest restaurant, Kaya, puts it to me when we sit down for a chat after dinner.
Having just worked my way through piles of fiery curried Laksa noodles, buttery jam toast, tea, eggs, fragrant rice, cucumber, and fried chicken, I want to know more.
The special thing about Malaysian food, she says, is how it takes influence from the country’s three main ethnic groups – Malay, Chinese and Indian.
“Because Malaysia is a multi racial country,” she explains, “our cuisines are unique in the sense that it’s like a combo of all these different cultures and ethnicities coming together and sharing flavours.”
Heat, I have already learnt, is a must. Even the national dish Nasi Lemak – a mellow sort of Malaysian ‘picky tea’ with coconut milk aromatic rice, cucumber slices, boiled egg, fried chicken, peanuts and salty morsels of dried anchovy – has a chilli-based sambal on hand to spice things up.
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Curried laksa noodlees with chicken, prawn and tofu at Kaya in Chinatown. / Image: The Manc Eats
Toast with Kaya pandan jam at Manchester’s new Malaysian restaurant. / Image: The Manc Eats
Kaya hasn’t yet been open a month, but Juliet says they have been ‘overwhelmed’ with the response to the new opening – admitting that they weren’t quite prepared for the number of people they would get coming through their doors.
Most of the flavours here are big and aromatic, with dishes using a lot of lemongrass and galangal, turmeric and other spices.
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That said, there is also a surprising amount of toast on the menu served with homemade Kaya jam and thick chunks of butter that could’ve well been laid on with a trowel.
Eggs come two ways – half-boiled with a little soy and pepper with strips for dipping, or hard-boiled and halved – whilst noodle and rice dishes comprise the bulk of the mains.
It is, as Juliet has already explained, a real mishmash of flavours. But it totally works, with Kaya already drawing in the crowds.
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“It was quite overwhelming to be honest, in the beginning, because we were not expecting this turnout,” she reveals.
“I guess a lot of people are obviously curious as to what Malaysian food is, so we had a lot of people coming in just to try, but we also had a lot of Malaysian coming in, just to, you know, because they feel like ‘oh cool, I can come here and eat the food from home.'”
Fiery laksa noodles at Kaya in Manchester. / Image: The Manc Eats
Kaya can be found on Faulker Street in Manchester’s Chinatown. Image: The Manc Eats
She also says they’ve already found it to be a balancing act with spice tolerance levels. Simply put, some English customers – myself included on this occasion – can’t always handle it.
I don’t know if I was having a bad day, because I’m usually into it when my lips start to tingle and my mouth feels like it’s on fire, but on this particular afternoon, I confess to finding the spicy curry laksa noodles a bit of a challenge.
Juliet laughs and tells me their Asian customers say the opposite – that it should be hotter. It doesn’t do my ego any good, but I suppose I’m not that surprised.
Her goal, she adds, is to make Kaya “as authentic as it can be, but at the same time introduce this type of food to locals.”
“I’m trying to find a balance, it’s been quite overwhelming, but it’s exciting to try new things, see people eat the food and we’re always improving, definitely, we want to make things better.”
Eggs are served as a starter half-boiled then mixed with soy sauce and black pepper with toast strips for dipping. / Image: The Manc Eats
A plate of chicken satay skewers with a chunky peanut dip, diced cucumber and red onion at Kaya. / Image: The Manc Eats
Whilst Malaysian cuisine has exploded in London, here in Manchester we’ve been slower to catch on – at least in the city centre.
For Juliet and her family, though, the lack of competition in town is a plus. They had previously tried opening a different style of restaurant a few years back, she tells me, that was a franchise and on a “very different scale altogether.”
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By comparison, Kaya – she adds – is “very small, but it’s a nice size to start.”
“My brother, Nicholas, my older brother. He’s been in Manchester for I think about thirteen years. So we’re all from Malaysia, so we’re all born and raised there, so he came here for school and he stayed on,” she says.
“So the fact that there’s not much Malaysian food in the city itself made us feel like there could be a chance, so we just went for it.”
It certainly makes a very welcome addition to Manchester city centre.
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Whether you’re already a diehard fan of Malaysian food, or you’re curious to experience something new, take it from me: Kaya is well worth a visit.
Featured image – The Manc Eats
Eats
Acclaimed restaurant staffed by prison inmates announces sad closure
Daisy Jackson
The Clink, an acclaimed restaurant where the food is prepared and served by prison inmates, has announced its devastating closure.
The charity behind the restaurant, which is attached to HMP Styal, has confirmed that it will close for good on 31 July 2025.
The Clink is famed for the training and experience it provides inmates, helping them to get a head start into the hospitality industry when their sentence ends.
It’s also achieved plenty of acclaim as a restaurant in its own right, consistently being rated as the best restaurant in Wilmslow and voted Cheshire Restaurant of the Year in 2024.
Over the years, hundreds of students have earned qualifications including City & Guilds NVQs in Food and Beverage Service, Professional Cookery and Food Hygiene.
The Clink restaurant in Styal is closing
But The Clink has now announced that it will be closing this summer due to ‘a number of factors’, including costs and participant numbers.
Donna-Marie Edmonds, Chief Executive of The Clink Charity, said: “The decision not to renew our contract at HMP Styal has been made with an incredibly heavy heart.
“The Clink Charity’s mission is to reduce re-offending and we have been doing this at Styal, producing outstanding results for over a decade.
“Although the restaurant will officially close this summer, our partnership at Styal will be remembered not only for its landmark training outcomes, but as a beacon of hope, where women have sought refuge and rehabilitation.”
As one of those students put it: “If it wasn’t for my journey at The Clink, I wouldn’t be where I am now.”
Deansgate’s new mini brunch triangle attracting big queues – and rightly so
Danny Jones
Manchester is absolutely bursting at the seams with brilliant brunch spots, and don’t even get just started on trying to pick from all 10 boroughs as a whole, it’s impossible.
However, over the past year or so, we suddenly realised that somewhat of a city centre trio of brunch spots serving unreal breakfasts, midday delights and early afternoon scran has emerged.
While some have been there longer than others, all three of these places within aren’t just within spitting distance of each other but are enjoying a real wave of success at the moment – and it’s no surprise why: they’re all utterly incredible.
Three brilliant city centre brunch spots for you to try
1. Bruncho
First up on the list is the aptly named Bruncho, which opened just last summer, and despite announcing itself to the Manchester hospitality scene rather quietly at the time, it’s starting to pick up some serious pace now.
Specialising in unreal breakfasts and Mediterranean exports like menemen, Turkish eggs, their own spins of spicy favourite shakshuka, as well as plenty of dessert-forward plates with colour palettes as full as the plates themselves.
It goes without saying that you can obviously get a proper good ‘Bruncho Full English‘, but we’d encourage you to branch out and, who knows, maybe have a brekkie that features ice cream? In fact, it’s sentences like that which make it our Thomas’ favourite way to start the day – albeit ideally a lie-in.
Now, another very strong candidate which has been around on the Manc brunch scene much longer than the other two on this list is local success story, Alex’s Bakery, though we’ll admit we’d mainly visited this place for the unreal brownies, cupcakes and other assorted sweet treats until recently.
However, in addition to the popularity of their lunch deal (a panini, cupcake and drink), they’ve really stepped up their wider brunch offerings of late, going from what was once just a Manchester Artisan Market back in 2014 to branching out into everything good you can put on toast and tonnes more.
It may not garner the often ridiculously long queues of other places, but that’s because this place has a steady flow of regulars all week long who’ve steadily fallen in love with it over many years. They’re tres leches cakes alone are well worth the visit.
3. Acai And The Tribe
Last but not least, the acai craze is undoubtedly one of the biggest foodie trends around right now, as proven by the lines that gather outside this Great Northern venue at least once virtually every weekend – but Acai And The Tribe has actually been on the hype for ages.
That being said, after moving from Arndale Market to Deansgate Mews back in 2022 and now along the main strip in recent months, their popularity has skyrocketed. If you’re looking for a health brunch open packed with vibrance, vitamins and plenty of other very nice toppings, this is the one for you.
We’ll warn you, finding the right window to visit is essentially if you don’t want to wait around for ages these days, but both Clem and Daphne still greatly approve, so it’s it gets the seal of approval from us.
So, while we could recommend you a whole load of fantastic places in around Manchester city centre, we’ve been particularly charmed by this mini Manc brunch triangle around Deansgate.
Best of all, it’s just always great to see local businesses thriving, isn’t it? Especially when it comes to people lining the streets and sending it viral just for a chance to taste their offerings.
Modern breakfast and brunch are things that can be either perfect in their simplicity or surprising in their creativity; either way, we’re glad there are plenty of examples of that here in Manchester.
Georgina Pellant -
6th July 2023 
