Chinatown's latest hidden cocktail bar deserves to be another hit, living up its promise of providing tipsy thrills, tucked on the top floor of a former teahouse. Its strikingly oversize murals offer contrasting visions of East and West - fittingly, since Tipsy Room's founders comprise an Indonesian and a Scotsman.
Tipsy Room's bartending team does confidently polished work with playful potions.
A teapot tempts with titillating contents, an easy-drinking blend of baijiu and gin that smoothly weds Asia with Europe. If you can't get enough of that combo, order the Chinglish too (RM45), a baijiu sour backed up with Hepple gin for herbaceousness (RM45).
Another regional twist on a classic is the Mandarin Mojito (RM35), reviving with Mandarin oranges, gula Melaka and green tea. And buzzy baijiu is back one final time for the Golden Flower (RM35), sweet and sour with elderflower and passion fruit.
A couple of cheeky concoctions round out Tipsy Room's current repertoire. Date Night is a popcorn box we'd be happy to sneak into any movie, with caramel-crunchy popcorn slyly concealing a salty-sugary long drink with dates and Milo (RM45). And if you're here for brunch, sip on the bacon-infused single malt whisky mixed with maple syrup, topped with a succulent bacon strip.
All in all, an alluring space for a night out or even day-drinking, with Chaka Khan and The Pointer Sisters playing on the speakers on a Sunday morning. Tipsy Room is run by the same team behind the new restaurant downstairs, Quack and Cluck.
Hidden above the hubbub of Chinatown, this rooftop cafe offers getaway vibes. Part of a travellers' guesthouse in downtown KL, Gaia would be - in better times ahead - where people from all around the globe come together over burgers and beers.
With R&B and Cantopop tunes from the eighties and nineties playing on the speakers, Gaia harks back to simpler days. Prices also feel like a throwback to twenty years ago - a hearty set meal of old-school mushroom soup followed by a chicken sandwich (with a chunky-moist, hand-ground patty) plus fries, paired with a free flow of hot or cold tea, clocks in at only RM18.
Gaia Rooftop
Birdnest Guesthouse, 210, Jalan Tun HS Lee, Kuala Lumpur. Daily, 11am-3pm, 5pm-10pm.
Petaling Street's latest hidden cavern of cocktails might be a bit too risque and ribald for some customers, but if you're ready to shed your inhibitions, G-String's playful potions like the Bubbles & Panties (RM32; vodka with a tropical twist of lychee and grapefruit) and a classic Jungle Bird served strikingly in a bird-shaped glass (RM32) might make for a merry, memorable night. Bar bites such as Cum On My Lace (RM24; fresh fuchuk stuffed with fish paste, showered with bechamel) are also surprisingly tastier and more tantalising than their names might suggest.
G-String KL
First Floor, 147, Jalan Petaling, City Centre, 50000 Kuala Lumpur. Currently open daily, 4pm-10pm.
Strange, stealthy serendipity: Small Shifting Space is a place that nearly never existed. When 2020 started, its founder was running a bubble tea store on Petaling Street, while its current chef had spent several months working in a freshly launched restaurant in Shenzhen.
Both men have made the best of this year's shifting terrains. Lee swapped boba for Bobar, turning his store into a two-storey destination for a chef-driven kitchen, natural wines and community events, reflective of venues that he respects in Singapore and Melbourne. Chin has moved from China to Chinatown, living here this past month to absorb a sense of KL's food culture.
October's unsolicited surprises have forced Small Shifting Space to shelve its opening till next month. But customers can still savour a fraction of its team's capabilities, courtesy of care packs of savoury and sweet temptations for takeout and delivery.
Selling five pieces of fried chicken with sides for RM110 sounds shifty, but take a peek inside this package and you'll see that life is sometimes like a box of fried chicken - you might not get what you expect, but hopefully you get more than you deserve.
Chin's chicken with all the fixin's is subversive, an Asian take on a Southern U.S. fried chicken feast. The light, Japanese-style tempura batter for the chicken, tinged green with nori, might rouse a Confederate yee-naw, but this is poultry at its prime, from the meat to the marinade, smoothly succulent and potently pure-tasting. Add RM40 for a lumpfish caviar top-up, bringing a brininess that enriches not only the batter's seaweed but its fleshy contents, a convincing coupling of would-be-fish and fowl.
As for the accompaniments, the Skinny Rice is as much a misnomer as Stable Trump, with glutinous rice gloriously simmered in chicken fat and showered with deep-fried chicken skin for the epitome of a guilty indulgence. And while we'd love to see collard greens with hot sauce in this mix, the Braised Kailan is beautifully tender and full-bodied in flavour. A mustardy egg salad with skin-on potatoes, plus thick-sliced cornbread, round out this meal that two people would struggle to finish. To wash everything down: Cold-brewed Chinese tea, fittingly in lieu of southern sweet tea.
This is, however, not representative of the tasting menus that Chin (a Singaporean-born Malaysian, billed as the restaurant's chef-in-residence for an indefinite period) plans to serve next month. Chinatown EP01 is currently slated to feature courses like chicken with elements of jasmine tea and rice vinegar, fish with fiddlehead ferns and sour plum, and beef with brassicas.
The 'Glutton 4 Gluten' box showcases SSS's baking skills, a prerequisite since the team is poised to set up a baker's corner for laminated pastries in REXKL, completing a croissant-fuelled conquest of Chinatown's two current hotspots of Kwai Chai Hong and the cinema-turned-cultural/culinary complex.
If you love tarts, these two might leave you breathlessss: SSS' pistachio-raspberry and chocolate tarts are decadently luscious on top, densely crisp at its base, brilliantly buoyant and balanced in their dynamics and dimensions, everything that cloyingly one-note, artificial-tasting varieties aren't. Proving that terrific things come in twos, the box's other delectable dessert duos comprise bombolone-style donuts (red dates and tonka beans), eclairs (elegantly irresistible in raspberry and lemon bergamot) and loaves (a triumphantly textured apple crumble that might make Martha proud, a lively lemon that Julia would have reveled in). Cold brew coffee with nifty nutty nuances complements this ensemble (RM120).
Natural wines are already available for sale - a South Australian Lucy M. Chardonnay is an adventure on its own, fermented in ceramic eggs, aged on lees in bottle, for one wild wine (RM260).
Small Shifting Space's care packs will likely be available for a week or so, before the restaurant readies to welcome dine-in guests. Contact 0174405591 to order at least a day in advance.
Small Shifting Space (SSSKL), 141, Petaling Street, Kuala Lumpur.
