I think this must be the trendiest place I have been to in KL, now. Sentul Depot was first developed as a railway yard more than a hundred years ago, and despite being heavily bombed during the Second World War was still in use by the national railway company until 20 years back. Now Malaysian conglomerate YTL is trying to turn this industrial area into something like the Meatpacking District in New York, starting with art shows and other events, and last year providing a permanent home for the Tiffin Food Court.
There are 15 stalls which are occupied at the moment by Italian, Chinese, vegan, Middle Eastern, Australian, Spanish, Caribbean, Japanese, American, and Mexican food sellers, plus an alcoholic ice cream stand, but this changes. For instance in November I’m told they had 5 vegan stalls. In addition to these, there is a cocktail/wine bar and a Tiger beer bar.
Most of the vendors have existing restaurants, but use this place to try out new dishes and be a bit creative; however a couple are solely based here until they find premises elsewhere. The stalls nestle inside what is a cross between a very industrial looking area and an artist’s collective, with rainforest plants and trees also making an appearance. There were bats flying around as well, resting in the trees.
Most of the food came in tapas sized portions, at KL tapas prices plus. Taco King’s black bean tamal was an ok version of what Tex-Mex places (and I until researching this, and probably beyond) call a tamale, with soft, sticky grain lightly filled with ground black beans but it came with a phenomenal salsa. Very spicy, it was also sweet and savoury with pungent onion flavour. Really good.
Daughter loved the crab roll from Crabee, which came with curly fries in order to justify the huge price for half a sandwich!
Felafel from Leen’s were a little dry and lacked punch. Didn’t get it from the weakly pickled vegetables or the cumin dusted yoghurt. Not bad, but not too good either.
Ramen was supplied by Tokyo Ramen (which seems to be an offshoot of the Tokyo Restaurant), and wife thought the toppings were good but let down by a weak soup. It’s pork free, made only with chicken.
Hijau, a vegan cafe, took 50 minutes to prepare scrambled tofu and miso butter toast, as they had run out of vegan mayonnaise and had to make more. The ten small toast slices had a taste reminiscent of the herbal sauce you get with dim sum here, and the scrambled tofu, while a little dry, worked well with the tardy mayo. A shame then, that they ruined the dish by pouring maple syrup all over it. Without that, potentially a decent sharing dish.
The alcoholic ice cream stall had actually run out of laced treats, so we tried a pair of their teetotal varieties. Fior di latte was milk flavoured with sweet soy sauce, and this was rich and creamy; Pickled Pepper was my choice as the maddest item available. This put together pickled beetroot and pink peppercorns, and was surprisingly good, though the pepper gave it a bit of a weird texture. The taste was sweet, sharp and warming – had you said it was raspberry and ginger flavoured, I might have nodded.
The range of food at Tiffin is very good, even if it wasn’t all quite as nice as it could have been. It’s also impressive to have so many trendy outlets in one place, meaning you can mix and match posh dishes, food court style. I also really liked the decor and setting, so forgive the minor food errors (ie chef choices I didn’t like) somewhat! Worth a go.
We went back a couple of months later, and a lot of the stalls had changed. Highlights were the pizza by the slice, and the pies, plus the ice cream from a different alcoholic ice cream company!
Address: Jalan Strachan, Sentul, 51100 Kuala Lumpur
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