14 Jun Papparich, QV, Melbourne CBD

I’d heard good things about this restaurant chain and I knew it was very popular, with queues of people making it hard to get a seat. Apparently there are many outlets in Malaysia, but I’ve honestly never seen it before.  I’d also heard it served quite authentic Malaysian food so I was keen to try it out. If I’d gone for lunch I might have tried the wat tan hor or char kway teow, but being dinner, I thought nasi lemak would be easier.

The first thing I noticed was…there was A LOT of curry sauce. Normally the curry is meant to be dry(ish), but this sauce was flowing into and mixing with my other ingredients. After a while the sambal started to dissipate into the curry. I was also expecting to see more ‘bits’ in the sambal. Maybe it’s just not sambal I’m used to seeing, but this one was more like a smooth chilli sauce.

The rice was the first part I tasted. Instead of being cooked with coconut or just being plain rice, it was like chicken rice, which was a bit odd. Maybe they lightly fried the rice or something, but it seemed slightly under-cooked.

The curry flavour wasn’t too bad – it was similar to the curry mum makes using a curry paste from Malacca, however, the sambal prawns weren’t that great. That might have been because the curry mixed up with the prawns.

If I had to be picky, I’d also say the ikan bilis were really small. As in, 1/3 to 1/2 the length of normal ikan bilis, and there also wasn’t very much of it.

I have to say that after hearing of Papparich’s good reputation I was disappointed.

Pappa Nasi Lemak ($12.90)

Papparich QV
Level 2, Shop 11, QV Square
210 Lonsdale Street
Melbourne, VIC, 3000
(03) 9654 2682
https://www.papparich.net.au/store/qv-square/