Magic One

November 2011

It takes a certain skill to create a restaurant that perfectly encapsulates a zeitgeist from a specific period in time, such as Magic One has done. Walking into the interior, you get a distinct feeling of being transported back to the ‘80s, into an eatery eerily reminiscent of one of the Edens that used to so bewitch Malaysians with their smorgasbord of culinary proferings ranging from local hawker fare to lobster thermidor and chicken chops. Fast forward to 2011, and the quizzically monikered Magic One may only be a couple of months old but it’s got that whole retro mood down pat.

To wit, there’s the menu replete with Chinese cooked dishes, seafood (yes, the ubiquitous lobster thermidor is present and accounted for), and Penang hawker food. The seafood may well be meritorious – I wouldn’t know; I didn’t try it – but it was the hawker food that had enticed me, Pied Piper-like, there. There were whispers on the grapevine that it is pretty good, and although there were inconsistencies in the quality of the Magic One dishes, the ridiculously low universal price of RM6.90 more than made up for any minor inadequacies.

Sure, the laksa was a tad sweet, but that was easily rectified with the addition of lashings of prawn paste. The Penang prawn mee was good, for KL restaurant standards. There were big juicy prawns, a generous blanket of fried shallots, and a soup that – though undoubtedly enhanced by MSG – was nevertheless satisfyingly hearty. The runt of the lot, sadly, was the fried kway teow. Unredeemable even with the assistance of plenty of soya sauce, it remained staunchly vapid, both in taste and appearance. Lucky then that the belacan chicken wings (fragrant, juicy, with a lovely hint of belacan) and chicken lorbak more than compensated.

And despite the lack of an access ramp for my friend who was in a wheelchair, the readiness of the staff to help hoist the chair up the stairs was testament to a wonderfully helpful disposition that carried all the way through to service. Next time ‘cheap and good’ is on the agenda, head straight for Magic One. Just avoid the kway teow. Fay Khoo