KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 20 — Malay fine-dining: now that’s something you don’t often hear about in KL, even as the city sees French, Italian, and artisinal cafes mushrooming everywhere. Then again, Malay cuisine is better-known for its homely and traditional side.

And besides, it can be a tough convincing diners to shell out RM25 for a rendang dish that they could otherwise get elsewhere for a fraction of the price. Which is why Enak KL had to devise a menu and concept that’s different from what Malay restaurants usually offer.

“The recipes served at Enak would not be things you would find outside commonly,” says Sherena Razaly, the owner and manager of Enak KL, a fine-dining Malay restaurant in Starhill.

Enak KL has been around for over six years — quite an achievement amidst the competitive environment of Starhill’s fine-dining restaurants. “It was my family’s concept,” she says. “We’ve been talking for years before about how we don’t have really good Malay restaurants to entertain clients, so a few years ago, my dad said ‘let’s bite the bullet and go ahead with the restaurant’... even though none of my family members had any experience in the F&B business.”

Enak’s appeal lies mainly in their selection of good ingredients, and a strong adherence to family recipes, which are mostly from her Johorean mother, with contributions from her Penangite father. The menu was developed around the intention of showcasing as much flavour from Malay cuisine, and serving dishes that wouldn’t be found in a typical Malay restaurant.

Such dishes include kerabu jantung pisang and botok-botok, both of which tend to pique the interest of first-timers. Jantung Pisang (banana flower) is arguably not a popular ingredient in most cuisines, but is a central ingredient in this kerabu, which has a unique milky texture and taste because of the addition of coconut milk.

“Until mum brought out the dish for us, even I didn’t know about it,” she says. “One of the things we wanted to do with Enak was to bring out the best flavours in Malay food and say that we’re just as good as any international cuisine. We wanted to draw on the old, forgotten recipes, and the kerabu jantung pisang made perfect sense,” she said.

Then there’s botok-botok, a steamed mackerel fish dish that was once a common Johorean dish, but is rarely seen now because of the difficulty preparing it — especially when it comes to sourcing out the nine types of leaves needed to make it.

“Botok-botok is one of the dishes where your grandmother would go into the garden, pluck a few leaves and steam it with the fish. But now there’s no one who has that kind of backyard, and it’s very leceh because it requires a lot pre-planning,” she says.

Among the leaves involved to make it are papaya leaves, cassava shoots, laksa leaves, and daun kesum. “Everything is then wrapped in banana leaf and steamed, so it’s a relatively healthy dish that has no oil, and each one of the leaves has some health purpose — some of them are good for the skin, for digestion, the eyes, and others,” she adds.

QC level: Mum

The transition from family recipe to a restaurant-scale business is never easy: there’s the willingness to let go of precious family recipes to chefs, the quantification of every ingredient to the last gram (unusual for traditional Asian kitchens), and making sure everything is prepared to the family’s standards.

After all, if there’s one thing customers can’t stand, it’s a restaurant touting itself to be authentic when the kitchen staff are doing little more than using the microwave and throwing in the MSG.

That’s why throughout Enak KL’s existence, Sherena’s mum has made sure — and fussed about — the way things are cooked and prepared. Until today, the 65-year-old refuses to let the hired cooks prepare the Manisan Kelapa Muda Enak, a custard dessert made using young coconut water. “She’s not entirely convinced that the chefs can do it right; it requires a small fire, plenty of patience, and she thinks their hands aren’t quite as good yet,” she says.

Also, almost every supplier was personally vetted by Sherena’s mother — this extends to the restaurant’s suppliers for ulam, bananas, leaves, and beef. “She maintains a really strong hold on the quality side of things — it can make life a little difficult and a pain sometimes, but it’s a good thing,” she says.

Enak KL is at LG2, Starhill Gallery, Jalan Bukit Bintang, Kuala Lumpur. For more information, visit http://www.enakkl.com/ or call 03-2141 8973.