You can’t believe how happy we were when we finally found a restaurant serving mee goreng in Metro Manila. It has been more than a year since we first tasted the said noodle dish in Jalan Alor Food Street, a street food mecca in Kuala Lumpur, and we were instantly hooked.

MARTABAK CAFE AT MOA (MALL OF ASIA)

We tried various substitute, even finding instant mee goreng noodles in groceries, but it simply wasn’t like the ones we tried at KL. And so it was that one happy weekend, we finally found a restaurant at the Mall of Asia serving our favorite Malaysian noodles, Martabak Café.

Named after a popular Indonesian street food, martabak is a pancake stuffed with eggs and meat. Unfortunately, we were too excited to find that they have mee goreng on their menu that we totally forgot to try that.

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MARTABAK CAFE INTERIORS

The interior of the restaurant is quite simple, red and white walls decorated with Indo Malay-inspired sketches with a few textiles hanging here and there from the region. You’d notice how legit the place is, not only by its décor, but through the number of Muslims frequenting the place. Martabak Café is a certified Halal restaurant.

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THE ONLY INDO-MALAY RESTAURANT IN MOA

So what exactly is mee goreng—also spelled mie goreng and mi goreng—and why do we go gaga over it?

Mee goreng is a stir fried noodle dish popular in Indonesia and Malaysia. It consist of fried yellow noodles mixed with veggies, garlic, onions, shallots, chicken, beef, prawns, and various spices. Most of the ones we tried at Malaysia were super spicy, even if we ask them to tone it down a bit. It has so many flavors going on all at once that it’s hard to find a direct replacement for it back here in the Philippines.

ICED COFFEE AT MARTABAK MOA

After some minutes of patiently waiting, our orders finally arrived.

We asked for a plate of their roti canai (Php130.00), a bowl of curry laksa (Php208.00), a serving of mee goreng (Php208.00) and a glass of kopi ice (99.00). We were told that serving sizes were good enough for sharing, but we found it a tad too little, considering they’re not that cheap.

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MARTABAK CAFE’S ROTI CANAI

VERY SPICY LAKSA CURRY AT MARTABAK CAFE

My buddy, who’s a big fan of roti canai gave two thumbs up upon first dip and bite. It’s actually like the real thing, she said in between mouthfuls. The curry laksa was also spot on, but very, very spicy! It was quite good that we actually didn’t mind drinking water after every sip.

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MEE GORENG, AT LAST!

And at last, the mee goreng paired with kopi ice. From its looks alone, I can tell that it would taste like the ones we had in Kuala Lumpur. And I wasn’t that far in my assumption. It was actually quite good, even better when paired with the iced coffee. It’s definitely something I can go back to every day if not for its prohibitive price—well, at least for us.

Well, I guess it’s a good thing that Martabak Café is quite a ways away from home; else I’d probably be spending Php208.00 everyday just for snacks.

Martabak Cafe
Address: Ground Floor, 131 North Wing, SM Mall of Asia, Bay Boulevard, Pasay City, Metro Manila
Contact Number: (0927) 412-7782 | Facebook
Opening Hours: Mall Hours | Menu
GPS Coordinates Map: 14.536424, 120.981839

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