What always adds to my back to work ‘hunger pains’ is the fact that over the holidays The Brooding Architect and I tend to treat ourselves to numerous mid-week holiday “I’m not really hungry but might as well eat” lunches. One such lunch happened just last week following some post-Christmas sales shopping. After ‘sensibly’ using the last of my Christmas gift vouchers to buy a $37 bottle of hand wash (don’t judge me, it was Aesop), The Brooding Architect and I found ourselves near QV when the mood for lunch struck. I am of the view that QV (for the non-Melbourne locals, this is a large shopping complex on in the Melbourne CBD) is a bit of a food wasteland so was trying to convince The Brooding Architect that an iced chocolate from Max Brenner constitutes lunch, when on  a whim, we decided to eat at Old Town Koptitam Mamak (“OTKM“), which is located in QV Square.

The food we ate at OTKM was actually pretty good – certainly better than anything else I have ever eaten at QV – so I was surprised to read that OTKM generally gets pretty terrible reviews on Urban Spoon. For around $30, we got a dozen mixed satay (chicken and beef), some steamed rice, rojak and some iced lychee drinks.

The satay is fresh cooked to order on a hot grill, resulting in a lovely smoky flavour. The satay is served with the usual accompaniments – peanut sauce and slices of cucumber and red onion. The peanut sauce was a little on the sweet side for me and lacked the spicy chilli kick I am always hankering for, but was nonetheless quite tasty. The beef satay was definitely the standout though – a lot more flavorsome than the chicken satay.

Beef and Chicken Satay

Rojak is one of my absolute favorite foods. Rojak is a spicy Malay / Singaporean vegetable and fruit salad, which contains  fried Chinese doughnuts (the same ones normally served with congee), bean curd (tofu), cucumber, pineapple, green mango (or green apple) and served with a thick, sweet and spicy peanut sauce flavored with chilli and shrimp paste. The mix of flavours sounds eclectic but it is fantastically refreshing on a hot summer’s day. It can be hard to find, but if you do stumble upon some, it is definitely worth being adventurous and giving it a try.

The rojak at OTKM was certainly not the best I have ever had, but by Australian standards is was pretty good. It had all the right flavour elements, and for $7.50 was a pretty generous serving. My only criticism was that like the peanut satay sauce, the rojak sauce was a little on the sweet side for me.

Rojak - Malaysian Style mixed fruit and vegetable salad with spicy peanut sause

To wash it all down we ordered a couple of iced lychee drinks. These were simple and refreshing – literally some lychees and lychee syrup in iced water – and definitely not excessively sweet. If you feel like something a bit more sugar-y though, I would suggest ordering the cendol or iced milo dinosaur.

Iced Lychee Drink

Despite all the bad press, I found OTKM to be pretty good value for the price. Perhaps just stick to the fresh cooked menu items and avoid ordering the pre-cooked items from the  Bain Marie.