PETALING JAYA: Malaysian cuisine is often introduced to the world through nasi lemak and roti canai. Yet those familiar favourites only scratch the surface of the country’s rich culinary landscape.
One Malaysian-born couple, now living in Australia, hopes to showcase Malaysia’s lesser-known flavours.
Geetha Ganesan and her husband, Nithyaraj Subramaniam, run MalayaLane, claiming it is Adelaide’s first Malaysian-Indian cuisine restaurant.
The couple first started with a commercial kitchen and a takeaway business called Smatra Curry House.
Geetha, from Kulai, Johor, worked as a banker in Malaysia, while Nithyaraj, from Ipoh, had some F&B experience. For Geetha, however, cooking has always been a part of her life.
“I started cooking when I was about 12 because I’m the eldest of my siblings, so I cooked for my younger brothers and sisters. My grandmothers taught me, and it became second nature to me,” she told FMT Lifestyle.
Nithyaraj moved to Australia for a job in 2018, and Geetha joined him after they married in 2022. The couple spent two years in Melbourne before relocating to Adelaide, South Australia. There, they missed the flavours of home.
“South Indian and North Indian food was already quite common, but we couldn’t find any Malaysian Indian food in Adelaide,” said Geetha. “We are the first to bring that taste here.”
The couple registered Smatra Curry House and began promoting their food through Malaysian community groups.
Focusing on home-style Indian food was not initially the plan.
Geetha started with pandan nasi lemak, and customers soon began asking for banana leaf rice, prompting the couple to add it as a takeaway option. They received 35 orders right away.
This venture connected the couple with Malaysians in the city. Some had been living in Adelaide for 10 or 20 years, occasionally travelling all the way to Melbourne for authentic Malaysian food.
“People would tell me, ‘Your food tastes like home.’ Sometimes I have even seen our customers cry in front of us after eating because they missed that kind of food,” she said.
As word spread, the business expanded into pop-ups, food carnivals and expos, where the couple sold Malaysian favourites including Ramly burger, nasi vanggey and Roti John.
“At one point, every corner of my car was filled with packs of food - there was no space left. We knew then that it was time to open a restaurant,” Geetha recalled.
Smatra Curry House was rebranded as MalayaLane and officially opened on April 11.
Despite being 30km from the city centre, MalayaLane drew strong support on its first day, with a queue stretching around the premises. In fact, Jing Lee, the first Malaysian-born member of the South Australian Parliament, attended the grand opening.
“The crowd was much bigger than we expected - around 170 customers showed up. At one point we ran out of rice, but people were still willing to wait,” Geetha said.
Today, MalayaLane’s weekday lunch menu, its busiest period, features staples such as pandan nasi lemak with fried chicken, mee goreng, laksa and more.
On weekends, the menu expands to include banana leaf rice, served with a spread of 13 accompaniments including three vegetables along with curries, raita, papadum and dessert.
Diners can also add dishes such as Chicken 65, sardine sambal cili padi and fish head curry.
“I tell all our customers, ‘Whether you are Malaysian or not, you should enjoy the banana leaf meal with your hands,’” said Geetha. “I even teach them to crush the papadum into the payasam on the leaf itself - that’s how we would eat back home.”
The weekend menu also features ghee rice with chicken sambal or lamb masala, nasi kandar, and Ipoh-style nasi ganja.
With a Royal Australian Air Force base nearby, former personnel who trained in Butterworth decades ago also drop by MalayaLane, reminiscing about their time in Malaysia and the food they remember.
For now, Geetha and Nithyaraj are focused on MalayaLane, but hope to open two more branches in the future. “We want to show people that this is also Malaysian food.”