(This venue is closed.) Breakfast special, without the traditional banana-leaf wrapper.
Nasi lemak ($2.00) can be a snack, or the foundation for a light meal, at any hour. It's named for rice steamed with coconut milk, which delivers a caloric kick-start; this version adds peanuts, cucumber, hardboiled egg, pickled vegetables, and tiny dried fish (anchovies are the usual suspects). At Sanur the customary sambal, or chili-based sauce, is only an incidental ingredient.
I procured my takeaway breakfast from the tiny street-level sitting room. That's also where you'll find kueh (pronounced Kway, about 75 cents each), sometimes savory but usually sweet little bites that are eaten throughout the day in Malaysia and Singapore but are near impossible to track down in New York.
Many of Sanur's kueh are based on rice flour or glutinous rice flour, sometimes in combination with tapioca or mung bean. I've tentatively decoded several colors as pandan (pale green), corn (yellow), coconut (white), and yam (light brown). Though there's no menu to provide confirmation, very often you'll find a few fellows nearby who will happily sing the praises of their favorites.
Also shown, from the full-service restaurant downstairs: rojak; fried egg with oysters; fried mee Siam; on choy "in Malaysian style," a.k.a. kangkung belanchan; butter shrimp; bak kut teh, showing fatty pork and a goji berry; asam stingray; stingray in lotus leaves.
Sanur Restaurant
18 Doyers St. (Pell St.-Bowery), Manhattan
212-267-0088
