Omah's Malaysian Restaurant

You don't see too many still-life paintings of Malaysian food. Beige laksa soups, tan tangles of noodles, taupe roti to mop up russet curries - it's a brown culinary landscape, and a sloppy one, too. Still, eating with your eyes makes as much sense as straining to hear a melody when footballers belt out their team song. Try as you might, it's just not going to happen. Luckily, good Malaysian food overcomes its visual deficiencies by smelling great, tasting even better and being cheap and filling.

Omah's is a three-year-old restaurant in a modern commercial development. First impressions are of sharp lines and muted tones: furniture and tiles are black, the floor is grey, waiters are in black T-shirts. For a brief psychotic moment, a diner in a red shirt looks as if she's on fire, such is the contrast. Slowly, softer details emerge. The timber ceiling is strung with bird cages, there's an aquarium, and an antique wooden ladder leans into one corner, serving as a coat rack. It's all supposed to evoke 1950s Malacca, where the rich folk would meet in town squares to show off their tropical birds, then retreat to a restaurant for yum cha while their birdcages swung overhead from hooks.

They would sit on stools or upright chairs - at lacquered timber tables, and very likely eat from blue bowls with dragon and bird motifs. Omah's furniture has been made to order, painstakingly copied from old magazines; the crockery and chopstick holders were sourced from the town of Ipoh because they're not easily found in Malaysia's bigger cities anymore. Still, you never feel as if you're sitting in a period piece. New Port Melbourne - young, professional and adept with chopsticks - barely lets mid-century Malacca get a word in. The savvy wine list with enthusiastic tasting notes also feels contemporary.

Owner Stewart Gan was operations manager of the Chinta group of restaurants so he knows howw to sell Malaysian food to Melbourne. Omah's doesn't have the play-by-numbers feeling of a chain restaurant. Gan lured chef Jacky Goh from Kuala Lumpur's Shangri La Hotel and sponsored him to stay in Australia. You can taste the five-star skills, even though the food isn't highbrow and the menu isn't radical. Goh roasts and grinds his spices daily and makes curries the day before they're served to allow flavours to develop. This approach means his powerful beef rendang has an appreciable depth that makes it one of the restaurant's bestsellers. I love the udang pedas, battered prawns tumbled with a redolent sambal of chilli, onion, prawn paste and the requisite secret ingredients. The prawns could be firmer, but the flavours are genius. You'll be licking your fingers. Soft-shell crab is fab, too, crumbed with crushed rice crackers and grilled seaweed, for salty substance.

Some dishes even disprove the brown theory. Beans tossed with spicy prawn paste are frisky, crisp and cheerily green. The pandan sago with coconut syrup is a cooler green and a textural treat: this is what a giant with a mouthful of marbles must feel like. Also good (and brown) is the fried ice-cream crusted with breadcrumbs, sponge and coconut. Drizzled over both desserts is gula melacca, a very brown palm-sugar syrup. Close your eyes and enjoy.