For Kuala Lumpur’s tastiest laksa you’ve got to head to Madras Lane, just off Petaling Street in the city’s Chinatown. Not only will you have amazing food here but you’ll also be transported back to 1960s Kuala Lumpur – it honestly looks like nothing has changed here in all that time. This place has the raw energy of a Chinese food market, with butchers hacking through bones, fish scales flying and feathers being plucked from birds by the pillowful. Right in that lane, among all the market action, you’ll see a lovely couple making laksa, both assam laksa and curry laksa. While I love both types, I have a thing for the intense and unique taste of assam laksa. It’s from Penang and has a sour/salty/fishy tamarind broth that contains no coconut milk at all, making it far less rich than curry laksa. The flavours are fresh and complex and some of the ingredients unusual; for example torch ginger flower and bud. You’ll find it frozen in large Asian supermarkets. Assam laksa uses thick, round rice noodles which are different to the thinner, flatter variety used in curry laksa. I hope you try making this because it really is sensational.