Creative Southeast Asian restaurant Rambu is now open for lunch on weekends, with a new “weekend brunch” menu.
Unlike the dinner menu’s inventive spins, these dishes lean traditional, built for easy enjoyment and accessibly priced. It’s a small step toward the restaurant’s plan to eventually open for weekday lunch too.
Start with the Larb Neua (¥68), whose menu description undersells the stir-fried beef: punchy and savory, laced with fresh herbs and a hint of citrus, served with radicchio and toasted rice. Treat it as a starter, as the dishes that follow are hearty enough to be a meal on their own.
The Massaman Curry Beef (¥128) is excellent, tender beef and potatoes swimming in a complex curry with a low hum of spice, sweet, savory, and creamy all at once, served with rice.
Rambu also does its own Asam Laksa (¥88), Penang’s sour-spicy fish broth-based noodle, where the soup is everything: fish bones and flesh boiled down for hours, then reduced with herbs, spices, aromatics, and fermented fish paste — it’s no easy feat, speaking from experience. On an early visit, mine could have used more punch, a stronger fish flavor and a touch more salt, though that’s partly down to personal taste.
The Nasi Lemak (¥88) does Malaysia’s national breakfast justice, carried by juicy fried chicken crusted in spice and served with coconut rice and Rambu’s classic sambal. Though, I’d have preferred a yolky boiled egg over the shredded kind.
Rounding things out is the Rambu Curry Noodles (¥78), creamy curry egg noodles with pulled chicken and dragon beans.
Beyond the new lunch dishes, it’s also worth ordering the Rojak (¥58), a mixed fruit-and-vegetable salad with jicama, pineapple, and peanut granita, the latter a stroke of genius that results in a light, nutty dressing melting over the dish.
For dessert, the Cendol (¥58), one of the newer additions to the menu: shaved ice with gula melaka (palm sugar), jackfruit, coconut, and pandan jelly. Jun’s prowess in the dessert department is well known, and this one hits all the notes for flavor balance and enjoyment, an elevated version of the Malaysian sweet treat indeed.
A handful of dinner dishes carry over to lunch too, including the Nasi Ulam rice salad and Ikan Bakar whole grilled turbot.
