Ming’s Pantry Malaysian Street Food — Restaurant in District of Canberra Central

If you’re in Canberra and craving Malaysian food, this spot is definitely worth checking out. The flavours are bang on, and you can tell they’re serious about using fresh, high-quality ingredients.

I tried the char kuey teow, Hainanese chicken (without rice), and laksa. First up, the char kuey teow was a winner—smokey, chewy noodles with just the right amount of wok hei. The prawns were juicy, the bean sprouts added a nice crunch, and the whole thing had that perfect sweet-savoury balance.

The Hainanese chicken was tender and juicy, with silky skin that was spot-on. Without the rice, it felt a bit like something was missing, but the flavours of the chicken itself and the accompanying sauces made up for it. Definitely light on quantity for the price, though.

As for the laksa? Pure comfort in a bowl. The broth was creamy, spicy, and layered with flavour, while the noodles were cooked just right. It had generous pieces of chicken and prawns, though again, portions weren’t huge.

At $18.80 for the laksa and similar prices for the others, it’s reflective of the quality, even if the servings are on the smaller side. But honestly, where else are you getting Malaysian food this good for under $20?

This spot nails the authenticity and taste, even if you might not leave totally stuffed. Great for when you want something delicious and a bit special without...

Update still one of the best Char kway teow around!

Disclaimer: Bear in mind that this is comparing against what Canberra has to offer.

Easily one of the top two Malaysian restaurants, maybe just nudging ahead of a nearby restaurant (Madam Lu's).

We ordered char kway teow, silky egg flat noodles, nasi lemak with beef rendang and mee goreng Mamak. The first 3 were fantastic and pretty authentic!

CKT is my go-to Malaysian dish since I've been young and this is really good, probably slightly better than Madam Lu's offering (which is pretty good too). Wah tan hor fun (silky egg flat noodles) was tasty. Nasi lemak had a good balance of flavours with the rendang being extra fragrant! Mee goreng mamak was ok but I've never really grown up with it so can't really comment.

All noodles were cooked to perfection, with a bit of Al dente texture intact.

Prices and portions were reasonable (again, Canberra standards), easily feeding an adult with one dish. We shared 4 dishes between 4 adults (2 small eaters), a young boy and a toddler.

Yummy and will definitely be back +...

Came here on a Sunday night and it was pretty busy but that may have been because there was only one front of house staff that had to do takeaways and dine in. Nevertheless it wasn’t slow and we got our food after about 10 minutes.

I had the hor fun - think they called it something like silky egg gravy, my partner had the beef rendang and a roti. Now I consider myself a hor fun / wat tan hor / silky egg gravy on flat rice noodle connoisseur so I was very impressed that a) the noodles were fried before the sauce was on and b) there was the familiar wok hei flavour that I knew and loved. Places like Papparich do not fry their noodles in this particular dish. The only development point on this one is that the prawns could do with more flavour.

The beef rendang was pleasant, maybe tending to the slightly sweeter end of the scale with no heat to it but there are many versions of rendang in Asia and so I’m not overly familiar with what it is like anyway. Roti was delicious!

Reasonable prices at around $40 for the meal, I want to come back and have the assam prawn...