Martabak from Tetangga Kita, our neighbour

Aiming to bring the Indonesian street food closer to Malaysians, Tetangga Kita claims to use authentic ingredients and recipes imported from Indonesia to come up with their version of Martabak.

If you haven’t already noticed, it’s called Martabak, and not murtabak as we know it here. A common streetfood and pasar malam snack, the ones sold here usually has peanuts, corn, coconut and/or red bean, and better known as ‘man chien kuih’ in Hokkien or ‘tai kau meen’ in Cantonese. It usually comes as a super thin crispy version or the thicker version which has a texture that’s almost kuih like.  

Tetangga Kita offers two options, Martabak Manis and Martabak Telor translated as sweet martabak and savoury martabak respectively. Yeah, I know, their translations are a little different from our Malay, but stick with me here …

For Martabak Manis, there’s the thicker version which comes in a variety of flavours or the crispy thin version which has a nice crunchy taste. Some of the specialities on Tetangga Kita’s menu include the Jagung Keju (Tebal), Lotus Biscoff (Tebal) and Sapi, which is the crispy egg martabak with beef tenderloin, onions and leek.

In fact, this is a modest description because if you check out their full menu, there’s at least 10 different varieties or more.

We tried out the Kit Kat Green Tea with Cheese (sweet) (RM28) and the savoury Martabak Dendeng (RM26), which is similar to the meaty murtabak sold at the Indian or Indian Muslim restaurants.

Verdict: Opinions were split on the Green Tea – No.2 and I found this a bit too sweet, and too rich/buttery. But No. 1 really liked it.

We unanimously loved the savoury Martabak Dendeng. The outer skin is like roti canai and it’s really crisp (you must eat this fresh to enjoy this), and the filling is a combination of meat, eggs and onion, thereabouts with some slight variations. This even came with the signature ABC chilli sauce, an institution in Indonesia.

It may be a tad pricier than the night market but to be fair, this is a much larger portion and nicely packaged so you pay for the novelty and innovation I guess. I checked out the full piece in the pasar malam and it was RM16. The basic OG version is about the same price at Tetangga as well.   

Tetangga Kita has two outlets, one in Hartamas Shopping Centre, Kuala Lumpur and another outlet in Paradigm Mall, Petaling Jaya.

Recently, it came up with a new packaging – “To all our frontliners, Makasih Ya” – to show appreciation for our frontliners during this unprecedented time. In conjunction with the campaign, Tetangga Kita partnered with The Hope Branch, a non-profit organisation (NGO) launched to help vulnerable families, single parents, Orang Kurang Upaya (OKU), marginalised community and B40 during this pandemic, whereby part of proceeds of the total campaign sales was donated to them.