The Eater Award–winning Hainan Chicken House in Sunset Park opened in 2023 with a lesser-seen Malaysian-style Hainan chicken served with sticky rice balls, plus rotating specials that stayed fresh even for regulars. Owner Chris Low says he hadn’t planned to be “mega-involved,” but once he found himself there far more than expected, “we owed it to ourselves to try something that’s fully fleshed out that isn’t just a happy accident.”
That’s the momentum behind Kelang, the family’s follow-up restaurant that opened in Greenpoint, at 715 Manhattan Avenue, near Norman Avenue, in early December. “It’s everything that I wanted to be able to do at Chicken House,” he tells Eater.
Through Kelang, Low is pulling from various facets of his identity: his family’s lineage in Malaysia’s port city of Klang, his parents’ Chinese Malaysian roots, and his upbringing in Brooklyn in the 1980s and 1990s.
After opening Hainan Chicken House, Low came to realize that his family’s hometown had its own food culture distinct from other parts of Malaysia. He points to the liberal use of dark soy, as seen in the bak kut teh, a pork stew: their version of char kway teow is also different from the one in Penang.
The restaurant’s name is the “antiquated spelling” of the Malaysian city of Klang. Kelang’s menu is Malaysian, yes, but with Caribbean and Italian American touches — because these were the foods that Low also grew up eating.
“All those cuisines bleed into [Kelang’s] menu in one way or another,” he says. “I love that, sometimes, it’s a little bit more overtly, and sometimes, it’s very subtle,” he says. “People would come in and be like, ‘This is not right.’” He’d respond, “‘This is right for us. This is how I had it growing up. I don’t know what to tell you.’”
Under the salads and vegetables section, the Caesar kerabu (Malay for salad) uses sambal, crispy anchovies, kerisik (toasted coconuts), and chicories. “You would not often see a leaf like a Castelfranco or radicchio, these bitter greens in Malaysian cuisine. But that’s a little bit of where some of the Italian American influence comes through.”
Another Malaysian dish, redang, the dry-curried dish, is typically made with beef. Low grew up eating curry oxtail from Jamaican and Haitian restaurants in Brooklyn. Kelang’s large plates version uses oxtail, plus a mixture of two types of rice: the Haitian djon djon, a black mushroom rice, and the Malaysian nasi ulam, with chopped fresh herbs. Elsewhere, dishes make use of habaneros and scotch bonnet peppers, too. Small plates include curry puffs and paratha with dal; noodles such as the abacus seeds made with gnocchi-shaped taro, and, yes, you can find the family’s Hainanese chicken here too.
Low, who is a filmmaker, drew from cinema to design the space, which is steeped in nostalgia and the aesthetics of Hong Kong director Wong Kar-wai’s In the Mood for Love (“it’s almost a trope,” he says). The result is an “amalgam of memories.”
The family hand-tiled the floor themselves, making it look like the topographical map of Klang. The space includes gingko designs and hand-painted mirrors over the banquette and booths. Family photos hang on the walls, “wedding photos and stuff from the ‘50s and ‘60s, and some of them have a little bit of a rockabilly look,” he says. “It’s crazy to think this was in Malaysia and these are relatives. We just found it to be so cool and wanted to present this aesthetic that people might not be thinking of when they think of Malaysia.”
Ultimately, Kelang is about showing the food Low and his family know. “I wanted to bring this cuisine from a smaller town in Malaysia and make it more prominent.” He wants New Yorkers and beyond to explore the breadth of cuisines in the Southeast Asian country.
For now, Kelang is open for dinner and weekend brunch. It’s not serving alcohol yet, because they’re still waiting on their liquor license, but when that comes, expect cocktails and natural wines.