KL is one of the great eating cities of Asia, with three distinct culinary traditions — Malay, Chinese, and Indian — overlapping in the same neighbourhoods and often the same restaurants. Eat at hawker centres, follow the queues, and don't worry too much about décor. The food is the point.
For a first night, head to Jalan Alor in Bukit Bintang, where a string of open-air seafood and Chinese-Malay stalls run late under strings of red lanterns. Brickfields (KL's Little India) is the place for South Indian banana-leaf rice and chai. Lot 10 Hutong in the basement of the Lot 10 mall gathers a curated selection of KL's most famous hawker classics — old shophouse names like Soong Kee beef noodles and Hon Kee porridge under one air-conditioned roof.
Try nasi lemak for breakfast (coconut rice, fried anchovies, peanuts, sambal, hard-boiled egg), char kuey teow (smoky stir-fried noodles) for lunch, satay or roast duck for dinner, and ais kacang or cendol to cool off afterwards. Service charge of 10% and SST of 6% are added to restaurant bills; hawker stalls take cash and add nothing.