A very unplanned street food crawl through Kuala Lumpur

This started as "let's just grab something quick before the mall closes" and turned into a four-hour, six-stall crawl that I am not even slightly sorry about. If you follow me you know Jalan Alor is basically a second home, but this time we pushed further into Petaling Street too, which I don't cover nearly enough.

The char kway teow debate is never going to be settled and I'm not going to pretend I settled it, but the stall we hit near the start of Jalan Alor earns a genuine top-three spot for me this year — smoky wok hei, not too oily, and the cockles were fresh, which matters more than people admit.

Petaling Street surprised me the most. I went in expecting mostly tourist-facing stalls and instead found a noodle spot tucked in a side lane that had a line of locals rather than visitors, always a good sign. I won't spoil which one made my final top pick — that's in the video, with timestamps for each stop.

What I will say here: bring cash, bring an appetite you're not proud of, and don't plan dinner after. We tried and failed spectacularly at that part.