Michelin Guide Debuts in Malaysia With Four One-Star Restaurants

The MICHELIN Guide published its first selection for Malaysia on 13 December 2022. The MICHELIN Guide Kuala Lumpur and Penang 2023 lists 97 restaurants and gave the country its first four Michelin stars, two in the capital and two on the island of Penang.

In Kuala Lumpur, a star went to Dewakan, where chef Darren Teoh builds a tasting menu on ingredients native to Malaysia, many of them little used in fine dining; the restaurant had already been named the best in Malaysia by Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants earlier in the year. The second went to DC Restaurant by Darren Chin, whose cooking is classical French with Japanese influences.

In Penang, the stars went to two very different addresses. Restaurant Au Jardin, an 18-seat dining room in a converted warehouse in George Town, serves modern European food with local touches under chef Kim Hock Su. Auntie Gaik Lean’s Old School Eatery cooks Nyonya food, the cuisine of the Peranakan community, in a simple setting. Its owner, receiving the award at the age of 69, told the audience that life was great.

The inspectors also awarded 32 Bib Gourmands, the distinction for good cooking at moderate prices, many of them to hawker stalls and coffee shops selling a single dish, and recommended a further 61 restaurants, 34 in Kuala Lumpur and 27 in Penang. Three individual awards were made: the service award to Leanne Lim of Dewakan, the sommelier award to Mahammad Hafiz bin Abdullah of DC Restaurant, and the young chef award to Lim Yan You of Au Jardin.

The balance between the two cities was the notable feature of the guide. Penang, with a fraction of the capital’s population, has long been regarded as the country’s best place to eat, above all for its street food, and the selection confirmed that reputation in an international reference.

Malaysia was the latest step in the guide’s expansion in Southeast Asia, after Singapore in 2016 and Thailand in 2017, and before Vietnam in 2023 and the Philippines in 2025.