Dining · Kuala Lumpur
Beta
Raymond Tham's Kuala Lumpur restaurant turns the tasting menu into a journey through Malaysia's regions, from a Kedah pancake to Borneo's wild ginger.
A map of Malaysia, course by course
Beta opened in Kuala Lumpur in 2018 and sits on the ground floor of Cormar Suites on Jalan Perak. Its head chef and co-owner, Raymond Tham, uses the tasting menu to tell the story of Malaysia through its regional cooking.
The main menu is called Tour of Malaysia, and it travels the country in stages, north, east (including Sabah and Sarawak), central and south. “We focused on cultures and stories from different regions in Malaysia,” Tham said of the 2026 version. A shorter menu has run beside it in past seasons.
Regional dishes, rewritten
Each stop takes a local dish or ingredient and reworks it. In the 2026 menu, peknga, a Kedah coconut pancake, comes shaped like an English crumpet, with salted fish, sambal and belimbing buluh, an idea Tham traces to his years abroad. A tapioca bread with red chilli emulsion recalls the food shortages of the Japanese occupation of Malaya.
The east is represented by a seared scallop with tuhau, a wild ginger native to Borneo, alongside pinasakan, a Kadazandusun dish. The main course is Penang Cherry Valley duck, dry-aged for 14 days and grilled; Tham was among the first chefs to champion local duck. Dessert turns teh tarik into an ice cream made with Cameron Highlands tea.
Earlier menus worked the same way. In late 2023 a tempeh course drew on Johor Bahru’s mee rebus, a baby squid dish on Kelantan’s ketupat sotong with a tempoyak foam, and a watermelon “hinava” offered a plant-based take on the Sabahan raw-fish salad.
Local materials
The Malaysian thread runs beyond the food. Plates are made from Malaysian clay by local potters, and watercolours by a local artist hang in the room, which Michelin calls “quite stunning”. There are optional cocktail and wine pairings, and an add-on course of Sarawak heirloom Lawas rice with abalone, caviar and kaffir lime oil.
Beta entered the Michelin selection in December 2022 and won its star in 2023, a year after the guide arrived in Kuala Lumpur and Penang. It holds one star in the 2026 Michelin Guide Malaysia.
Sources: The Star; Michelin Guide; Grazia Malaysia
Nearby