Lazat Malaysian Restaurant, 495 Ballarat Rd, Sunshine. Phone: 9312 7880
Lazat is a new Malaysian eatery in Sunshine, and a very welcome in that it is the suburb’s first of that denomination – AFAIK.
It’s accessed from an always busy and unlovely stretch of Ballarat Rd – miss the turn-off an you’ll be going around the block. Although we’re pleased to learn there is also access from Hampshire Rd – turn off at Chinese restaurant Golf Leaf.
Lazat occupies a building formerly home to a short-lived place called Grills Plus and, before that, a Souvlaki Hut (I think …)
Some of that fast-food vibe lives on in the set-up and decor, but we enjoy a lovely and late (for us) lunch.
Moreover, the service is spot on, our food arrives with admirable speed and there is a welcoming presence in the form of manager Francis, who has landed here after helping launch Chef Lagenda in Deer Park.
Perhaps best of all, in an area where late-opening joints are difficult to find, Lazat is open until 10pm every night of the week except Saturdays and Sundays – on which it is open until 11pm!
There’s outdoor seating and a function room available.
We enjoy having our pal Carl, a former Geelong Advertiser colleague of mine, along for the ride so can go a bit further than just a bowl of noodles or rice each.
On the other hand, us hungry boys plump for regular Malaysian eatery mainstays that mostly satisfy without really setting our worlds on fire. With one fine exception …
Curry puffs ($5.80), prawn dumplings ($6) and lobak $5.50) – all are average in the good sense of the word and are gobbled up with glee.
The star of our show is beef rendang ($16.80).
The is very mildly spiced but the gravy is deep, dark and rich and the meat is fall-apart tender.
Better yet, it’s of a far better quality than we’re mostly familiar with when ordering this dish – there’s no gristle or fat here. At all.
Our gado gado is a cause for puzzlement.
The mix of tofu, hard-boiled egg, snow peas, bok choy and broccoli is good mixed with a nice peanutty sauce.
But $14.80 seems a really steep price for such a dish.
No matter – we’ve enjoyed our feed, and Bennie and I suspect we’ll be back soonish to try such Malaysian benchmarks as Hainan chicken rice and/or mee goreng.
We take Carl to La Morenita for coffee before calling it a day.
consider the sauce 
Finally made it here for lunch today! Had the lobak and roti with satay for appetizer – both were great! Like you, we all loved the Rendang sauce, although the large pieces of beef were not quite at the fall apart stage. Curry laksa was excellent and we took half the Nasi Goreng home as we were all full. Seen some bagging of the service on UrbanSpoon but ours was exemplary. Will definitely go again,
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Hi Shell! I’ve hit this place for a cheap lunch by myself a couple of times in the past few weeks. I think it’s become a fixture. Beware of parking, though, at weekends when hordes descend on to the Chinese joint next door for yum cha.
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You’re right about the parking! We just parked at the Courts and walked – took 1 min.
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