A Guide to Vancouver Street Food would be Kate Moss–skinny. Hot dogs and roasted chestnuts—hardly even a pamphlet. The closest we get to what street food could be are the rows of steaming stalls at the Richmond Night Market.

Meanwhile, in the Malaysian city of Penang, you can buy a 60-page book that identifies 67 kinds of portable snacks that are available, starting with ais kacang, the chilled dessert best eaten when it’s 30 degrees in the shade of the little stand where they shave the ice and layer it with red beans, corn kernels, and syrup… Oh right, we have Popsicle carts. But until you can lay waste to the food of Melaka, Kuching, and Kuala Lumpur, we also have new restaurant Chilli Padi.

Barely four weeks old, this small spot is on Fraser Street just south of 41st Avenue. Think buses, free street parking—handy to get to. On a drizzly Sunday night, we were initially the only customers, but we looked like more. A vast mirror visually doubles the room, including the gas fireplace that Adam Rahman, who co-owns the restaurant with his wife, Linda, clicked on as we walked in the door.

Brown faux rocks frame the faux flames and form a deep band, like a vertical crazy-paving path, just below the crimson-painted, fabric-draped ceiling. There are six tables and two booths, each with a little tea-light lantern. The overall effect is cozy.

I wondered why such a small spot imports its own spices. The reason: “The chili we use back home is slightly different,” Rahman said in a later phone interview. Turns out that while this is Rahman’s first restaurant, he gained his chops by running the Malaysia Kitchen catering company for four years.

Malaysian cooking is the ultimate fusion cuisine—a vibrant mix of Indian curries and butter chicken; Chinese rice and noodle dishes; Thai fare; even Eurasian recipes that, filtered through local ingredients and techniques, take on a fresh and identifiably Malaysian identity.

Linda does most of the cooking at Chilli Padi. Ramping up the multiculti mix is a kitchen colleague from the Middle East, hence the tabbouleh and falafel on the menu. Burgers and fish and chips? That’s because the younger generation can’t always cope with chilies, Rahman says.

Over the next hour, the room filled up: two guys eating solo, a couple of families, us the lone Anglos (all good signs), everyone there, we figured, for tastes of home. The roti canai may not be the flakiest in town (Banana Leaf’s are my current benchmark), but they’re brutally hot when they come to the table.

The dipping sauce is thick enough to scoop, and so addictive that we ate it by the spoonful, until the only things left were the leaves, stems, and an occasional peppercorn that explained its complex curry flavour. Beef rendang is an authentic Malaysian dish, a dry curry with the soft, whiskery texture that dry coconut gives. Add citric notes of lemongrass and kaffir lime, chili warmth, and beef chunks cooked for four hours, and the results are what you would imagine.

Chunkier than sauce, sambal is more a spicy chutney that, here, you can order with mussels or prawns. But how often do you see mackerel on the menu? Bookended by cucumber slices, the two little deep-fried fish lay side by side on a platter.

The sambal was so addictive I’d buy it by the bottle and eat it with a spoon. Chili attacks can be instant or stealthy. This one—I timed it—allows you 18 seconds to relish the fruity sharp-sweetness before the heat kicks in. Now that’s foreplay.

Rahman says they can make any noodle or rice dish vegetarian. Good to know, since almost all of the vegetable plates contain meat or fish. Lemak cabbage (lemak means “cooked with coconut milk”) contains bits of fish ball, tofu, red-pepper strips, and cabbage cooked to that teeter-totter point between softness and crispness, all in a thin coconut sauce that’s the pale yellow of primroses. No huge spice here; just a gentle, creamy dish for when you need cosseting.

The menu is posted on-line at www.chillipadi.ca/, and you can call for takeout. Aimed at kids from the high school across the street and residents of the neighbourhood, lunchtime specials of fried noodles, fried rice, and shawarma and tikka wraps are $3.99, pop included. Pleasant people, efficient service, and did I say “deal”? Apart from shellfish, mains are $7 or $8. Our bill, pre-tip, was $29 and change.