A LI YAA – Kuala Lumpur

We celebrated our first day of Chinese New Year 2025 lunch at Aliyaa, a restaurant specialized in authentic Sri Lankan cuisine. Having looked through the menu earlier, we quickly ordered what each of us wanted. For drinks, hubby and I had their masala tea. The sugar packs are at the side to put based on your own liking. Evelyn had the Ceylon Ginger Tea. We started with Fish Cutlets which were really delicious when paired with its sauce. Next came the Nandu rasam. Unlike normal rasam, it is made with blue swimmers crab and is slightly spicy. I love this. For mains, we ordered the Crab Meat cooked in Jaffna style (so yummy, and I can't have enough), and Mutton Paal Poriyal (tender mutton cooked with rich and creamy coconut milk sauce and aromatic spices). For veggies, we had the Amma's Eggplant Salad to go with the mains. We had these with string hoppers and roti. We ended our meal with dessert - sweet appam. We really enjoyed the food and the service rendered by the staff.

We had dinner with some great friends here. They absolutely loved it. The starter was fried vegetable cutlets which was crispy and tasfully done . We had the vegetarian set which came with a variety of perfectly cooked items from beetroot, drum stick sothi, onion and garlic with fenugreek curry, coconut chambol , mango rasam, bitter gourd , Amma’s eggplant pal curry and leek stir fry. The Jaffna crab curry and the mutton poriyal was excellent too, we also had the chicken curry . For dessert we had the best appam ever and wattalapam was very good too . The set came with rice and red rice string hoppers. We had the soft red rice Puttu with the coconut chambol which complemented the dining experience. For drinks we had the lychee watermelon juice and blended coconut which was delicious. The waiters were very hospitable and the ambience was superb too

Very tasty n auténticoLove the crab meat curry v juicy & tender!Butter gourd curry was slightly bitter but still goodEggplant dish was good and interesting.Good to know many plant based vegetarian optionsThanks heaps👍

I have been here twice. The food is very nice. Quiet ambiance. Ask the waiter for suggestions. Usually they are very friendly. They have decent vegetarian options. The drumstick rasam was very nice. The wattalappam was nice but can be a bit too much for one person.

My partner and I had high expectations when dining at Aliyaa, especially after learning that they were featured in the Michelin Guide. While there were some highs, there were plenty of lows that left us feeling underwhelmed and quite disappointed.We were excited to experience Aliyaa, but when we were ready to order, we were informed that they were only serving the Christmas set menu. This should have been communicated earlier, ideally when we made our reservation. Nonetheless, we decided to proceed with the Christmas set menu.So, what stood out? High praise goes to the drinks, the shrimp and scallops with pappadum, and the grilled red snapper, which were definite highlights. For dessert, we tried the Sri Lankan love cake and the appam. The love cake was dense, sweet, and nutty, but unfortunately, the flavors felt somewhat confusing. The appam was good, but the way it was served puzzled us: we initially thought only one appam was provided, but then the second one arrived after we had finished the first. This staggered serving seemed unnecessary and a bit disorganized.Overall, the dinner was okay, but the service definitely needs improvement. It was especially disappointing because my partner had been wanting to visit this place for a long time, and it didn’t live up to our expectations.