Azalina’s Serves Malaysian Food Like No Other

The story of this restaurant is a beautiful one.

Eusope is a fifth-generation Malaysian street food vendor. Her father had a small stand where he sold noodles for 55 years, and she was raised by her grandmother, also a street food vendor, who sold nasi lemak. To say that cooking runs in her family would be an understatement.

Eusope is Mamak — an Indian-Muslim group of Malaysian people. She was born in Penang, but her family is originally from Kerala, India. Like many, they migrated to Malaysia, but passed through Sri Lanka and Fiji before landing in Penang.

Eusope left to Singapore on a culinary scholarship when she was sixteen. She ended up cooking in hotels in pastry, which allowed her to travel around the world before coming to San Francisco in the early 2000s; she’d eventually start selling food at the farmers’ markets to make ends meet before joining the La Cocina program in 2012, which helped turn her into a restaurateur.

Fast forward to today, Azalina’s restaurant in the Tenderloin is a complex culmination of her diverse upbringing and decades of experience. “When people ask why I don’t make the food the same food as other restaurants, it’s because I don’t know how to be authentic,” says Eusope. “I have never really cooked Malaysian food until I came here — I can’t cook like your mom and grandmothers. But I try to bring flavor through my memory and experience and I just cook the way I know, and I hope what I make reminds you of the way your mother lovingly cooked for you. That’s what I’m going for.”

Let’s talk food then.

The food comes in the form of a tasting menu, each dish inspired by the Indian, Chinese, Mamak, and Malay dishes Eusope grew up eating. “Each of these dishes are a representation of what Malaysia is to me specifically,” says Eusope.

The menu changes every four weeks and comes in a two-course and four-course option (go with the four, of course). The plating has a bit of finesse without being precious, and there are dishes that you’ve likely never encountered before because they come from her mind and experiences.

The first course on the current menu is a tomato shorba, a spiced Indian soup. “The village I grew up in had some Indian neighbors that would make this during monsoon season,” says Eusope. Her version uses roasted Early Girl dry-farmed tomatoes, which are in season right now, and is finished with a zingy herb sauce and served with a rice flour rosette along with tapioca pearls for texture.

For the next course, there’s a dumpling dish inspired by Chinese zongzi that subs softshell crab and trout roe in lieu of ground pork and lap cheong, since Eusope doesn’t eat pork. For the main event, there’s a rendang unlike any you’ve had before: instead of the typical beef, Eusope uses veal shank and serves it over turmeric rice (she was inspired by Italian osso bucco). “I plate it like an Italian grandmother. It’s very comforting,” says Eusope.

You don’t have to save room for dessert because you don’t have a choice — it’s your fourth course. She does a bingka, a dessert found all over southeast Asia. The Mamak version she grew up was made out of cassava root and was served with a banana porridge; Eusope adds her cheffy spin by substituting plantains and serves hers in a strawberry porridge.

This menu runs for four weeks — by the time you read this, the dishes may be different, yet they’ll still be inspired.

What are we drinking?

To pair with the complex and flavorful fare, take your pick of beer and wine. On the wine front, Eusope recommends one of the California Wines from Carboniste: “Because our flavors are big and bold, some of the wine’s effervescence cuts through the richness. The flavor complexity becomes more rounded.”

But where things get more interesting are in the non-alcoholic mocktails, from which there are five to choose from. Her favorite is the tamarind and date soda, which features a base of roasted-then-dehydrated dates simmered in tamarind extract. The dates are pureed and coconut soda water is added to it. “It’s sweet and sour and refreshing; it’s a staple drink in my household growing up,” says Eusope.

There’s a story with the space, too.

The charming space was designed with the help of students from the San Francisco Art Institute. “I wanted the feeling of being outside and inside someone’s home at the same time,” says Eusope.

To accomplish this, you’ll notice plenty of murals and plants lining the walls. Arches and pillars frame the kitchen, mimicking the wooden framing of houses in Penang. “It’s as if you’re sitting outside and looking into rows of houses,” says Eusope.

On the Leavenworth side, there are artifacts from Eusope’s literal home: a mortar and pestle, a coconut grater, some of her grandmother’s bread molds. Look further and you’ll see sarongs and saris that her family has worn over the years hanging from an open window. It’s all very personal.

What’s next? A focus on food.

… But not in the restaurant. Eusope has a line of jarred food products that she hopes to get in more stores. “Right now Rainbow carries our whole selection,” says Eusope. “The future is to grow this business.”

In addition to hoping to continue to operate the restaurant and having a positive impact on the Tenderloin, Eusope also has a forthcoming cookbook titled “I Am Mamak” with author Francis Lam due out in Spring 2025.

Omar Mamoon is a San Francisco-based writer & cookie dough professional. Follow him on Instagram. Follow Resy, too.