Malaysia: Dietary restrictions

Being a Muslim country, finding halal food in Malaysia is easy, but most Chinese restaurants are not halal — ask if in doubt. Meals at Malay restaurants and Western fast food restaurants like McDonalds, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Pizza Hut are halal. Restaurants at major hotels serve halal food. Generally local Muslims will eat at Western, Chinese and Indian eateries if there is a halal sign or a framed picture of Quranic verses on the walls at the payment counter. Most of the restaurants tend to display their halal certification or halal sign on their places.Halal certification was awarded and enforced by government agency usually JAKIM.

Vegetarianism is well understood and every restaurant will be able to come up with something on request, but don't rely entirely on menu descriptions: innocuous-seeming dishes like "fried vegetables" etc will often contain pork bits, shrimp paste (belacan), fish sauce etc. Indian restaurants usually have very good vegetarian selections, and purely vegetarian Chinese restaurants (often serving remarkable "mock meat" products made from tofu, gluten etc) are also not uncommon. Getting vegetarian food in rural areas, especially those near fishing villages, may be more difficult, but learning some basic Malay vocabulary will go a long way to help you get your message across — see the Malay phrasebook. Veganism is rarely understood in this part of the world and is largely mistaken as a synonym for vegetarianism.