Terry’s Kitchen is a Malaysian canteen in a CityLife church in Wantirna South – MASHAHER

A church canteen isn’t the first place I’d expect to find amazing food but Terry Tang’s Malaysian eatery helped me see the light. Every dish is cooked with joy, infused with love and served with pride at an affordable price.

You might roll up early to eat a Malaysian breakfast, cracking soft-boiled eggs into a bowl and dressing them with soy sauce and white pepper, alternating seasoned eggy spoonfuls with crunchy nibbles of sweet, coconutty kaya toast.

You could come with the kids and watch them in the playground while you sip teh tarik, Malaysian milk tea, or strong black “kopi”, which is made with coffee beans roasted with sugar and margarine.

Maybe you bring the dog and sit on the terrace to dip roti into curry sauce and, if you’re lucky, Terry will be tending the charcoal barbecue, driving spice-scented chickeny wafts into the air.

Terry Tang is from Miri, near Brunei, where his aunty ran a chicken shop, but he’s worked his way through Spanish, Italian, Korean and Japanese restaurants in Melbourne. Back in the day, when he was cooking Italian, an old nonno told him he made the best pizza in the world.

Here, cooking the food of his heritage, he’s more likely to hear he’s not making a dish right. “Everyone has an opinion,” he says, laughing. “I tell them this is Terry’s kitchen, Terry’s taste.”

Give me Terry’s taste any day. The sardine curry puffs are rich and spicy, made with tinned fish in shortcrust pastry. I like them even more when Terry tells me he made this snack because he was nostalgic for eating them on Malaysian Airlines when he was a kid, and I’m in absolute rapture when I learn his mum Mee Eian wraps them in the kitchen out the back.

Nasi lemak (coconut rice with peanuts and egg) is a staple but there’s something mysteriously good about Terry’s chilli sambal that will keep me coming back for further investigation.

The noodle dishes have a lovely touch: the lou shi fun is made with fat rice-flour squiggles and topped with marinated minced pork and squid cake.

Ko lo mee, a little-seen Sarawak dish, is a bowl of curly egg noodles with barbecued pork dressed with onion oil and pork fat: a blast.

Kueh − colourful sweets – come from a trusted supplier and are delicious, but if you’re quick, you might nab a coveted container of house-made tofu with ginger and pandan.

This unprepossessing canteen has an order-and-pay set up and customers are asked to clear their tables and sort utensils and plates into wash-up crates.

It feels like a community hub, which is only appropriate, given it’s situated in a Pentecostal megachurch. You don’t need to be called to Jesus to enjoy the food, but I bet you’ll be full of praise as you eat it.