7 Tips to Solve Malaysians’ Biggest Daily Dilemma: Where to Makan

On any regular day, Malaysians face this one great life question: deciding where to makan. It’s already hard enough to decide when you’re on your own (especially when you want to eat EVERYTHING) but add a few more people into the mix and, walau wei, what should only take a minute can take up to half an hour. #TrueStory

To help reduce this struggle for you guys, we’ve put together some tips to help solve this very real and true issue that only Malaysians know all too well.

1. Pick a new place that all of you have never been to before

When you’re deciding where to makan, most people would provide the same suggestions over and over again. There’s nothing wrong with that; we’re creatures of habit. I mean, it’s the same reason we always go to certain mamaks as well.

However, instead of going through the hassle of having everyone list down their favourite places, why not head to a totally new place? Whether it’s one that you guys have been meaning to check out or something that’s been getting a lot of buzz lately, you could use the opportunity to scope out this new place to see if it’s a good fit, both food and budget wise.

2. Appoint a new leader to decide where to eat each time

Okay, this may sound like a scary idea but hey, we all have to eat, right? Everyone can take turns being a leader for a day and deciding where the group goes to eat.

Source: The Star Online

Someone needs to keep track of who has already been the leader too, but we’d recommend going by alphabetical order to make things easier.

Of course, they should take people’s dietary restrictions and budget into consideration as well but ultimately, taking turns this way can help save time on deciding on a place, thus giving you more time to enjoy your meal too!

3. Pick a place to eat by drawing a note at random

The concept here is simple. Everyone writes down a place to eat on a piece of paper, fold it, and place it into a bowl or mug.

Source: Alyssa Anne Photography

Then, one person can select a piece of paper by random. That piece of paper determines where everyone is going out for a meal that day. Easy!

4. Create a food tournament bracket

Sometimes, we can learn a few new tricks from others. In this particular case, a six-year-old had a brilliant idea on how to decide what to eat. Using the concept of a tournament bracket, he had different foods go up against one another and the ultimate winner was pizza! Then again, pizza always wins…

Source: Imgur

This ingenious idea allows you to put restaurants up against each other and/or have different foods be the contenders. Plus point is that everyone gets to vote too and it’ll surely get a few laughs going pre-lunch!

5. Propose an option instead of a question

Basically, instead of asking people where they want to eat, why not start the convo by making the recommendation?

As opposed to saying, “Where do you guys want to makan?”, try going with, “Hey, let’s go to [insert restaurant name]?”. That way, if anyone has any objections, they will say so straight away. If you’d like, you can start with something more general like, “Spicy food?”

You can then ask them to make their own suggestions and it will get the ball rolling in making that decision. To ensure you come to a decision in a jiffy, set a timer to make sure you guys don’t end up spending 20 minutes trying to decide. We’d go with 5 minutes max.

6. Make your own wheel of food

If you want to keep things way more fun, you can also create your own wheel of food! Taking a cue from game shows like ‘Wheel of Fortune’, all you need is a list of different places to go to or different cuisines; then, get someone to spin the wheel.

Source: Wheeldecide

You can even turn it into a game for fun!

Sure, it may initially take you a bit of time to put the actual wheel together but it’s worth it considering all the time you’ll save in the future!

7.  Let your music taste decide on what to eat

We’re sure you’re wondering how that works, right? Did you know that there’s some pretty cool research done by Professor Robin Dando of Cornell University in New York that states that our moods have the ability to inhibit or amplify all sorts of different flavours? Meaning, the mood that you’re in at THAT moment can actually determine which flavours you enjoy more! #MindBlown

Using this info, IPC Shopping Centre in Mutiara Damansara explored this concept with the Professor and it led to an interesting solution. Partnering together with Spotify, IPC has come up with ‘The Mood Menu’ as part of its new app.

Want to try it out? All you need to do is download the IPC app and look for ‘The Mood Menu’ function. Then, just connect your Spotify account to the app and it will recommend you stuff to eat based on your recent listening history on Spotify! Music, mood, and food? What can be any better than this?!

The best part is that it’s available for both Android and Apple too.

So, if you can’t decide on what to eat, why not give IPC’s ‘The Mood Menu’ a go and try out their cool feature for yourself!