Hasni “Jeff” Ghazali, the chef and co-owner of the popular Malaysian restaurant, Bentara, got a request he couldn’t refuse.

Ghazali will be putting in 15-hour workdays this week as the personal chef to Malaysian Prime Minister Dato’ Sri Mohd Najib Tun Abdul Razak and his family, who will be in New York and Washington on a diplomatic mission.

“It has been very exciting,” Ghazali said Monday after entertaining a press contingent from Malaysia, who were intrigued that Americans are fond of their country’s cuisine. “They want to know how a Malaysian restaurant came to be in New Haven.”

MALAYSIAN food doesn’t get much play on the American restaurant scene, which is surprising, given the popularity of other Asian cuisines. With the exception of satay, a Malaysian dish that has thoroughly penetrated the American market, Malaysian specialties remain a little exotic, even to our 21st-century global palates. But those coconut curries, tantalizing spice blends and unfamiliar menu names are well worth searching out. And New Haven’s Bentara restaurant, serving cuisine from the province of Kelantan in a quietly sophisticated setting, is a good place to start.

Chef Hasni "Jeff" Ghazali, one of the more popular Malaysian chefs in America, runs the 150-seat Bentara near Yale, New Haven. From whipping up a sweetly spicy Roti Canal to a pineapple-laced vegetable pickle to savory chicken dishes, he has been popularizing one of the most exotic foods found in America for over a decade.

Chef Hasni came to America to study computer programming and worked as one for over five years. But Malay food had been on his mind for many, many years. As a boy he would wake up at three in the morning, and deliver the delicacies my mother had prepared at home to coffee shops and hawkers. Later he helped his mother at the restaurant she eventually opened. In the United states he tired of being a computer programmer and the thought of running a restaurant challenged him. Chef Hasni started Bentara over 10 years ago with an American business partner.

Hasni "Jeff" Ghazali took a gamble on the Ninth Square 12 years ago, when no one else would. He was honored this week by aldermen for leading a "revival" in the heart of the city.

Ghazali, who owns Bentara restaurant, choked back tears as he accepted an aldermanic citation from Aldermen Alex Rhodeen and Bitsie Clark at Monday?s full board meeting.

The Malaysian-born restaurateur and his business partner, Bill Christian, moved Bentara from East Haven to the Ninth Square in 1997, when that region of downtown was a ghost town.

The move "signaled the beginning of Ninth Square?s revival and confirmed that a business could thrive there," said Rhodeen.