The overriding objective of this article was to explore the impact of the Asian Economic Crisis on household food consumption expenditure in Malaysia. We estimated Engel's expenditure elasticities for food items using aggregated cross-sectional data from the 1993/94 and 1998/99 Household Expenditure Surveys. The estimated results clearly indicate that the expenditure elasticities of away-from-home food decreased in middle and upper income classes, those of at-home expenditures for rice, meat, fruits and vegetables increased in a situation where severe economic recession accompanied with drastic decline in asset prices in 1997-98. However, we found the expenditure elasticities for low income class reversed direction compared to its counterparts. This result is partly attributed to the fact that the negative impact of the Asian Economic Crisis was more severe on middle and upper income classes than low income class.