Restoran Hatinie

If you’re looking for some nasi lauk action this Ramadhan, Restoran Hatinie is worth a visit. It’s got a sinful range of dishes to choose from, including kawah dishes as well as the different perciks. You might liken it to a one-stop pasar Ramadhan. But let’s start with the basics for those of you with an inner kampung soul: the sambal belacan is good. The texture is just right, not dry and clumpy, and the belacan is not too strong that you feel you’re eating belacan on its own. More importantly, it’s got kick. (Read: reasonably pedas).

And what better way to enjoy a side dish of sambal if not with fish, right? Ya, what do you feel like having? Salted fish? Fried fish? They have both, each with several selections. If your inner kampung self is feeling really kampung, we recommend any of the salted fish or fried kembung rebus with plain rice. However, the bawal is also yummy-juicy and has the right kind of crusty kunyit coating over it. Or, if you’re into kettle “spare parts”, they also have fried lungs and liver.

While I maintain that anything durian based should be banned from existence, there’s sambal tempoyak here and it goes down well with many of the patrons. If your taste buds are kinky like that, whack some onto your rice and mix it all to mush. It seems that’s the only way to have it.

Those big on ulam – or if you’re half rabbit – Hatinie is also the place to go. The ulam spread is probably one of the best in Klang Valley, no joke. We recommend ulam raja for amateurs and the tenggek burung for those looking for a slight citrus-y zing. For the latter, be sure to pick the young shoots. These are smaller leaves and are slightly light-green. The young shoots aren’t chewy, so you won’t feel like you’re eating a mango tree. More...

Gaucho Grill

It’s hard to imagine being served a plate of dates in a steak restaurant bit well it is still the fasting month. Service at Gaucho is excellent and the restaurant too has a really nice feel to it. It’s colours are warm, reds and woods giving a sort of modern ranch guesthouse feel to it.

There’s a nice salad and soup bar that pretty much comes with all meals and roomy booths to put your feet up in. Pity it’s at Chulan Square, a very prominent yet rather overlooked strip of International restaurants. Most of the restaurants here are barely full because somehow passing by here just seems like an afterthought. It akes focus to actually consciously stop here. More’s the pity though because Gaucho is a decent place to have dinner and drinks.

However after peeking into crazy buffets and crowds of people at Pasar Ramadhans, the uncrowded nature of Gaucho is a bit of a relief. You can talk here, privately and linger over your steaks.

Right, to the food. Starters can either come in a large dish of fried morsels or you can order up some tapas. The squid is cunningly wrapped in almonds before frying. This gives it a really nice crunch, not as oily as some of the battered ones and crispier than breadcrumbs. Mmm… I like squid like this. Comes with a very nice yogurt dip.
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Andalus Restaurant

Meandering around to the back roads behind Jalan Ampang, I was astonished to find that it’s now a little bit Arab. No less than three Arabic restaurants have sprung up in different degrees of deco and brightness. During fasting month the after dusk hours make these outlets a hive of activities as people perk up with the promise of rice cooked slow with heavy meats, a strong dose of Arab coffee and a toke from the many shishas.

So which one to go to? One, that is quite full of people is flooded with fluorescent light. The other though slightly dimmer, is still a little too bright for me. I confess I do like my Middle-Eastern restaurants smoky, dark and a little mysterious. Andalus has the most ambience of all three. It is also apparently where some of our Arab friends come in order to have affordable and half decent Arabic food. So this is where my friends and I decided to grab a seat and start the night by ordering a mint shesha (rather cheap at RM13.00 with limitless coal).

Happily when the homous tahina came, we found it to be delicious. It was creamy and fragrant with good olive oil. Pita bread came in plastic bags to keep the moistness. Even before we ordered anything else, the homous was all gone. We washed this all down with a tall glass of limejuice with mint. Have it without the sugar syrup as the sourness is more refreshing. Perusing through the menu we decided on a Chicken Briyani and the Atlas Lamb, which is a tagine of lamb cooked with preserved lemons, prunes, almonds and sesame seeds for the next phase of the meal.

Expecting the conical shaped claypot tagine I was amused to find the lamb served in a flat dish. More...

Sao Nam

It was one of those rainy Sunday nights where most of the usual hawkers were closed. Hankering for something different, we arrived at Sao Nam with images of sour, sweet dishes in our heads. Nothing like rain to awaken hunger in the tummy. The Sao Nam at Plaza Damas is a nice place for a rainy night. You can sit outdoors under the covered sidewalk and enjoy cool breezes in an otherwise very hot city.

There’s a whole special menu at the back, some you need to pre-order but I’m here for the Goi Mang Cut or the prawn and mangosteen salad. It never ceases to amaze me how delicious Indochinese salads are. Vietnamese uses familiar ingredients like Thai but with it’s own twist. Chewing through the food its easy to imagine the joined borders and love of fresh greens and fruits coupled with essentials like fish sauce and tender meats. This is a signature salad and marries the juicy, tongue tingling mangosteen and fresh, briny prawns to perfection. It is then mixed with a Vietnamese vinaigrette, a combination of vinegar and squeezed citrusy-sour fruits. For texture they mix in some dried coconut and strips of salted squid. So delicious…

I tried the beef in a bamboo tube next. This one is oily with tender beef, a little bit like the Cambodian Luc Lac except it has more gravy and finely chopped herbs like mint and kafir lime interred thoroughly within it’s depth. Best thing about this dish is that it’s full of sliced onions adding mellow sweetness to the gravy. You eat this with a combination of starfruit slices, lettuce and more Vietnamese ulam in rice paper. More...

Lagoon Seafood Restaurant

Mmm, crabs … when you crave them, you really crave them. Your fingers twitch and tentacles sprout out of your head. Well, the next time you have crab craving, try out the Lagoon Seafood Restaurant. There’s nothing like plain-grilled crabs to really enjoy their sweet taste without the distractions of gravy and condiments. Another simple way is to boil them with a little bit of salt, but that means you’ll have water-logged flesh and your fingers wrinkle like prunes.

We recommend grilled crabs at this restaurant.

The minimum order is two crabs, served halved or quartered – probably not enough unless you’re eating alone. Prices depend on the season but they’re definitely cheaper than in the city or suburbs. Regulars testify to some seriously pumped-up crab claws, so look forward to sinking your teeth in some thick, white flesh. Grilled plain, the flesh is firmer and sticks to the bone. Some chilli paste on the side will add a little zing.

Another favourite is the sweet-and-sour crab. Crab-wise, it’s not all that fantastic, but the sauce goes beautifully with man tao (a plain bun), which are pretty d*mn good here. You can have them steamed or fried, though the latter are more delicious. The outer part of the bread is crispy and brown, and the inner is sweet, white and fluffy. Dip it in the sauce and mmm … go straight to heaven. More...

Luna

I don't normally review bars or clubs but since Luna serves quite decent pizzas and the sky view is breathtaking, I decided to give it a go, just this time. If there was a competition for the 'Coolest Restaurants In Malaysia', I am sure someone would nominate them. It's a bar restaurant actually, for lack of a better term.

There is the usual finger foods (okay, they serve only finger food), but I'd recommend you the pizzas and the chicken wings. Now, the pizza comes to you square, thin crusted (you can have a choice of thick or thin crust) and is surprisingly quite good. They have a variety of pizzas on offer so you can pick and choose from a selection of Mediterranean (which is vegetarian), Salmon, Cheese or Italian. My favourite is Italian (RM35) which comes with pepperoni and grilled mushroom toppings with a mozarella cheese spread. More...

Ikan Bakar behind Estana

“It’s located where?!?” I exclaimed.

“In the car park…and make sure you go during lunchtime and not a minute later because the food disappears fast…oh that sambal…I could just drink it on it’s own, ” my colleague replied with a distant look in her eyes.

My curiosity was peaked from this conversation and I just knew that I had to try the mysterious ikan bakar place located in the car park behind the Estana Curry House on Sultan Ismail. It was still two hours till lunch and I was eagerly counting down the minutes, after all the places that usually taste best are in the most obscure locations.

To find this gem you have to walk through the hot dusty car park meandering past the vehicles parked in any which way. It’s situated in the little section in the corner of the lot by the trees. A tattered tin roof along with barebones tables and chairs scattered around is the scene you’ll find once you arrive, along with a crowd lining up for food and waiting for available tables. The area that is most crowded is where the food is laid out and this is where you have to use some elbow action to be able to grab at the best dishes and pieces of fish. This shacks serves typical nasi campur with a huge array of Malay dishes freshly prepared each day.

From ayam goreng to beef rendang, kangkung belacan to spicy tauhu just about any dish can be found here during lunch but it gets snapped up pretty fast. By 1:45pm you’ll be lucky to get a little sauce leftover from the dishes with your rice.
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Blue Boy

Blue Boy, a name that normally strikes intrigue due to the fact it is often mistaken for a rather unsavory establishment with a similar name. But this Blue Boy is wholesome, a place you can bring your momma to and a real hot spot during lunch and early dinner for those seeking a vegetarian option. The reason for this is that contrary to most vegetarian places that mainly serves economy rice, this place has a wide selection of local dishes that can make you renounce meat- well almost.

Blue Boy did not originally set out to serve vegetarian only. Originally a non-vegetarian place, it transformed organically into a fully capacitated vegetarian food court when their owners turned vegetarian some 20 years ago. Wrap your mind around this- fully vegetarian Nasi Lemak, Char Kuey Teow, Mee Jawa, Yong Tau Foo, Prawn Mee, Lam Mee, Curry Laksa and even Assam Laksa! Now how does one go about creating such creations with a vegetarian substitute? The answer is very simply and incredibly very tastily. Unbelievable to most carnivorous meat eaters such as we, meatless substitutes are actually very tasty.

Let us enlighten you on the finer points of vegetarian food, as we were ourselves at Blue Boy Mansion. For starters we had the Yong Tau Foo, which is normally stuffed with flour and fish paste, but this time it is a mock fish paste. Then came Nasi Lemak with mock Rendang Chicken and also Sambal Sotong that gave us a shock as it looked and tasted exactly like the real thing! As per recommendation we had it with the Sambal Petai as well. It was mind-blowing although the sambal petai had to be ordered separately. To substitute the normal ikan bilis, they serve it with crispy potato slivers with a saltish hint. If you closed your eyes, you could swear it was ikan bilis.
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Canton Fare

So we heard of this newbie at Plaza Damansara which opened just over a month ago. And yes, the market is already bursting with Canton cuisine so what's one more? Fear not, there's more than meets the eye. True, at first glance, their menu isn't that different. But I beg to differ when it comes to its quality and variety.

Take for instance the roasted section – charsiew, siew yok and roast duck. It's been done to death and the mere mention would probably have me rolling my eyes – AGAIN??!! But here, it's an art that's been mastered to perfection. The roast pork is crisp yet succulent, the charsiew has the right combo of sweetness, crunch and fat but the real winner is the duck. It's flawless to say the least and I dare say it's one of the best in KL, or even the country. I can vouch that the only other place that serves roast duck this good is across the globe at Bayswater London at 10X the price! The owner prides in the 10 hours preparation combined with the 3 hours of slow grilling to achieve this sinful pleasure. If you give one day prior notice, the chef can make to order roast goose too and I heard this is THE prize dish. Judging by what I've sampled, this goose warrants a follow up.

The rest that followed impressed us too. The deep fried prawns with sa zhi sauce is akin to salad prawns but the freshness makes the prawns exquisite with each bite. We wonder how the prawns could be so succulently fresh. Kudos to the stirfried egg white with crabmeat too. It's simple yet so tasty and the sauce has just the right consistency. The seafood wan tan hor deserves applause. I can taste the 'wok hei' due to the chef's expertise in wok frying with high heat, thus little oil is used. The sauce is so yummy, thanks to the richness from runny eggs poured over the dish. More...

Pak Nor Satar & Otak Otak

I was biting into a pyramid of fishy goodness. It was sweet, slighty sticky with strings of coconut in it and the taste of newly caught fish glistening in silver nets. Somehow the blend of coconut and fresh fish makes one think of sun, surf and sea the essence of Terengganu. Earlier we were just driving from one long windswept beach to the next thinking of irrational non-city slicker thoughts- like building a sekuci (a local sampan), living a nomadic beach existence and planting coconuts. Such is the appeal of the East Coast, it allows you to drift on modest wholesome dreams.

Back to the Satar. It comes wrapped in coconut leaves, after being stuck on long spits and smoked on hot embers. Made out of fish, grated coconut, santan and a bit of sago- it's a favourite snack here. While we were there, car after car came to buy dozens of it to take home. That and the sea air makes this snack really addictive yet small enough so you won't feel too guilty about scarfing down a truckload of these tasty little morsels.

Pak Nor (the father who started the stall) also makes otak-otak from tenggiri and other fishes. The otak-otak is not as juicy as the satar but has a really smouldering flavour. Best thing is that at the centre of each otak-otak is a chunk of fish. Yesiree... orang ganu ni suka ikang... More...

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