It's odd sometimes where you can find seafood restaurants. Overlooking the runway past the old Subang airport, lie South Sea. It serves its seafood fresh from tanks and cooked tasty.
“Okay, grab a prawn by the tail and peel it off like a coat.” So I grasped the slippery tail and slipped off the slick shell. It shrugged off smoothly leaving quivering pink flesh just balanced on the bottom shell. Of course at the same time I was also trying to suck off the juices from the said shell. It always pains me that parts of the prawn that soaks the marinade and sauce is the part that people discard.
The mantis prawns (which looks like a langoustine) came to our table hot and crisp. At South Sea it is fried in butter with scallions, garlic and chillies forming a crunchy exterior. You can munch most of the legs and shell after you’ve sunk your teeth into the soft, succulent flesh. It has that juice dripping-down-your-chin appeal to it. I imagine the skin can make a great bar snack, crispy, salty and addictive. Don’t waste the carapace either, because you can crunch that down too and lick all the goodness right down to the gritty eyeballs.
Earlier we started the meal with some geoduck sashimi. The seafood here is über-fresh since South Sea has a modest array of tanks outside. The weird-looking geoducks were fished out alive before sliced into sashimi. I seldom order geoduck but when I do, sashimi is the way to go. It has the consistency of firm abalone and delicious with wasabi-soy. They also provide a hearty clear broth, where you can dip in your slivers of geoduck cooking it into tender clam pieces. It’s the myriad textures of this deep burrowing sea critter that makes it a popular request at fresh seafood restaurants. The broth itself is good enough to slurp on its own while you await the next dish.
The fish here is simply steamed garoupa, firm and flaky. My sister claimed the head straight away. The fish is fat so the cheeks are puffy and full of meat. The soya sauce itself is delicious poured over rice.
"End your meal with some crispy lotus filled pancakes"
For the green quotient we had kailan done two ways. The shoots are blanched and leaves deep-fried crispy with garlic into the consistency of seaweed. Japanese tofu is served in a sizzling dish, a confection of sliced chicken and oyster mushrooms. This gives you a different texture from all the seafood and readies you for the noodles.
Okay the noodle dish is tasty, tasty here. It sort of took me by surprise as I usually don't put much stock into fried noodles in seafood restaurants. This dish is a yummy stir fry of fine-strand egg noodles, with fat beansprouts, meat and egg. That's the good thing about South Sea. Its non-seafood offerings are equally delicious as the seafood. Pity we were full by this time because dessert is one of my favourites. Crispy wafer-thin Chinese pancakes filled with lotus paste. It always feels sinful eating this after such a huge meal. Somehow knowing that the dough is deep-fried makes it worse. But I can’t help it, I always sneak a few in my napkin for later. We also had a sea coconut and longan tong shui. It’s a sweet soup that brings the meal together in the most pleasurable way.
More Photos To Drool On
The underbelly of the beast before the peeling commenced
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Foodster's Verdict
South Sea
Address:
No. 229, Jalan Dua A, Kampung Baru Subang, 40000 Selangor Tel:
Open:
11am-12am daily
Pros:
A large dining area both outdoors and indoors
Cons:
It's dark and you can easily miss the restaurant at night
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