Phone: (03) 9890 0972
Cuisine: Malaysian, Hawker
One of the things I miss most about Melbourne is the hawker style food you get in Box Hill. So when we found out that the place we were heading to was shut, we popped into this place.
The setup of the restaurant was done quite nicely. They managed to renovate the open kitchen to show off the chefs at work (it used to be La Porchetta) and the tables have a cute little drawer were they place serviettes in.
Chicken nasi lemak
My theory generally is that if you walk into a restaurant which specialises in a particular cuisine, it would be silly to not order something of that cuisine. Hence the nasi lemak - coconut rice with chicken sambal and ikan bilis (dried fish). Can't say much for the ikan bilis as I'm not a huge fan, but it was crispy and tasted like it should. The coconut rice was amazing and went superbly with the chicken sambal which was bursting with flavour and just spicy enough for my liking.
Ipoh horfun
The Ipoh horfun was also quite good, although I was a little disappointed in the lack of 'things' in the noodle soup. The steamed chicken was tender and full of flavour, although it seemed very much like Hainanese chicken - even the dipping sauce was the same. Was not very impressed when I found a piece of chicken skin which had not been cleaned properly.
Pork ribs claypot rice
When they warned us that this dish would take longer, I certainly did not expect it to arrive after we had nearly demolished the other two dishes. And it wasn't all that worth the wait. The ribs were well flavoured, but were quite dry and a little on the overcooked side. The rice was the biggest let down though. Claypot rice usually means you get nice bits of crispy rice from the base. In this case, we got slabs of overly sticky and semi-crispy bits of rice. I couldn't work out whether it was caused by the pot it was served in or the method they had cooked it in, but I won't be going back for more claypot rice - we'll leave that for Claypot King!
Ice kachang
Following on the theme of Malaysian foods, we finished off the meal with a bowl of ice kachang, a generous serve of shaved ice with coconut milk, red bean, grass jelly and various other Malaysian treats. Amazing flavours and the only fault I could find was the fact that they buried all the 'goodies' underneath a tower of ice that kept falling onto the table when we dug into it.
Service was reasonably fast given how busy they were, and the food was rather impressive (and each dish was less than $10!). Will be going back to try some more of their Malaysian fare next time I'm back in Melbourne!
3 comments:
Oh wow, look at that ice kachang!! I've never had a dessert like that but seeing them in the blogworld always fills me with envy - I bet it tastes amazing!
I just had lunch there today! (before I read your review) and I ordered char kuey teow and curry laksa.
The curry laksa came with the thickest layer of oil on top of it and was barely luke warm. The noodles were overcooked and the curry lacking in coconut.
The CKT came after the laksa was finished. It took 2 different waiters to go looking for it in the kitchen before the CKT appeared at the table. Lacking in wok hei and incredibly greasy, we didn't manage more than 5 bites of it before the grease made us sick.
I'm glad you had a good experience. Perhaps it was just the dishes we ordered that turned out so bad. It was quite a disappointing experience for us!
The Glen Waverley Petaling Street is heaps better!
Give it a try sometime (or any of the other restaurants on Kingsway)
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