Many many years ago, before the existence of this website and when I was still a student in the States, we took a super long road trip down to New Orleans for spring break. It was a beautiful city with quite a bit of culture, and it was also the first time I had Louisiana style seafood, with crayfish, shrimps, and those really distinctive sauce.
A few weeks ago, I had the same type of seafood treatment for the second time of my life, right here at PJ SS2’s Crab Factory.
Crab Factory at PJ SS2
Crab Factory has been in existence for almost 3 years now, situated just right across the road from McDonald’s in the busy commercial area that is PJ SS2. Parking can sometimes be a challenge at this area, especially on a Monday night when Pasar Malam is in full swing. Which isn’t really a problem since Crab Factory smartly chooses Monday to be their rest day.
menu with price list on the table, and on the wall
The restaurant is tastefully decorated with very practical table arrangment fit for group and couple dining as well. For those who are worried about going out of hands in terms of budgeting for a seafood feast, the prices are well written on the wall, in the menu, as well as their website at crabfactory.com.my
brown crabs in signature southern bang sauce
The ‘standard operating procedure’ when it comes to a shell-out type of restaurants like this is a little bit different from the conventional seafood restaurants many of us are familiar with. There’s no fork & spoon, chopsticks, or even gloves.
crayfish/yabbie in zesty lemon, shrimp with garlic butter
The seafood is poured onto your table that is laced with a giant piece of food grade wax paper. You then use your base hands to feed these delicious sea creatures right into your mouth ala caveman style. Quite a fun experience for most, but you’d want to make sure the nails are clean prior to dinner.
For a restaurant this size, the seafood selection is rather impressive. There are various types of crabs such as brown crab, king crab, spanner crab, and meat crab. Then there’s normal lobster, red lobster, and slipper lobster. You want shrimps? They’ve got tiger prawn, white prawn, freshwater prawn, and amaebi. Then there’s baby octopus and several types of shellfish as well.
brown crab set
If you can’t choose, the easiest way to start is with one of their sets. Such as the crab set we tried. In addition to your choice of crab, the set come with king white prawns, yabbies, hamaguri clams, NZ green mussels, scallop in shells, and baby octopus.
Additionally, there’s also sweet corn, chicken sausage, potatoes, french beans and shallot rice. These are the stuff that will help fill up the stomach a bit if you don’t want to overindulge yourself to way too much seafood (like we did this session)
brown crab set, mussels, and more shrimps (spicy plum sauce)
We sampled quite a variety of offerings from Crab Factory. The crabs were really fresh, big, and very juicy. The white shrimps tend to soak up seasoning very well, while baby octopus is perhaps just a tad slightly more cooked than I’d like it to be, but I think they stay quite true to the Louisiana style.
As for the sauces, I found myself enjoying the Signature Southern Bang sauce quite a bit, but my favorite has got to be the with the butter garlic sauce, which I think let you really taste the sweetness of seafood.
good times, and extremely full stomach
Overall it was quite a fun experience, the only problem I had was trying to operate the camera while eating with my bare hands (many trips to the water basin).
If you want to treat yourself some out-of-the-norm seafood feast, this is certainly a worthy option.
Here are several news worthy items you may find useful:
Valid till the 15th of January 2017 – Double Trouble- 2 L Crabs for RM120 only (1.2-1.4kg)
Seafood sets for 2-3 pax
1) Meat Crab-M (2pcs) RM175
2) French Brown Crab (900gm – 1kg) RM239
3) King Crab L 900gm – 1kg) RM299
new sauce – Thai Sambal and Spicy Plum
Scroll down and you’ll a coupon for 25% off (valid till 31st Jan 2017)
Haze always described me as someone who’s bordering insufferable when it comes to dining at shopping malls. It usually takes me quite a bit of merry-go-round trying to evaluate what is worth eating before settling into a restaurant. Luckily, at IOI City Mall, I found just what’s worth spending a meal – at Kakatoo.
Kakatoo at IOI City Mall
The restaurant is tastefully decorated with a modern touch and Baba Nyonya colors, and with a cute logo to boot, it is one of the better looking outfits among the many restaurants on the lower ground of this huge IOI City Mall.
As for menu, they offer a mix of Western & classic Nyonya dishes, I was only interested in the latter.
cencaru with sambal, just like how mom makes them
For the two of us, we went for the classic dishes that defines any Nyonya restaurants – ikan cencaru with sambal, and paku paki sambal belacan.
The fish (RM 29.90 for two) was on point. Fried to perfection and with properly seasoned sambal too. They gave a bit of extra sambal tumis in the middle, but I’d be a happier man if even more was offered.
paku pakis with sambal belacan
In retrospect, we probably should have ordered some other vegetable dishes that provides a bit of variety in taste, but thankfully the pucuk paku pakis (RM 16.90) did not disappoint. It was spicy, crunchy, fresh, and definitely went well with rice.
KY & Haze at IOI City Mall
The Nyonya dishes experience at Kakatoo was one that worth revisiting, and now if I go to IOI City Mall again, I know where to go for a decent meal I won’t regret.
Address: Kakatoo LG-78B & 78C, IOI City Mall Putrajaya, 62502 IOI Resort City, Putrajaya Wilayah Perseketuan GPS: 2.970467, 101.713870 Tel:03-89538074
Hello, guess it’s time to share another one of our experimental recipes, this time – fried pumpkin with salted egg yolk.
pumpkin with salted egg, steamed pomfet
We originally stumbled upon this dish at a restaurant in Klang, and since it was quite an eye, or taste bud opener, I decided to re-create the same thing in our own kitchen. The result was pretty decent. So if you want to try something perhaps a little different at home, this recipe should fit the bill.
pumpkin, curry leave, chili padi, flour, salted egg
Ingredients (2-3 pax):
half a small pumpkin
1 salted egg yolk (2 shown is pic, overkill)
4-5 chili padi
curry leaves
half cup flour
dash of salt to taste
enough cooking oil for deep frying
deep frying pumpkin is the first step
Cooking instructions:
cut pumpkin into bite size slices and coat them in flour
heat up oil & deep fry pumpkin till golden brown
crush salted egg yolk with a spoon
heat up 2 spoon of cooking oil and fry egg yolk till fragrant
add pumpkin, then curry leaves & chili padi
add salt to taste (if need to) – done!
then fry everything with salted egg, done!
The version in the picture has a bit too much cooking oil to it, so with a little less oil it should be perfect, happy cooking!
Of the 400 some bak kut teh places in Klang, one of the most unique offerings of them all has got to be Ah Tao Seafood Bak Kut Teh at Teluk Pulai, for this is the very place that the whole idea of having seafood in bak kut teh came into fruition… I think.
Updates 20/2/2017: Ah Tao has passed away and hence the place is temporarily closed until they figure out the way forward
Ah Tao bak kut teh is located at Beng Heong restoran, at the corner
If you’re looking for a sign that says “Ah Tao BKT”, you won’t find it. The stall is located within Restoran Beng Heong, on the same row of shop houses also include the original Teluk Pulai BKT situated in a stone’s throw away. Parking is usually not a very challenging task, but they do sell out by 10am or so on weekends, so getting there early is a must if you want to avoid disappointment.
glorious seafood bak kut teh, proper tea is a must
While they also serve “normal” bak kut teh in clay pots, the unique selling point here is their seafood infused BKT. If you simply go with seafood, they’ll include big prawns, lala, sea cucumber, fish fillet, and perhaps squid together with your choice of pork meat (I usually go for “tua kut” aka big bone, or “kahwan”).
Alternatively, you can also opt for crab, or just lala, just prawn, and so forth. I tend to think anything involving shells work best, such as lala, crab, or prawns.
prawns, fish fillet, and lala are among the extra ingredients
To make the herbal soup “compatible” with seafood and partly to avoid unwanted seafood smell, the soup is made spicy with quite a fair chunk of chili padi, so what you have then is a very unique taste of spicy bak kut teh. I love it, it was like BKT on steroid.
KY, Kelly, Haze
I’ve only been to Ah Tao a couple times since, but I figure there’ll be quite a few more future visits.
If you’re from the other side of Klang/Shah Alam or prefer to have this for dinner, Klang Coast at Bukit Tinggi serves a pretty decent version of seafood bak kut teh as well, supposedly manned by the apprentice of Ah Tao.
The good people at Komugi got me a X’mas hamper and Haze decided that I should have a video on it.
There’s the 8cm Baum, cheese & onion loaf, cranberry scone, chocolate hazelnut banana french toast, coffee raisin loaf, and of course, the all important white xmas cake!
