I found myself at Plaza Damas last weekend. After several hours of attending to certain business, it was suddenly dinner time. We decided that perhaps it would be a good idea to explore something at this comfortably small but elegant mall instead of heading elsewhere to quiet down the little growling sound from my stomach that is starting to get annoying.
“Fish Satay” in lemon grass
We past several restaurants before deciding upon Penang Village. Being from Penang island, I am always skeptical towards restaurants that claim to serve Penang food. However, I was feeling a little adventurous that day, and whatever food I could see from those customers that are already eating certainly looks inviting.
nice ambiance and surprisingly good food
The menu is simple and illustrated with enough photos of the dishes to guide those who can’t read English or Malay. We ended up ordering 5 items for the two of us, nasi lemak with beef, nasi tomato with lamb, kailan (vegetable) with salted fish, fish satay, and otak-otak.
beef nasi lemak and lamb nasi tomato
Even though it was a weekend evening, the food didn’t take more than 10 minutes to come. The nasi tomato and nasi lemak came with pretty good meat curry (rendang and kurma), the rice tasted very authentic and even the presentation was rather high class. A small glass of acar accompanied the rice.
The otak-otak served is of the Penang variety, for the uninitiated, it is a type of steamed fish paste with mixture of traditional spices. The otak-otak was not oily and nor over powering, just nice and a good companion to the rice dishes.
I especially like the interesting “fish satay” served on a lemon grass stick. It reminded me of the same thing I had at Bumbubali (a Balinese restaurant at Puchong), very succulent and delicious. The taste of fish cake and the core infused with lemon grass aroma was simply brilliant. This would be my must-order at Penang Village.
Penang otak-otak, kailan with salted fish, fish satay
The rice dishes were around RM 12+ each with the other dishes slightly cheaper. The dinner costs RM 60+ for the two of us, 5 dishes and 1 drink. A pretty decent price for the quality of food and location. I am not too sure about their other classic dishes like Char Kueh Teow, but if they can have similar quality it wouldn’t be disappointing.
Plaza Damas is located at Sri Hartamas
Other than Plaza Damas, Penang Village has branches at USJ 9, TTDI, Alamanda Putrajaya Mall, and a couple other locations at Indonesia too.
Address:
Hartamas Shopping Centre (Plaza Damas)
Lot G8B&9, Sri Hartamas, KL
GPS: 3.163548, 101.656076
Tel: 03-6201 9816
The first thing we fill our stomach with when arriving dead starved (thanks to PLUS highway who decided to repave the road during Saturday rush hour) at Melaka was the pork satay. Situated opposite to the Pay Teck school on Jalan Portugis, the shop is actually just a few blocks away from the famous Jonker Walk.
ooO glorious food
Satay is traditionally a Malay dish, and most of the time prepared by Muslim, hence, with Halal meat, ie: no pork. However, in this historic town of Melaka where you can get fried pork fat in Poh Piah, it is just fitting that pork satay is served too (by non-Muslim of course)
the shop and the satisfied customers
The thing about this Xiang Ji satay shop is that you don’t really have to place any order. After you sit down, they will start to serve you satay soon as they are done from the barbecue pit. We had plenty of pork satay, liver satay and chicken satay, sadly, they ran out of my favorite: the pork intestine satay.
satay with the ketupad, peanut sauce, raw cucumber and onion
The portion of a single satay is not very big here, probably about half the size of those huge Ampang satay, but the taste is different. The pork goes well with their marinate tastes of turmeric and some other sauces that I obviously don’t know (probably their trade secret). The liver though, can be a little dry, but still pretty good. The chicken satay did not disappoint either.
but ARGH, why no intestine!!?! Looks like I’ll have to go there again.
After the satay, we went to Jonker Walk and to have some snack, other than the Poh Piah on previous post, we had the must-eat Chendol and also some very good otak-otak sold on a stall nearby the unmistakable Jonker88 restaurant.
The Chendol in Melaka is poured with the thick and original Gula Melaka (palm sugar) which made all the difference. The rich and sweet caramel taste of palm sugar on top of the finely shaved ice was just absolutely delightful.
Look it! I can even draw up a Melaka map!
Address:
Kedai Satey Xiang Ji
50, Jln Portugis
Melaka
GPS: 2.202817,102.244209
Tel: 019- 667 8868
Address:
Jonker88
88, Jalan Hang Jebat
75200, Melaka
GPS: 2.199570, 102.246644
Tel: 019-397 5665
One of my favorite local delights in this part of the world is the otak-otak. Now, there are two different types of otak-otak, noobs such as Suan would love that the southern type that is thin, wrapped with banana leaf, and cooked over charcoal fire; but the Penangite in me still prefers the northern Nyonya style variety that is thicker and bigger, often steamed instead of grilled.
my god, brain.. brain!
In Klang Valley, you can often find the southern style otak-otak in pasar malam and many Malay markets; but to get a decent peranakan otak-otak, now that is a bit of a challenge. Which was why I was rather delighted to have spotted this otak-otak set offered at Kopitime in 1 Utama.
Despite the slight over pricing of the item, I just had to order it. The set came with two decent size otak-otak and two slices of roti bengali. The otak-otak turned out to be actually pretty good, and the roti bengali does serve as a pretty good companion for the light meal. Though the RM 7.90 + tax is a little too much to pay, however, I wouldn’t mind it once in a while.
not exactly cheap..
Kopitime is situated at 1 Utama new wing facing the bowling alley, though I believe they have some other branches too. Other than the otak-otak set, we had prawn mee and laksa, both dishes were pretty bad and best left unmentioned.
By the way, the word otak means brain in the Malay language, though the food does resemble a little on the fascinating human organ, it is best not to remind yourself of this fact when consuming this dish.
GPS: 3.150050, 101.615939
