1 /5 Matthew Chew: Our dining experience last night (1 January) was awful. We are a Malaysian Chinese family here in London, and had gotten a social media ad for this place and decided to try it for New Years Day.
Some of the Malaysian/Singaporean key dishes were unavailable (the salted yolk rolls, and satay). Of what we did order, the chicken karaage was the only starter we enjoyed. The "mixed dimsums" were not steamed properly and served undercooked (dumpling skins hard, raw prawns and chicken inside). The salted pepper squid had very little squid in it, mostly being curled up batter scraps.
All the main dishes were disappointing: either too salty, too bland, or completely not the item it was called.
The "Mushroom Pork Belly" was served upside down (soft skin and fat should be on the top), dry (meat did not fall apart even when cutting), and bland (surrounding mushroom sauce was way too salty, yet the meat tasting like it was boiled on its own and the sauce just added on top). The tamarind see bass was such a waste of good fish, with the batter too salty and the fish overcooked.
All the dishes that involved "King Prawns" used a weird prawn that was completely overcooked, with the texture almost as if the prawns were dehydrated and not activated properly before cooking/serving. The "King Prawn Laska" was too salty and the fried tofu squares were undercooked.
We ordered the "Spicy Sambal Spam Fried Rice", which is meant to use chilli paste (sambal) and spam chunks. Instead we were served the "King Prawns Fried Rice" on the menu, except the dish tasted like it was cooked in the sweet chilli sauce that came with the karaage, and there was no asparagus or fish roe in it. Then, as if the chef recognised it was not correct, had included pork lard – which is part of neither fried rice dish, and actually meant the rice was now no longer edible for our pescatarian guest.
Finally, the "char kway teow" – one of our Malaysian national dishes. It first came out as clearly the wrong dish, with clam shells in it and the noodles were obviously linguine pasta meant for the "aglio olio seafood linguine" on the menu. But to disguise it, the chef used soy sauce to darken the dish and added some beansprouts. It visibly was not our dish, so our kind waitress Mayuri was very apologetic and took it straight back. But when the dish came out the second time, the dish looked awful. The correct noodles were used, but all clumped together as if still from a packet. No sauce was used to cook the dish, so it just tasted of cooking oil.
Our waitress said the chef was relatively new and maybe not familiar with the menu. But if thats the case, then really the restaurant should have just closed for the evening rather than opened up and served all this, as it was such a waste of many good ingredients, some of which will have been expensive or not easy to source because they are specific to Malaysian/Singaporen cooking. Such a shame.
If we paid for everything that we ordered, it would have been £45 per person including the 12.5% service charge. However, the food was so poor and our waitress was really apologetic and sympathised with us, that we were only charged for our drinks.
