Latest Recipe, KL

Le Meridian's flagship restaurant was recently revamped and renamed Latest Recipe. The setting is grand and the spread follows the latest trend in restaurant buffets, spotting Japanese, Chinese, Indian, grill, live cooking, dessert stations and the likes.

What stands out in this particular buffet is the tapas style appetizers that you pick and plate onto equally quaint Japanese trays.

Sitting Pretty

Each plate held the perfect serving size and a tasty mouthful. Needless to say it was very easy to polish off the plate(s) without feeling uncomfortably stuffed.

Before

After

Satisfied with the food and service, baby G and I went back for dinner the same day, this time for their ala carte.

Mushroom Soup

Warm Mushroom Salad

A medley of mushrooms, fortunately they tasted very different. I especially liked the salad, with the mushrooms lightly grilled and dressed to preserve their unique flavors.

Seafood Squid Ink Pasta

Ooo...squid ink pasta, something I always try when I get the chance, coz it looks so different from the usual, it just have to taste different too, you'd think? Unfortunately it tastes...like regular pasta. It has a denser texture than most but no hint of the ink they get their pigmentation from. Still, it was a good dish, with fresh seafood and a light cream sauce. My favorite part of this dish, hidden at the corner right of this pic, is the slivers of fried garlic, adding sweetness and fragrance which lifted the dish and made it the highlight of the meal for me.

Little Bites, KL

Braised Beef with Noodles in Light Broth

Quick bites at the airport lounge before my flight to Kuala Lumpur. Gone are the days of day-old cucumber sardies and stale coffee; I had some pretty decent fare tonight. First was the appetizer of Japaneses braised beef which was light, flavorful and very healthily packed with veg.

Pan Fried Salmon with Fettucini

Next up, the salmon. I adore this fish to no end and though my default choice of execution is to have it rare, this cut was cooked to my satisfaction nonetheless. The fillet had a light, crisp crust and a delightfully pink, almost rare center. The fettucine was cooked al dente in a light cream sauce and again served with very healthy broccoli and carrot slices.

Why the sudden obsession with healthy fare? Well, it just happened to be made this way. In any case, I was soon to tilt the swing back to balance with a meal at the Luna Bar.

Luna Bar at Pacific Regency

Located at the Pacific Regency, this rooftop enclave held a pool, jacuzzi and bar. Around the bars were private dining, erm, boxes that stuck out of the sides of the building. With full length glass walls and ceiling, they give diners the illusion of being suspended in mid air, offering an unobstructed view of the city and the very far off ground below. I stayed as far away from the edge as I could, indulging instead at the bikini clad couples bubbling away in the jacuzzi. Not that they turned me on, they just kept my stomach down.

Luna Bites

Food at such digs are usually sub standard, unmemorable and unmentionable, probably to keep the limelight on the hip setting and chic crowd. But not so with this place. With no open kitchen, food has to be prepared at the Olive Lounge, the main restaurant of the Pacific, yet apart from the wait, this arrangement had no detriment on the food to come.

We had garlic toasts with various dips (toasts were fragrant, dips well seasoned), onion rings ("meaty" and the largest I have ever seen, these O's were co-O-lossal!) and mini wagyu burgers with chips.

I do not profess to be a burger connoisseur, but I had my expectations for the wagyu's. Sad to say they were far from being the best on the (pool) table. The patties were a tad on the dry side, and they tasted, well, ordinary. If put to the blindfold test, I honestly wouldn't have been able to tell them from the next BK. They were saved by the large chips though, and of coz, the view. :)

Rooftop View of the City

Miss Read, KL

Potato Cubes with the "Trimmings"

Dainty bites before the big guns. As usual I needed my tatos with all the sauces the place can provide. Spotted mustard by the bottle and promptly requested for one, along with mayo and tartar, just for comparison, you understand.

The tatos were nothing much to speak about, they were lightly fried and not too greasy, but bland. The army of sauces did little to liven things up.

Walnut Pasta

This, ladies and gentlemen, is my best picture to date. The clarity, contrast and color captured near perfection in my books, for those who don't know better they may think I am swooning over a carat. But I remain focused and on track.

Taste wise, this is also one of the best pasta I have tasted. Walnut pasta is indigenous to a remote part of Italy and not readily found in many Italian restaurants, maybe coz it sounds unusual and unfamiliar. A real pity, for forays into the unknown has its own rewards, so you can imagine my delight when I saw this on their menu.

The sauce was made with, well, walnut, and enriched with mascapone, which gave it a most lusciously creamy body without imposing on the walnut's subtle fragrance. Mushrooms played the second supporting role, alongside parsley juliennes that lifted the entire dish to a delightful finish.

Mac & cheese

Oh you would think this to be the simplest, least exciting dish of the night, but it turned out to be way more than the name promised. 4 cheese sauce so thick, rich, creamy and stringy, as cheese should be. What more can I say, the picture says it all. Bon appetite!

Senses, Hilton KL

I had the luck of taste to dine at the acclaimed Senses restaurant in Hilton Kuala Lumpur recently. OK, not so recently, think half a year back? So whilst the taste buds not longer tingle with the fresh memories of flavors, the mind recalls with fondness, and with a little help from my friend, my 3.2 mp camera phone. So here goes:

The usual bread filler with the now trendy mini baguette, a healthy smear of French slightly salted butter, and a pomegranate and cranberry punch. We all need some goodness to balance out the butter every now and then.

Cream of White Asparagus with Seared Scallop and Edemame

A choice of soups and I went with the white asparagus coz Baby G had the same thing just the previous night. Also a good time as any to try the snowy white green (pardon the pun) for the first time.

The soup was light despite the cream base, and the scallop balanced the sublimity with its subtle sweetness, almost a perfect slurp sans the edemame, hard and tasteless. They were probably added in for color, although a better contrast for taste and texture could have found its purpose in a few kernels of lightly caramelised corn kernels?

Lightly Seared Seabass, Spinach Spetzels,

Saffron Couscous, Curry Foam and Curried Mussels

Quite a mouthful, on both tongue and palette. The fish was a tad dry and over done, the spetzels carried no hint of spinach, but the foam was fun to have and all elements managed to come together quite beautifully, texture and color wise.

And a surprise dessert...

Gosh I loved the truffles and coffee, any meal that concludes with a good cuppa cannot do too wrong by me. That said, dining at Senses was sublime, the service excellent and the food well worth a try. I will probably do a return visit for the other items on the menu so stay tuned.