The ladies were saying that they’d want to celebrate my belated birthday today, yet it has to be something healthy for me due to my strict diet requirements. Then I suggested the vegetarian restaurant which was notorious for its outrageous pricing, as I heard. Not that I wanted to blow their wallets. Since there were 5 of us, it’s easier for us to order food. Besides, I thought of buying the lunch too.
... this place was notorious for being expensive.
... sweet potato chips, Chinese style.
... it's rather odd to find this here. It reminds me of Vichudda.
... the intermediate tea pot was nice.
... seaweed soup. Seaweed was good for my diet.
... instead of those purpleish seaweed that usually used for making soup, this was those rectangle type seaweed you can get from the mall.
... this curry lamb was served with a loaf of bread.
... the name of the dish was siong gou (up there) tau fu, which prompted us to look up at the ceiling if there were some leftovers still stuck there.
... fried water spinach in belacan.
... a very famous dish amongst the vegetarian dish, duck meat.
... forgotten what was this, but it was really good. KUMA even said it tasted a bit like fried pork lard.
... a healthy meal ending with fruits as dessert.
Rating: 6.5/10
We were served the sweet potato chips and that place of vege with sambal belacan as appetizer. The chips, I could understand, but the plate of belacan laden vegetables. It reminded me of how Vichudda serves the belacan with cucumber. This belacan was nowhere as spicy as Vichudda’s though. As expected, vegetarian’s food tend to be mild, which was a good thing. The belacan was similar too, probably the best they could’ve imitate without resorting to using meat extracts.
The seaweed soup was rather surprising. I expected the purple-ish looking seaweed being used here, rather than the rectangle type of seaweed that you can buy from shopping mall. It has plenty of mushrooms in it. Despite it seem rather plain, it tasted quite ok, being vegetarian. I have no problem finishing my bowl of soup. At least this kind of seaweed wasn’t as sinewy as those purple type, which almost choke me to death most of the time I have it.
Next, the mutton was served, together with a loaf of bread. The bread, I expected it to be something similar to those bread that serves with crabs. It was a bit disappointing on the bread because it was not as soft as I expected and it was quite tasteless. As for the mutton, the texture was very much like… mutton. Which was a success, in term of feel. Yet it doesn’t contain anything lamb-y in it. The smell of lamb or anything. The curry gravy was very much like Mamee’s Kari Kapitan flavour. ALGJ agreed as well. I suspect they used the pack of seasoning from Mamee’s instant noodle.
The ceiling tou fu looked damn good, though the taste was not so awesome. I had to garnish it with plenty of soya sauce and jalapeno to eat it with my rice. A big fail for vegetarian restaurant to serve something very much vegan compatible. Perhaps egg was an important source for making good bean curd. Stir fried water spinach, it has the look. But when it comes to the taste, the fermented bean curd soft of kills it. It tasted very weird for me. I guess I just need my little shrimps and belacan in my stir fried water spinach.
The following 2 fried items were the duck meat and the other which I’ve got no idea what it was called, ordered by KUMA. It was her favourite. The duck meat was nice, something which I’ve abandoned long ago because I have had too much of it. The other dish laden with ketchup was the best of all. The mildly crisply pieces, I supposed it meant to resemble sweet sour pork.
Finally, we were served with a plate of fruits as dessert. The best part was, the fruit platter wasn’t that vegetarian at all, because there was a strand of hair stuck to a piece of mango. Now, who wanna guess. Is hair considered vegetarian?
I might probably revisit this place again when I ran out of idea to eat, along with my group of people, of course. A good escape from eating genuine meat, while feasting on vegetarian meats, which weren’t all bad. Except, don’t order the vegetable dishes there. Just leave the nice tasting vegetable dishes back to the ordinary non-vegetarian restaurants.
Location: N3 04.366 E101 35.429
