Bangsar Seafood Garden Restaurant

December 2008

Yes, Bangsar Seafood Restaurant is still there. It’s just hidden from plain sight behind the car showroom. The restaurant has recently been given a face lift. One corner of the restaurant has been turned into a water garden, where you dine on glass counters with water flowing through them. It’s quite a soothing feature.

Since it is a Chinese seafood restaurant, we had to order the crabs. Despite its name, the baked crab in butter sauce, which is the house speciality, is actually cooked with margarine and milk. The addition of curry leaves and chilli padi gives the salty, buttery sauce a spicy edge, which makes it very appetising. Definitely a nice compliment to the big fleshy mud crabs. We recommend you order a serving of buns (the fried ones preferably) to soak up the sauce.

If you prefer something with a simpler taste so that you can fully appreciate the freshness of the crab, the steamed garlic crab on glutinous rice would be a good choice. The presentation is beautiful – a luscious red crab sits on a bed of glutinous rice in a bamboo steamer. We can’t help but think of a giant crab lo mai gai. The rice is very fragrant and coupled with the sweet
flesh of the crab, this could easily be a meal by itself.

We particularly enjoyed the crispy duck with mixed herb flavour. It smells really good. The tender flesh and the slightly salty herbal taste can be quite addictive, especially when you dip it in that thick soy sauce. Both the bamboo shoots and asparagus in light Qi Zi sauce, and Chinese marrow rings stuffed with prawns, are commendable for their lightness. They are good for cleaning the palate after those full flavour dishes.

For dessert, we had the durian tempura, or rather, I personally had all the four pieces in that one serving. However, rather than the actual durian flesh, the filling is made out of authentic durian cream that is prepared from the flesh. Good enough for me. The boiled Lin Chee Kang, which is filled with chewy bits such as dried longan, lotus seeds, barley and white fungus, makes a refreshing end to a heavy meal.

While Bangsar Seafood Restaurant is not revolutionary by any measure, it still is a good spot for a casual family dinner.

There is nothing painfully overwrought on the menu here; every effort is made to serve good food on your plate. The worst you could call it is unsurprising, but we don’t all want to be surprised when we go out to eat. Most of the time, we just want dinner. The type of seafood you’ll find here is fresh, simple and the type where you lick your plate clean – which is the best kind of compliment we can give. Lim Chee Wah

Awards

Bangsar Seafood Garden Restaurant was shortlisted in the Best Seafood Restaurant category of the Time Out KL Food Awards 2009 and 2010. Our food awards are 100% voted for by the people of KL. This way, we guarantee that popularity and consistent performance is rewarded.