Decanter

January 2011

Decanter makes you want to like it. The service is top notch – smiley, attentive and accommodating, the menu is affordable and the setting casual and inviting. It had just finished raining on the Monday evening we were there, and sitting outside on the balcony in the cool evening air, it felt a world away from KL.

The food itself is a mixed bag, and there were a lot of buts. The black pepper beef udon arrived steaming and fragrant, but lacking in the actual pepper department. The special chicken chop was excellent; crispy outside, juicy inside and flavourful throughout, but drenched in a starchy gravy. The prawn fritters were fresh, but doughy. One of our favourite dishes of the evening was the belacan chicken wings, but annoyingly cut into fiddly small pieces. When there’s as little meat as there is on a chicken wing, leaving them whole seems a smarter choice than breaking them into bonefilled morsels. But the best dish of the night went to a simple stir-fried kailan. The vegetable was sweet and fresh and adorned with fresh prawns and sotong rings.

There’s no groundbreaking cuisine here, but what you do get is simple dishes at affordable prices. It was surprisingly busy for a Monday night but not noisy, and really for a neighbourhood restaurant, what more can you ask? Emma Chong