The Restaurant @ The Club @ The Saujana

Posted on July 28, 2009 by Lyrical Lemongrass

I’m not kidding. That is the name of the restaurant. Imagine my hesitance as I approached the front desk of what I believed was The Club @ The Saujana. The conversation could very likely have turned out to be:

Me: Hi, I’m looking for The Restaurant.
Front Desk: Which restaurant, ma’am?
Me: The Restaurant.
Front Desk: Which restaurant, ma’am?
Me: The Restaurant.
Front Desk: Which restaurant, ma’am?
Me: The Restaurant.

As you can tell, I couldn’t have gone very far with that conversation. Thankfully, I had arrived at the correct place after all. My actual conversation was:

Me: Hi, I’m looking for The Restaurant.
Front Desk: Yes, this is The Restaurant.
Me: Is this the only restaurant?
Front Desk: Yes, this is The Restaurant.
Me: This is the The Restaurant?
Front Desk: Yes, this is The Restaurant.

There is, of course, a moral to the story. I’ll leave it to you to figure that one out.

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The scenery is quite different in this part of the neighbourhood. Despite the growth in residential properties in recent times after a sluggish period when our international airport moved from Subang to Sepang, a fair bit of the area is still lush with vegetation. True, the location of the resort is quite a distance from KL, but with modern infrastructure and traffic jams merely at the entrances and exits of all toll booths, the time taken is a wee bit shorter than in the olden days.

Chef Nancy Kinchela has had an extensive culinary career around the world before joining The Club @ The Saujana on 1 April 2009. Far from an April Fool joke, she is serious and appears uncomfortable about being in the limelight, which I can only presume means that she is more at home in the kitchen. Her style is modern European, and she is a stickler for using organic ingredients. Her culinary style fits in well with the cool restrained elegance that is The Club. The suites in this boutique resort are tastefully decorated in contemporary Asian accents and there are loads of benefits including a daily replenished private bar (all you can drink)!

A number of the items we had that night were not on the menu. The refreshing combination of seasonal vegetables including fava beans and asparagus with jerusalem artichoke puree was light and citrusy, whetting our appetite for the subsequent dishes. Imagine then, scallops, pan fried, with foie gras, a decadent combination further enhanced with sliced truffle and mint. I fell completely in love with the roast lamb, tender morsels of deliciousness, but thought the accompanying ravioli (filled with beef and spinach and cooked in duck fat) a little overcooked on the outside rendering it a little stale and tough in texture, but the filling was still very tasty.

Another interesting dish was the butter poached lobster, squid and snapper cassoulet served with pillowy soft squid ink gnocchi. The taste was citrusy and intense. Chef Kinchela’s forte seems to be her ability in using ingredients sparingly but sufficiently to create just the right balance of flavour. She readily uses truffles to accentuate her dishes…a slice here and there to just give a hint of the scent but not to overpower the dishes.

The desserts were nice. I particularly liked the lemon tart which looked deceivingly plain, and the chocolate fondant with caramel snaps.

Now, having seen the menus for lunch and dinner, I can tell you that prices are on the high side. From the dinner menu, starters range from RM39 to RM48, soups at around RM37/38, and main courses from RM58 to RM160. Desserts are approximately RM35 each. The lunch menu (including an Asian selection) starts from RM35. The prices seem comparable to the prices at Sage, and I sometimes feel compelled to compare these two. Naturally, I can’t do that because the cuisines are predominantly different, and personal tastes come into the picture. I do think that The Restaurant will give any other good restaurant a run for its money, especially when it comes to privacy and ambience, and freshness of produce.

The Restaurant @ The Club @ The Saujana
Jalan Lapangan Terbang SAAS
40150 Shah Alam

Tel: 03-78431234

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Thank you, Liza Latif-Grosskinsky of The Club @ The Saujana for your kind invitation to dine at The Restaurant and Frat Mustard of theQGuides for making it happen. Much appreciated!

La La Chong Seafood Restaurant, Subang

Posted on July 26, 2007 by Lyrical Lemongrass

1. The idea of bliss (or What Lyrical Lemongrass Did This Evening).Sitting in the kitchen of Just Heavenly in Bangsar.

Watching Allan, covered in flour from head to toe, kneading baby blue fondant.

Pleasant conversation.

Savouring moist chocolate cupcakes topped with freshly made icing.

2. Diamonds are a girl’s best friend

Just as friends come and go, so do Makan Club members. Bouncing Barbie made a decision to choose polished diamonds over diamonds in the rough and we wish her well.

Bangsar isn’t that far away, dear friend, and we’ll definitely carry on our “makan” sessions. 14 years is a long time to know someone. I still remember going to work in Bus No. 5 when we were still new at the office! Now there won’t be anyone visiting my room at 12.30pm and asking me, “So what’s for lunch today??”. We wish you all the love and happiness that diamonds can’t buy.

3. A feast, no less

The Makan Club has been visiting La La Chong for close to 10 years. Many special moments have been celebrated here, birthdays mostly. On the occasion of Barbie’s farewell, it seemed only appropriate that it be spent here, in La La Chong, together with three of her closest friends and colleagues.

We wanted old favourites. So we asked for fern stir fried with tuna. Unfortunately, they had run out of fern, and offered to replace it with four-angled beans instead. Thankfully, the substitute was quite delicious with lots of tuna and chopped chillies stir fried with the vegetables.

Another old favourite is Siong Tong Lala (Lala in superior soup). The shellfish is cooked in a fragrant soup with a generous amount of wine thrown in to bring out the flavour of the dish. As always, we were extremely pleased with this dish.

The crabs, on the other hand, brought out mixed reactions. We all liked the salt baked crab dish which was fried with ginger. However, the salted egg yolk crab dish failed to impress us. The crabs appeared to have been deep fried, so any attempt to scrape the roe from the shell would have been futile, and the flavour of the dry sauce seemed to have been marred by an excessive usage of salt (presumably used to enhance the flavour of the salted egg yolk).

The grilled mackerel is one of my favourite dishes here. The sauce used to marinade the mackerel tasted similar to a kabayaki sauce made of soy sauce, mirin and sugar. The fish was so delicious, I had no trouble finishing it up!

We still have fond memories of this place. I’m not ready to write it off just because of one botched recipe.

Also check out:

Living in Food Heaven
Da Wheel Of Life & Happiness
Masak-masak
Little Miss May

La La Chong Seafood Restaurant
Lot PT6824, Terminal 3, Abdul Aziz Shah Airport, Subang.

(directions: Head towards Terminal 3, Subang Airport. At the traffic light, turn right)

Tel: 03-7859 1906

Red Velvet if you please

Posted on May 12, 2007 by Lyrical Lemongrass

I first read about the Red Velvet cake in the New York Times on February 14 this year.A red cake? I was sceptical. I read on. Apparently, the cake, which purportedly originated from the South (of the US of A, not Malaysia!) had been around for several years already, but only gained popularity of late thanks to various celebrity endorsements. Cocoa is normally used to obtain the dark colour which is further enhanced with red food colouring, although some purists use red beet as an alternative for natural colouring.

I scoured the internet for recipes, but never got around to baking the cake. And so I archived it in the recesses of my memory.

box of surprises

Blogger, Riz, after learning about my mini-obsession with the Red Velvet, surprised me yesterday with a couple of beautifully presented boxes of cupcakes, one of which contained, surprise surprise, Red Velvet friands. Thanks, man!

The cupcakes and friands, baked by his friend, Aida, not only looked good but were scrumptious too. Aida takes orders, so if you wish to contact Aida, do drop me an email and I’ll give you her number. (Check out Riz’s gorgeous collection of photos of Aida’s cooking and baking here.)

cupcakes

The Blueberry Cupcakes with Cheese Topping were as good as they looked.

banana poppy seed cupcake

And who can resist something as exquisite as the Riz Banana Poppyseed Friands with Lindt Chocolate Frosting? (Aida named this friand after Riz!)

red velvet friand1

As for the Red Velvet friands, they were exactly what I expected them to be. Mini cakes that were moist but not too dense, with a very slight recognisable taste of chocolate and with a texture that resembled a cross between a butter cake and a muffin; but the deep red colour throws one off into a different dimension, defying all sense of rationality and expectation. I love the cheese frosting which was very good and perfectly complemented the cake.

In the words of Alannah Myles, with a slight twist of course….

Red velvet and that little boy smile
Red velvet with that slow southern style
A new religion that’ll bring you to your knees
Red velvet if you please.

A Whiff of Lemongrass

NOT a food blog

Category Archives: Location: Subang

The Restaurant @ The Club @ The Saujana

La La Chong Seafood Restaurant, Subang

Red Velvet if you please