mango tree meal

airports are not exactly known for their gourmet meals and since i am quite a frequent traveller, i have yet to say let's fly down to this or that airport for a fantastic dish, not that i am any kind of globe-trotting gourmand or epicure.
but i have been zipping and zapping around some airports in the region over the past few years and have yet to find a restaurant that serves pretty decent food as one is waiting for a flight or is in transit elsewhere.
and this includes airports like klia, suvarbhumi, changi, sukarno-hatta and funnily enough, the kabul airport - nope, no restaurant there the last and only time i was there in 2003.
but i must say, drinkdrankeat's recommendation of the mango tree at the suvarnabhumi airport in bangkok was spot-on.
the amazing thing is they actually have branches in london, tokyo, busan and good old kuching. kuching? go figure that.
i guess their owners, the coca group - you know that chain of steamboat restaurants with the special sauce - have big plans to conquer the world with their version of thai cuisine.
but as you know, and i know, any good thai restaurant must be able to make good pad thai.
suffice to say, and it is my test of any decent or good thai restaurant, the mango tree pad thai was just great with its juicy prawns, crunchy beansprouts, the al-dente flat rice noodles and the filligree of an egg omelette spread like a net over the entire dish.
it is as good as any pad thai in thailand as pad thai is the thai nasi lemak as far as i am concerned.
i mean, anyone from street hawkers to hole-in-the-walls to mom-and-pop restaurants and fancy dining places have their own recipe for this dish and it is pretty hard to spoil it.
but mango tree did not disappoint me. fact is, it was pretty good though i had to put lashings of chilli flakes and fish sauce to make it a spicy and tangy experience.
that's just me, i guess!
of course, the name brought back memories of another the mango tree restaurant that closed down in bangsar some time last year.
the mango tree in kuala lumpur was owned by ricky parlanti, a ninth-generation chef whom i first met over a pint of guinness in a bangsar pub after he had finished his shift at the carcosa seri negara.
guess i have to fly down to kuching for my fix of mango tree. and i will!

the indian invasion

there was a time when bangsar baru was a happening place of plonk, pizza, party, packs of nasi lemak and pretty late nights.
all that came to an end when the 24-hour mamak restaurants came in and sirap limau became the drink du jour, replacing sangria.
while a few places soldier on with music and mayhem, the others have closed down and in their place are a clutch of restaurants offering a wide variety - and to a certain extent a range in quality - of indian cuisine.
this indian invasion is not to be confused with the mamaks and the local chains of lotus or devi's corners (the original devi's corner in lucky garden was probably the best ever).
it started with the chettinad - which closed down years ago, with madras woodlands a few doors away and then along came d'sagar (which moved on to become sagar in one bangsar) and saravana bhavan with its all-vegetarian menu. raz-oi, which means kitchen in punjabi, was briefly the toast of the area until it was replaced by restaurant mirchi recently.
still on the scene is the anjappar, a non-veg restaurant, which is a very indian way of saying it offers meat dishes too.
d'sagar's old spot - one of my favourites - is now kashmir, all the way from penang, while its neighbour is chennai ponnusamy.
the newcomers are chutney mary's in jalan telawi 2 and just nearly opposite it is ludhiana station, which serves punjabi cuisine. chutney mary's - related to the chutneys in petaling jaya - is not to be confused with the quite famous chutney mary in london.
it was my third time in chutney mary's since they opened late 2005 and service had improved. the food was served faster now and the quality is consistent though the decor, which i can only describe as post-modern-retro-funk-gone-kablooey has its moments. its kitsch as only the subcontinent can and do make in its infinitesmal creativity.
let's just say the food is better.
we started with spiced papads - the dried lentil chips mingled with spices that exists to melt in your mouth once fried or lightly grilled over a flame. the pepper-corn papad - rolled into cones went well with the mint chutney.
the menu had the usual complement of meats and seafood, vegetables, briyanis and rotis with a good sprinkling of paneer or cottage cheese being among the main ingredients. a trip to india last year revealed the power of the paneer and since then, it has been a favourite in many a meal.
we settled on a couple of paneer kulchas or bread stuffed with cottage cheese and the pretty good hyderabadi lamb briyani, which can almost hold its own against even the garden-variety hyderabadi briyani found in any restaurant in northern india.
of course, the ones in india are just awesome and spicy with the lamb just coming off the bone after being cooked in exquisite basmati rice for hours on end. together with the yoghurt-based raita dip, this briyani is just mind-blowing or rather, gut-busting.
our table also hosted the laal maas - a lamb curry cooked in kashimiri style that was spicy as it was piquant, together with the noor-e-chaman or the saag paneer as it is commonly known in malaysia, the basic cottage cheese with spinach that has been mashed beyond recognition.
definitely better than it looked and it combined well with the raita, the cottage cheese's mild sharpness offset by the spinach and rounded off by the onion-chilli yoghurt raita.
a fish dish helped to round off the meal, namely the rasabari macchi or a rather fresh dory cooked with vegetables and pungent spices that added the zing to the briyani.
the servings are rather small for the price but well worth it for the taste.
now on to the rest of the indian invaders in bangsar baru.
and elsewhere.

sawadee crap - bad thai food ahead

where have all the good thai restaurants in kuala lumpur gone to?
a friend asked me that after picking up the tab at montien - truly thai restaurant in the rather spanking new one bangsar cuisine complex in bangsar.
it came up as the food in montien, to put it simply, was bad.
except for the acceptable tom yam kung.
there was six of us, with three eating rice which came at a whopping three ringgit a plate - the waiter said the price of rice went up due to pump price hikes, yeah right!
together with some dishes, we stuck to two classics - thai green curry and tom yam kung. green curry was not spicy while the tom yam was acceptably fragrant and quite spicy - and as you can see, i finished a good part of it.
but both the classics together with the other dishes came luke-warm.
a friend who was just eating the dishes and looking forward to spicy food was most disappointed.
the other dishes were a spicy fish paste or otak otak in an omelette, pieces of deep fried cat fish and a salad relish called the nam prik long rea - minced chicken, dried prawns and salted egg, that came in a platter of raw long beans, sliced cucumber and cabbage, fried brinjal, steamed ladies fingers and crisp-fried flaked catfish.
the only thing going for the relish was the salted egg.
so that was that with the rice and the dishes.
another friend took the pad thai - thai style flat rice noodles with peanuts, bean sprouts, chillies, lime and sugar and said to represent thailand, sweet, spicy, crunchy and sour.
it was just badly-fried chinese style flat rice noodles or char kway teow.
it was bad thai, not pad thai - in my mind.
the last friend just tried some dessert but had no joy too.
we couldn't wait to get out of the place.
we left and headed to to the pretty much packed vincenzo, just a couple of doors away from montien, for some fine whisky. more on that later.