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!

great dining at the cungdinh

fresh and spicy was the order of the day at a friend's birthday dinner this week. so off we went to explore and discover the best that kuala lumpur could offer.
and weeks after grousing about bad thai food, we ended up at its neighbour in one bangsar - cungdinh vietnam restaurant. funnily enough, both cuisines are geographical neighbours too.
one bangsar - located along jalan ara in bangsar - comprises a variety of restaurants with bangsar seafood garden as its anchor tenant. cungdinh vietnam would be the fourth outlet i had eaten in that row of restaurants.
the menu at cungdinh vietnam was pretty comprehensive and after some recommendations, we ordered some starters, a main meal and some noodles to share.
the first dish, rice cakes with prawn floss in special vietnam sauce, was a cracker. six saucers of steamed thin rice cakes with spicy prawn floss and some croutons were soaked with sauce and cut chillies for an astounding sensation.
it was a deft and simple sauce, slice, spoon and slurp experience. absolutely extremely and highly recommended
we then tried some spring rolls which somehow didn't really do the trick though it came stuck on a hollowed-out pinenapple with a tea candle inside.
nice to look and nice to eat but not exceptional.
still, the experience spiked to a new high with the tiger prawns grilled in chilli salt with special sauce arrived at our table.
well, first off - all the sauces were pretty special, i can attest to that. and quite spicy too.
the prawns were an absolute treat as we licked the chilli salt and crunched and munched the grilled shell and meat with occasional dips in the sauce.
wonderful would be the only way of describing the dish. the prawns were just right, spicy and salty and absolutely heavenly.
and then, fresh and spicy took a delicious twist with the hue pho - pho is vietnamese for beef noodles - that we shared as a finale.
rice noodles, slices of beef with sprigs of mint and some bean sprouts with a dash of lime juice in a spicy soup helped to assuage our hunger and clear our nostrils.
another special sauce added the extra spiciness that only some wasabi could match.
some vietnamese drip coffee with milk ended the wonderful dinner for me, complementing the slices of sugar-frosted ginger that came at the end of dinner.
the coffee was quite nice but i had had better coffee in vietnam and also in another vietnamese restaurant - saonam in tengkat tongshin. now that is one fine restaurant with a branch opening soon in the hartamas shopping centre.
but that is a report for another day.

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.