So we were walking around 1 utama looking for something to eat. She was thinking of going to that ramen store in Isetan. I was not feeling like having ramen so I was trying to encourage her to have something else. hahahaha.
we walked around the back and this sign that said they were giving free refills of rice, miso soup, cabbage and barley tea. That seems to be too good to be true so we decided to walk in and have a look around.
The menu served fried everything, by that I mean that they had deep fried pork loin, pork fillets, jumbo prawns and one dish that served deep fried fish. I normally move away from deep fried anything but this restaurant seems interesting. They specialise in their pork chops. They advertise their specially aged meat and their very specific cooking method that results in a crispy but not oily result. I was intrigued so I ordered the extra large pork loin chop. My other half ordered the mixed fried which had deep fried pork loin, prawns and fish. (this is the only dish that had fish in it)
Before the main dish arrived, we were given an appetizer in the form of grated radish. This was to be eaten with a special sauce. Looking at it, we didn't really know what it was for but the waiter was kind enough to point out how we were to eat it. The sauce was an interesting mix of sweet and salty and the radish was refreshing to the palette.
When my dish came, it was a good looking. the gold skin on the pork loin seems crunchy but it was not dripping in oil. In fact, I found that the whole dish did not feel oily at all. It was just nice and crunchy. The meat was cooked just right that it was still very tender and juicy and it was seasoned very simply. The unlimited salad was just raw cabbage, but the fact that they took the time to slice it so thinly that it did not feel at all like I was a rabbit eating vegetables. With the sauce the salad was good. Then there is the miso soup. With most of the dish being good, I had high expectations for the soup but I was very disappointed. There is a weird saltiness to the soup that seems to rub me the wrong way and this I believe can be attributed to the type of miso that they use to make the soup. I feel there is a very 'processed' taste to the soup and I didn't like it.
Going back to the meat of the article, (get it?) they info graphic that was given to us showed that there was three ways to eat the fried pork. The first way was to eat it with salt. This was just plain and simple salt. if you like salt you will like eating it this way (hahaha so 'duh' right?). The second way was to eat it with a spicy sauce. This was just BBQ sauce with a different name. It didn't taste self made, so I could only assume that it was the store bought kind. The third way was to eat it with a sweet sauce. This tasted like the spicy sauce but minus the slightly spicy edge.
All this was to be served with rice. Unlimited glorious rice. hahahahah. There were two choices to the rice. Plain white rice, and multi grain rice. I looooove rice. I had the white rice while she ordered the multi grain rice. Although people encourage more consumption of multi grain everything.... white rice is my guilty pleasure. putting everything together resulted in a very warm sensation in my stomach. Like I was being cradled in the arms of my mother. the sourness of the sauce and crispyness of the pork worked well together. This coupled with the fresh crunch of the salad made it into a very balanced and comforting sensation in my mouth. I believe the best compliment I could give to this dish is that it is comfort food of the ultimate level.
Moving on to the other dish, there was deep fried prawn, fish and pork. The pork is the same as mine, so we shall move on to the prawn. This was not the tempura kind although it was still deep fried just like everything else they serve at the restaurant. It was fresh and bouncy like prawns should be. The fried fish was just as fresh and just as tasty and this was a wonderful surprise. I half expected the sea food to taste fishy and lacking, as most restaurants do not serve good tasting fried seafood. This was different in a very good way.
In conclusion, this was serendipity as i did not at all expect that it would be a good experience. Now i have a new place to go for comfort food and i believe that this is a good thing. If the miso soup tasted better, i would give this shop a higher rating but as is i give it a 8 out of a perfect 10
