JAN 17 – Which restaurant in KL has a view of both the Twin Towers and KL Tower? Elegant Inn on the second floor of Menara Hap Seng (formerly Mui Plaza) has two balconies at different sides of the restaurant which offers great views of these two iconic buildings.
The wide balconies are great for pre-dinner drinks, an office party or even a launch event. We couldn't help thinking that this would have been a great spot for watching the fireworks display on New Year's Eve.
Elegant Inn was reborn in this new central city location more than six months ago but it has retained all the sublime essence of the original menu at their restaurant in Cheras.
So now, folks who are wary of getting lost in Cheras no longer need to miss out on Elegant Inn's fabulous cuisine.
Dinner that night was also educational. I learnt so much about the coming together of textures and flavours, mouth feel and what constitutes a soup with body from owner Jeannette Han who ate with us.
The Chilled Cup Delight – an appetiser – was a surprise: it's small glasses of crabmeat, raw chopped salmon and Foochow noodles, drizzled with a lemon parsley sauce, sitting snugly on a mound of shaved ice.
The taste? A whoosh of tangy lemon, lemon grass, garlic and chilli is released, combining first with sweet crabmeat, then salmon and the smooth white noodles at the base. What a refreshing kick start to the rest of dinner.
Honest and unassuming could be used to describe the Chiu Yim White Bait and Frog's Legs. There are no pretensions here but you have to acknowledge the chef's skill, and light-handedness with oil, salt and pepper in this dish. I loved the bites of crunchy white bait and sweet, tender meat of the frog's legs. The salt is subtle and even and enhanced the generous crispy bits of garlic.
Double-boiled soups are also what Elegant Inn does best. We had one done with figs, sweetcorn, Japanese scallops, carrots, green radish and spareribs. "The soups are usually double-boiled for four to six hours," said Jeannette, whose exacting standards were not met in the soup we had. Not enough body, was her comment, but we thought it was great with its clear, sweet flavours.
I wanted to drink up the sauce in the Steamed Golden Pomfret with Lemon Black Bean Sauce, so good it was. It was perfectly steamed, the flesh smooth and creamy, the spine red, as it should be (it would be overcooked otherwise). It was lightly tart from lemon, and intensitied by the black beans and garlic, with a little heat from chilli.
Tiger Prawns with Salted Egg Yolk is another signature dish: it comes with celery underneath (so you feel less guilt eating it!). Slivers of Bentong A-grade ginger spice up the thick salted egg yolk sauce hugging the prawns. Every bit of the delicious sauce vanished from the shell, as did the ginger as we dug into this dish.
A lovely aroma trailed the Pork Neck Meat Fried with Pepper as it was served. Slices of this tender meat had been stir fried with dried chillies, pepper, black beans, whole garlic, onions, green and red peppers and spring onions.
Bittergourd with Salted Vegetables is well-known here too. It looks simple but we found out the process that had gone into achieving the smoothness and crunchiness of the bittergourd. It was soaked with some of the salted vegetable and of course superior stock had been used to poach the vegetables. Add two pieces of fried chillies to it, and all the four requisite flavours – bitter, hot, sweet and sour – came through so well.
You would be tempted to pick the pieces of Hong Kong Yung Kee gooseliver sausage from the kai lan they had been stirfried with. It was a "wow" with each bite of the sausage with its complex, winey flavour.
"Here's our unassuming world-famous fried rice," said Jeannette as it came out. The skill is in the frying: "The rice doesn't rest on the wok at all. We toss it all the time. It's a mixture of freshly cooked rice and cold rice. It's not too dry nor wet." You could taste each individual grain of rice with the har kon (a different kind of dried prawns), and egg. Not a single grain was left in our bowls – we liked it that much!
Fresh Mango Pudding is really that at Elegant Inn – you scoop out chunks of mango. It's not the typical mango custard one gets at other restaurants. The Steamed Custard Cake or Malai Ko is to die for, being so light and fluffy, yet rich and eggy.
Filo Pastry with Avocado Filling is also light and crispy, with a creamy filling. The ginger soup for the tong yuen and longan with sea coconut is steeped from Bentong ginger.
The restaurant has acquired a reputation for being pricey but eating here is actually very do-able. There are set lunches at RM30 and RM35 per person. Dimsum is also available at lunch. For Chinese New Year, the lunch menus for 10 are at RM488, RM688 and RM888, with dinner menus ranging from RM788 to RM1,688.
Elegant Inn is located at 2.01, 2nd floor Podium Block, Menara Hap Seng, Jalan P.Ramlee, 50250 Kuala Lumpur. Tel: 03-2070 9399.
