PETALING JAYA, July 10 — The congratulatory flowers were still fresh outside Uncle Prawn in Sunway Giza when we visited earlier this week. This newly-opened seafood restaurant is located strategically near the entrance to this shopping centre built to environmental-friendly concepts in Kota Damansara. It was surprising to see the restaurant filled with people for dinner on a rainy weekday, and sitting in the cool outdoors.

Prawns are definitely what Uncle Prawn is all about, specifically the Tai Tau Har (big head prawns or udang galah).

We had these in two dishes: the Sang Har Meen and the Angled Loofah with River Prawns. The first is pure egg noodles deep-fried and finished in a scrumptious eggy sauce with heaps of prawn flavour. It’s noodles you should help yourself to immediately they are served so that some of the noodles retain their crunchiness. The sauce is not starchy; neither are the noodles and you would want to drink up this yummy sauce.

The Angled Loofah with River Prawns was a great pairing in a creamy soup tinged orange with prawn roe. I loved the naturally sweet seng kua (loofah) in the sublime soup, which also invited slurping every drop. You might want to ask for rice or noodles to go with this. The prawns were of a fair size (at least 250g), and they sell for RM25 each.

We had started dinner with some appetisers, or snacks as they are called in the menu. There was the Crispy Pork Belly in Honey, slices of meat marinated with a little nam yee (red fermented beancurd), then deep fried. Where the hot oil touched the fat of the pork and turned it crispy, it released a delicious aroma. These were lovely bites, in a light honey embrace.

The Butter Sauce Squid Slice had curls of deep fried squid coated in a butter sauce with cili padi and Indian curry leaves. The overall taste was fine, but the squid was a little tough and chewy.

Both these pork and squid “snacks” are RM12 each.

“Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” made its debut with a spicy flourish. It was all about clams, crab, prawns, frog legs and konyaku in a very fragrant and hot curry. Unusually, at the bottom of it was a thin piece of fried minced pork with salted fish and water chestnuts. It’s a curry without santan, and every ingredient in it had soaked up the spices. I wished there was more of the minced pork which tasted very good in the curry. So did the meaty frog’s leg, the crab and the prawns. The bunch of crunchy konyaku threads picked up all the flavours of the curry too. It’s a dish to get very busy with; again I couldn’t resist drinking up this superb curry.

This seafood curry is priced at RM118 and is enough for four people or more.

I would go back for the Braised Sweetened Pork Rib (RM18.80) which is like Tung Por Yook. It’s a baby back rib with a thin layer of fat between tender meat. It’s enough to sink into the sublime, creamy layers well-infused with a sweet sauce with hints of star anise and five-spice powder. Mantou, both fried and steamed, was served with this.

Uncle Prawn has a different treatment too for the Deepfried Red Tilapia Western Style. Most times, this fish would be steamed and dunked in a nyonya curry sauce or with a hot bean sauce. At Uncle Prawn there are very crispy meaty chunks of the fish coated with strands of egg yolk fried in butter together with cili padi and Indian curry leaves.

Bite into the Crispy Homemade Tofu with Mushrooms and Broccoli and you encounter a flaky biscuity top layer descending into soft, eggy and silky beancurd. Shimeji mushrooms and broccoli in an oyster-flavoured sauce complete the ensemble.

A tangy, sourish lemongrass jelly with fruits and lemon juice, and kwai leng ko, were just what we needed to end dinner on a healthy note!

From now till July 31, spend RM50 at Uncle Prawn and you will get a tilapia for just RM1. If your bill exceeds RM80, you will get 300g of tiger prawns at just RM1.

Uncle Prawn is located at Unit A-15, Sunway Giza, Jalan PJU 5/14 Dataran Sunway Kota Damansara, 47810 Petaling Jaya. Tel: 03-6148 1998, email.