Monday 5 May 2014

Restaurant Review: Gourmet Malaysia

Gourmet Malaysia

Address: 4466 Sheppard Avenue East, Scarborough ON M1S1V2

Hours: Open from 11 am everyday till 10:30 pm Monday-Thursday, 11:30 pm Friday-Saturday and 11:00 pm on Sundays.

I remember visiting my uncle in Malaysia as a young child, it was probably the earliest step towards my love of spicy foods. Fresh and dried Asian chilis frequently accompanied every meal and sauces that incorporated chilis were everywhere. Although not many memories regarding the food remain, often times I will taste something and a tinge of familiarity will spark in my mind, almost like deja vu. But enough of the nostalgia, we have a review to go through.

Gourmet Malaysia is a Malaysian/Indonesian restaurant located near the corner of Sheppard and McCowan. The restaurant resembles a large dining hall, with rectangular tables setup in row by row fashion and booths lining the windows. The menu is large and although I usually have my misgivings regarding large menus, in South East Asian restaurants this seems like common place. As I begin to peruse the menu something catches my eye. "Roti with beef curry". Roti canai (the South East Asian roti) is one of my earliest food memories. During a family trip to Thailand I remember coming home late with my mom and aunt after a long day of shopping (much to the dismay of my poor little feet). With the shopping spree over it was finally time to eat and we stopped at the only place open late on our way back to the hotel; a street vendor selling roti with curry. We took our new found meals up to our room and while my parents struggled with the lack of utensils I dove right in with my hands. The roti was chewy and buttery, almost flaky. Accompanying it was an aromatic yellow curry that was bursting with flavour, needless to say my young self mopped it all up. Ever since then I've been a huge fan of roti and I order it whenever I can.

Malaysian Curry with Roti
Gourmet Malaysia's Roti with Curry Beef didn't disappoint, the roti itself was chewy and rich, a great accompaniment for the complex and flavourful Malaysian curry. Our group lamented that we should have all just gotten individual portions of roti, I wholeheartedly agreed.

Crispy Boxing Chicken
Next we had the Crispy Boxing Chicken (due to one of my friends finding the name amusing). The chicken was prepped "lollipop style", which means the drumettes were cut near their smaller end and the meat was scraped with a knife towards the larger end (incidentally I've been told you can do these with the wing itself once you take out the smaller of the two bones). The dish is accompanied by generic sweet chili sauce and like the sauce the dish itself is not very memorable. I like fried things and the chicken was good, but you wouldn't be missing much by skipping this dish.

Soto Ayam
Next up on the docket was Soto Ayam, an Indonesian chicken soup accompanied with noodles. My friends enjoyed the soup while personally I found the taste of hard boiled eggs too pervasive. The chicken itself would have had a better texture if it was cut thinner or if it was shredded before being added to the soup. Decent nonetheless.

The next appetizer was Deep Fried Prawns with Chili and Garlic. With shrimp I have always struggled with whether I preferred them cooked shell on or off. In this case I would have definitely preferred it cooked without the shells despite it traditionally being done otherwise since the flavourful coating on the outside ended up being lost when you peeled the shrimp. Ways around this include eating the prawns shell and all (I tried this with a couple shrimp and found it a little unpleasant) or sucking the shell for flavour before removing it and eating the shrimp (the best compromise I could come up with). Overall this appetizer was good, though like all fried things you need to eat while hot!

Indonesian Fried Rice with Shrimp Paste

Next we tried Nasi Goreng with Seafood in Belacan Sauce (pictured above). Now that I'm at home I was able to find out that nasi goreng simply means fried rice in Indonesian and belacan sauce was another name for shrimp paste. We ended up ordering Indonesian fried rice with shrimp paste, which was unfortunate because we also ordered another dish... the Indonesian fried rice -_-. I bet the chefs in the back had a great laugh about that. Overall I the fried rice was decent, the flavour of the shrimp paste was strong, acting as a backdrop to other familiar Indonesian flavours of chili, garlic and shallots.  I have almost become numb to the presence of frozen vegetables in Asian fried rice, but  the rice here also had morsels of shrimp, squid and other seafood nestled within.

Malaysian Fried Rice
For dessert we had Ice Kacang, otherwise known as ais kacang or Malaysian shaved ice. Asian shaved ice always seem overloaded with toppings in a comical kind of way and honestly thats just the way I like it. The shaved ice at Gourmet Malaysia had agar agar, grass jelly, what I think is cendol (correct me if I'm wrong), red beans, sweet corn and condensed milk plus a single scoop of vanilla ice cream. To me the ice kacang was the perfect ending to a meal, especially since good Asian shaved ice is limited in the city. Keep in mind I'm a sucker for dessert though =D

Although I barely scratched the surface of Gourmet Malaysia's behemoth menu, what I was able to try has been promising. Sure there were some average at best dishes, but there were some gems of delectable proportions to be had as well and with a menu this big, who knows what other treasures lie hidden at Gourmet Malaysia.

Recommended

Gourmet Malaysia on Urbanspoon

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