Saturday, January 27, 2007

Magma, Bukit Pasoh


My initial skepticism of this place is totally dispelled from this dinner. Magma is located at 2 Bukit Pasoh.

Atypical of German places (I guess), the menu at Magma was filled with many options for meats, sausages, wine and beer. This shop-house restaurant houses a partial open concept kitchen without any glass walls so some the smoke crept into the dining area. Fortunately the restaurant didn't smell like it had any problems with proper ventilation. Being a partially open concept kitchen, we observed that not all of the food was prepared in the main kitchen and we knew because we were seated right beside it.

Sausage platter

A regular plate of mixed sausages which was on the whole pretty good. I wasn't really able to identify specifics, but they were generally juicy and some were spicy as well. Liked the coarse ones.

German pizza (Flammkuchen) with smoked pork loin, garlic sauerkraut

What I liked about the German pizzas at Magma was, instead of having a regular tomato based sauce, the bread was topped with cream cheese (woohoo!). They also come with a nice garlic flavour (woohoo again!) and bits of fragrant smoked pork loin that were lightly charred. The pizza actually looked like a sort of giant naan and the crust wasn't as thin as the Italian types. With the addition of sauerkraut, the pizza was savoury and sourish. It got thumbs up from me because there was cream cheese.

A mixed platter of supposedly pork specialties (Gemischte Schlachtplatte) , but I detected chicken and beef

This is pretty much a meat lover's dream. Big platter filled with thick slices meats, various sausages, a small pork knuckle and dumplings (German dumplings which look like meatloaves, not the wantons things). One of the sausages from this mixed platter was the boiled variety - it having a softer and squishier texture. The heap of meat sat on potato salad, sauerkraut, mashed green peas (which were not bad actually) and cabbages braised in red wine. This serving was meant for 3.



Hands with forks and knives get busy in the process...


There was a selection of interesting desserts. We did manage a toasted cheese dessert in cranberry sauce, chocolate mousse and a Gebackene Apfelscheiben mit Zimthonig (a tongue twister for baked apple slices in puff pastry with honey and powdered cinnamon).

Gebackene Apfelscheiben mit Zimthonig

a quaint cheese dessert with gooseberries and doesn't really taste of cheese at all

An interesting and not so regular chocolate mousse

The chocolate mousse was different because the white portion was made with jalapeno giving it a prickly spiciness. It was akin to eating wasabi ice cream. I'm not generally a mousse person so I haven't really paid too much attention to the dessert. It did come with a rather nice almond-y marzipan sauce. It was nice because I liked it and I generally dislike marzipan.

From first impressions, Magma seemed to be pretty good. The food portions were pretty generous but leaned towards being salty. On the top of that, we had very polite and prompt service from the staff that actually knew about what they're serving you. I think I'll come back another time.

No comments: