Natalina Italian Kitchen, Avenue K, Kuala Lumpur

This was a pretty good lunch at Natalina Italian Kitchen (Lot 06 - Level 03, Avenue K, 156 Jalan Ampang, 50450 Kuala Lumpur, tel : +60 12-673 3860)

Focaccia seemed freshly baked and came with some home made dips/tapenade. The olive and the parsley one were nice. 

Iced earl grey was weak - a pale shadow of the rendition that Din Tai Fung makes.

Pretty good frittura di mare with chewy calamari, prawns and a couple of fishes.

Rigatoni alla Norcina was kickass awesome. Minced lamb, green peas and mushrooms in generously salted rich brown sauce infused with flavour of lamb. Fuck me this was good.

Their seafood risotto was also competently done with well tempered thalassic flavours. There was only one problem with it. It was criminally undersalted. 

I'm not sorry for doing this but it upped the ante of the flavours in the risotto by at least a couple of notches.

Damascus, Bukit Bintang, Kuala Lumpur

Pretty strong queue at Damascus (130 Jalnn Bukit Bintang, Bukit Bintang, 55100 Kuala Lumpur, tel : +6011-3717 2122) and it was almost 10pm. These guys close at 4.30am so I guess it was still early in the night for them.

Place was pretty, clean, air conditioned and with an orderly system of queue managment

We had ayran.

Their Adani tea was nice. Noticeable infusion of spice with milk and sugar. Not so different from masala chai. If we ever come back, we're gonna be getting them by the pot.

That's creamy mix shawarma. The sliced beef and chicken were buried under all the yoghurt-y sauce. Both meats were pretty well spiced but I couldn't tell accurately how they tasted on their own because of all the sauce.

The rice that came with it was savoury and flavourful, belying it's pale appearances. A delicious stock went into cooking it.

Ordered lamb and eggs because is sounded good. Meat was minced and without much lamb flavour so it was a little disappointing..  

Lamb kibbeh was delicious with a crisp shell and piping hot minced meat.

Dessert was something called kunafa pistachio roll - a roll of sorts made with kataifi, the spun pastry that's used to make kunefe. Sweet, flat, pastry was not exactly crispy and not much pistachio flavour despite all the crush nuts. Wouldn't get it again.

NALÉ, Mid Valley Megamall, Kuala Lumpur

Social media brought us to NALÉ (G(E)-013, MIDVALLEY MEGAMALL, Lingkaran Syed Putra, Mid Valley City, 59200 Kuala Lumpur, tel : +60 10-661 7871). Their name appears to be the first syllables of nasi lemak. What intrigued us about them was their nasi lemak bakar.

We had a nasi lemak klasik which was the base plate for comparison with the bakar version which we also ordered. It's pretty good tasting. Sambal has that trinity of onion-y fruity ikan bilis-y flavour with a nice bit of heat. The fruitiness of said sambal reminded me a little of the one from the defunct Lemak Boys.

The nasi lemak bakar was packed with the sambal into banana leaves and grilled over flame. There was discernible smoky aroma from the 3 ringgit worth of bakar-ing. Was it nice? Sure. Worth paying for? If I'm here. But I don't think I'll make a special trip way out for this in retrospect.

200g of sambal petai that was topped with ikan bilis. Beans were well cooked and sambal was tangy and with some heat.  

Clams with sambal hijau. Pretty spicy and chewy.

House of Fishball (漁鄉丸), Sri Petaling, Kuala Lumpur

Breakfast at House of Fishball (37 Jalan Radin Anum, Bandar Baru Sri Petaling, 57000 Kuala Lumpur). We found out about this place because of their cendol/chendol but there were a bunch of other things on their menu that looked good.

These guys have a pretty robust ice kopi cincau. Coffee with enough fortitude to kickstart most if not all hearts. Not excessively sweet too.

Breakfast included their lard topped mee pok which was delicious. Like their home made fish cakes for the taste and tender chewy texture.

This was a mixture of fish noodle and glass noodle/tang hoon. Pretty impressed with those squiggly fish noodles. They were almost similar to fish cake in texture.

What we were looking forward to for this visit was their pork lard cendol. That's right, pork lard (猪油渣) in cendol. Salted crispy fried pork fat in our favourite coconut laden and palm sugar drizzled shaved ice dessert with pandan infused mung bean worms and red beans.

Large chunks of those lard too apparently. Did not taste weird. It added a lardy aromatic dimension which we never knew we wanted.

RSMY Best Cheese Naan, Jalan Medan Tuanku, Kuala Lumpur

 

I never knew that cheese naan was a thing in KL until recently. There're even a few listicles just for top cheese naan so we came to try RSMY Best Cheese Naan (11&13, Jalan Medan Tuanku, Medan Tuanku, 50300 Kuala Lumpur, tel : +60 3-2697 0700) which was mentioned the most often and was probably as good as any as a starting point. 

Menu as of end 2024. Sometime in November.

Got a bandung soda. It's milky with rose flavour but not enough fizz. Also very sweet.

Here's a cheese naan with extra cheese. These guys were pretty serious with the mozzarella stuffing. Lots of cheese pull and more than a couple of "chew well or you'll choke in cheese" moments. This one was a lot more cheesy than the one at Al-Ameen. I kinda like it for it's simplicity but surfeit creeps up fast for these things.

Sides like their spicy beef keema helps break the monotony of the naan. I like this for the coarse mince and the warmth from the spices. And the egg.

I've read numerous complains about them charging for dal. This stuff was decent tasting and well spiced. In retrospect, I thought it made sense to charge for a serving when requested for instead of giving them away for free when many people will probably not even touch it.

Nutella cheese fries from Friend Fries

Sauced with Nutella and cheese. Shop's along Bukit Bintang. They were pretty generous with the Nutella. The piping hot fries were mostly well coated in chocolate.