Canton-i Restaurant @ 1-Utama, Petaling Jaya

Back home in Manchester now. However, there is still plenty for me to write about regarding my culinary exploits in KL / PJ during my visit. The last few days since I have been back has been rather dull, as far as eating is concerned. But this always happen after every visit to Malaysia. After a couple of week of extreme stimulations of the tastebuds, all the food here seems rather bland and unexciting. Even when I went to a nice restaurant yesterday, it failed to recreate the buzz and high of tasting Malaysian food in Malaysia itself.


Here is place I have read about in many blogs and have had it on my list as a must-visit when I visited Malaysia next, so here I was.

The front was very modern, clean and had a rather upmarket look to it, despite having the image of selling popular Hong Kong hawker / cafe food. It was around 12pm on a Saturday and there were already loads of people going into the restaurant. I would have liked to have lunched a little later but seeing the crowd, we thought we'd better grab a table there before they were full up.



Here we can see the cooks doing their stuff in a kitchen exposed for all to see. No spitting into the food here! So, you can safely return the food if you dont like it!


The char siu wantan noodle dish was very nice. The char siu was tender and fresh with just enough charring to avoid the bitter taste. This was definitely Malaysian style char siu rather than the red and blander Hong Kong style. The wantans were huge.. like siu mai, and plenty of juicy prawns and pork filling within. The noodle was nice too, but not outstanding. The sauce, however, was just ok. Not as good as an old fashioned Malaysian style wantan mee sauce from a hawker.


The ngau nam meen (beef brisket noodle) is as good as any I have ever tasted. Neither better nor worse. I dont think anything ordering this would be disappointed, but neither would they be wowed.


I ordered an indivudual plate of crispy roast pork (siew yoke) and roast cuttlefish, after reading good reviews about the former. I was not disappointed with the former, as the skin was really crispy and meat was juicy and tender. However, the cuttlefish was really tough. I have had much better in the UK. I have not seen this kind of cuttlefish being sold fresh in the local markets here, so maybe the quality of the raw cuttlefish was not so good.



My overall impression was that it was just ok, especially given the price of around rm80 for all the above dishes. Ok, so its still about half the price I would have to pay in the UK in an average Chinese restaurant. However, I expected it to have cost a lot less in South East Asia, even if the quality was above average.

Some of the other blogs that made me visit this place:

Babe in the city
Masak Masak
Ling239

Curry Sotong / Squid / Cuttlefish

One of my favourite Malaysian dishes is the curried squid. The ones you get from the mamak stalls or nasi lemak seller. I would have this several times a week whenever I visited, but I always have a preference for small whole squids rather than the brown reconstituted cuttlefish.

My version is made from what I think is a cuttlefish. It looks exactly like the small squids, except that its rather huge .. about 6 times the size. Also its cleaned and frozen from fresh, so there are no tentacles and innards. Just the body itself. It makes the preparation really easy.

Ingredients:
Squid
Curry powder, mixed into a paste
Curry leaves
Onions
Tamarind juice
Coconut milk
Tomato paste
Salt

Method
I always blanch the squid first as it can be too fishy if cooked from raw.
Then I brown the curry leaves, onions and the curry paste together.
Then add the tomato paste, tamarind juice and coconut milk
Then add the squid and simmer for 10 mins - depending on the thickness of the squid.
And that's it!