All reader reviews by Khan

Melati (Peter St)

I am Malaysian myself and despite Melati billed itself as serving traditional and authentic Malaysian cuisine, I regret to say this could not be further from the truth.

I checked out the restaurant with a friend of mine and we went for the Set Menu C, which comes out to £20 per person with a reasonable amount of food. The place was not very crowded, however service was exceptionally slow; it took a good 15 minutes after our order went in for the waitress to serve us with a starter set comprise of chicken satays, sesame toasts and spring rolls, which is hardly anything sophisticated. To their credit, the quality of the starters was excellent though and the satays were some of the best I have ever tasted.

The main course, however, were extremely disappointing. The Beef Rendang was not spicy at all, and the beef was rather tough. In addition, the gravy was not flavourful nor savoury, to which I suspect was largely due to the absence of serai (lemon grass).

Next came the Sambal Prawns. Despite it looking promising, I was quickly disappointed. There were only SIX prawns in the whole dish and the sauce was very watery. However the biggest complaint has got to be the chef opted to use bell peppers instead of chilli peppers to cook the prawns. Sambal is supposed to be rather hot and despite I understand there might be a need to tone down the hotness to cater to the British taste, I felt as if I was eating sweet chilli prawns instead.

Stir-fried vegetable was pretty much the usual fare one gets at any Chinatown restaurant and although it was not bad, it was nothing exceptional either. The Ayam Kicap Manis was perhaps the only food which I enjoyed.

All in all, I would not recommend this restaurant to any foodie who is seeking real authentic Malaysian food. I think the restaurant is doing itself a great disservice by taking out the fiery zest found in most Malaysian dishes. One thing is for sure, I certainly would not be returning to this restaurant any time soon.

Wednesday, April 07, 2010
Overall rating
Food 3 | Service 4 | Atmosphere 3 | Value for money 6