Pantai Seafood

So much for being in a boot camp, I had a major pig-out weekend! Fail! But I shall not torment you with how guilt-ridden I am so it's on to the good part - the food!

Bro previously sang praises of Pantai Seafood. An attempt to make a reservation on Sunday afternoon was met with the response that they were all full for the aircond section, so we had no choice but to opt for the outside which was luckily quite cool. I'm not sure how to describe where exactly it is except that it's somewhere off the NKVE in Kg. Kayu Ara. We were just starting to enjoy the idyllic view of the kampung roads we were going through when boom! We arrived at a big restaurant filled with rows and rows of cars. Popular and crowded is an understatement!

The food took quite a long time in coming and we took bets in guessing which would come out first. My guess was their signature pork knuckle since it was probably pre-cooked while sis guessed squid but they fooled us with this fried snapper. This was really something different. It was deep-fried snapper swimming in a creamy butter sauce and topped with crisp fried curry leaves and buttery bits.

Taste: Best eaten hot, it was nice and crispy. The mild-tasting sauce added an interesting flavour to it. I'm not a fan of creamy stuff but the rest liked it. We saw another table with a brownish sauce, similar to this texture and figured maybe the crispy bits are meant to be mixed together into the butter sauce.

One thing good is that when your first dish appears, you can be assured that your next few will start appearing in rapid succession! This is another signature item - two style kailan. It's deep-fried shredded kailan leaves over stir-fried stalks.

Taste: I found it a bit oily but I liked the little anchovies generously sprinkled on the top!

This is a must-have and their speciality - deep fried pork knuckle! They bring it to your table to show it off first before removing it to cut it up but if you so desire, you're free to ask them to leave it for you to tear into :)

Taste: Served with a sourish plum sauce, this was one of my favourites! It's crispy on the outside and tenderly soft inside. Delicious!

Kam heong lala was next. This was done with the bigger type of lala but to our disappointment, there wasn't much meat at all in the shells. The few mouths I took were either bits of shell or horrors..sand!

Taste: There wasn't much flavour or taste either and worse, it was cold by the time it came to our table. Thumbs down!

We've been having a hankering for sotong goreng tepung for a while already so we insisted on this despite the staff telling us everything else was deep-fried!

Taste: I was quite disappointed though to see if coming coated with thick batter. I was hoping for the thinly coated crumbly batter that the Malay stalls do so well! An unfulfilled craving leaves an unfulfilled Pinkelle!

The highlight of the night - the crabs! They recommended salt egg crabs which is supposed to be their signature dish. Signature indeed...it made up for some of the not-so-good dishes.

Taste: We had two very meaty crabs which came generously coated with salt egg. Very enjoyable and it was rather reasonable at about RM33/kg!

The bill came up to under RM40 per pax for 5 of us which wasn't too bad at all, considering the amount we ate and took away! As we were finishing, we saw a couple who had just come in. The guy asked his girlfriend to hold an empty table while he went off to place the order. She however, insisted on following him and needless to say, in a popular place like this, their table was gone by the time they came back! Tsk tsk...girls, don't attach yourself to your guy when he needs you to hold the table in a terribly busy restaurant! :p