Singapore-Malaysia Trip: Zipangu Japanese Restaurant at the Shangrila

Thanks for enduring my many postings on my trip to Singapore and Malaysia. This is the final posting in this series. From tomorrow I am gonna take a long rest from blogging and pass the baton over to Suanne. It was just a 2 week trip but did manage to blog 28 entries in all. Wow, Suanne had not blogged for 4 straight weeks — that’s not fair!

Joyce treated me to dinner at the Zipangu Japanese Restaurant in the Shangrila Kuala Lumpur. The Shangrila KL is perhaps still the No 1 hotel in KL. It used to have been voted as the No 1 hotel in the world. Joyce had a corporate membership in the hotel. For that she gets 50% off.

We were deciding over whether we should go for the RM$98 (US$ 25+) Buffet or try something different. We opted for the Japanese restaurant because there were a long queue at the buffet restaurant waiting to break fast (it was Ramadhan then).

The entrance were grand. We had to wind our way along walls of wine. Pretty amazing and I was thinking … gosh! how much is this meal gonna cost!!

The restaurant were impressively laid out. We could see the kitchen at work from where we were. This is so authentically high end Japanese restaurant. The service were prompt. They must have the best waiters and waitresses in the entire city. They not only looked pretty/handsome but they do come across as very intelligent and professional.

Joyce and I could not recognize most of what was in the menu. So, we opted for the Set Dinner. Each set dinner costs RM98, same price as the buffet. I went for the Tempura Set Dinner while Joyce chose the Salmon Set Dinner.

What came first was a tea pot for each of us! I initially thought that it was tea.

Opening the lid, we found out that it is soup with piece of meat in it. We mulled for sometime over how we’re supposed to take this. That was when the waiter came over and ever so politely explained to us the dish.

You see, we are suppose to first pour the soup into a small plate and sip from it. Forget the lime on the plate — it’s supposed to be squeezed into the pot.

After the soup’s gone, we picked the meat from the pot and eat it from the plate. It’s basically one prawn and mushrooms. This was really good — great start.

They also served a small bowl of salad. I am never a fan of cold salad.

Next dish looked good until we’re told that it’s duck liver! I wished they did not described this to me because it tasted really good. At this point, I really felt like one of the judges on Iron Chef tasting unique and exotic food.

Some vegetables. Nice and crunchy … don’t know what it is called. I like it even though it is a cold dish.

This is Joyce’s salmon main dish. The salmon fillet looked too small to me. Joyce said it was really good.

Oh yeah, what do you call this? Daikon?

This is my partly eaten Tempura main dish. It was not bad but compared to Joyce’s salmon, I wished I had ordered that instead.

Miso soup … must have miso soup, right? BTW, is it right that the proper way to drink it is to slurp as loud as possible straight from the bowl? I guess it is because they did not give us soup spoons like those we find in chinese meals.

We ended up with green tea ice cream with a dash of red bean paste. It was quite different but would still prefer chocolate anytime!

For Malaysian standards, this meal is really expensive. For Canadian standards, this is a steal. Anyway, thanks for this meal Joyce. It was great meeting up with you again and catching up on old times.

So … here it is … the last posting on my trip to Singapore and Malaysia! What do you think? You think I had fun? At the end of the two weeks I was hopelessly home sick and was just dying to get home to Vancouver.

Recipes for the next few weeks … no more travel … over to you, Suanne!