A Few of My Favourite Things !

I think I laksa you too. I’m talking about the new Allen Woo venture located right opposite Horoki and down the alley from Longrain.

We had started with a few after-work Pisco Sours and a Caipirinha at The Mill then needed to grab a bite somewhere. We settled on the newly opened restaurant on its second night – if we could get in. Surprisingly, they were barely half full at 8:00pm and we were seated at a table immediately.

The decor is very, very sparse…so much so that you could hardly term it as decor – basic table and chairs on a concrete floor with a famous Chinese poem painted on by the Taiwanese chef, a lick of red paint on the walls and pillars – that was it. Cold and draughty so bring a jacket, especially if you are wearing a dress.

We ordered and asked for all the food to come out together but the service was fairly slow given the small number of diners. I supposed it was only their second night though. We started with the Ipoh Laksa (made with hor fun noodles) with slices of char siu, chicken and prawns. Deliciously coconutty soup that had a decent kick.

Next, the ‘popular’ dry chicken curry on bright yellow hokkien noodles which turned out to not be as hot as the laksa although we were given a chilli warning by the waiter. A little like a rendang but slightly too salty.

Oddly, the oyster shooters came out after the noodle dishes tasting a little ‘fishy’ although the dressing was okay. Not our favourite.

My pick of the night was the calamari, cucumber noodle and jelly fish salad. Quite a tiny bowl of salad but it had a lovely smokiness with the calamari cooked to perfection.

We enquired about dessert only to be told that there was only one on the menu tonight, dumplings in a ginger soup. Fortunately, a certain food critic was seated at the table next to us and we managed to overhear the waiter describe three desserts to them including the black sticky rice and kueh dadar.

Although not something that I would normally order, the sticky black rice was fantastic and worth ordering again.

We joked that they may be serving the ‘Ron & Sue’ version (you have to frequent Asian grovcery stores to understand this one) but fortunately the kueh dadar came out warm, straight from the pan. They didn’t have the usual green crepe skins and they were sitting in a puddle of cognac sauce – very unusual indeed and suitable for the very sweet-toothed.

The prices were quite decent with our meal totaling $56. I’ll give them a couple of weeks to settle in before coming back armed with a warm jacket.

Laksa Me

Shop 1, Liverpool St

Melbourne 3000

Update: John Leathlean reviewed this place in the Epicure, The Age on 29 May 2007.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 16th, 2007 at 11:31 pm and is filed under malaysian, melbourne, restaurants/cafes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.