Red Door Review in NST (03 Apr 2004)

EU HOOI KHAW savours classic Nyonya dishes at the Red Door Nyonya restaurant, notes the painstaking cooking methods that have gone into their preparation and tells of their tasty differences. TRUE Nyonya cooking at home demands a personal, detailed touch. The traditional way of doing things is always better - pounding your sambal belacan in a stone pounder or scraping coconut by hand. You wouldn't expect food to be prepared in this way in a restaurant.

But you can at Red Door, a nyonya restaurant located within the new Jusco in Kepong, Kuala Lumpur. The dishes, says Mee Mee Ngan, the owner, are all cooked according to her grandma's or mother's recipes. A thread of fineness runs through the food, whether it's Inche Kabin, Chicken Pongteh, Fishhead Curry, Nyonya Prawns, Nyonya Curry Chicken, Otak-otak or Kuih Pie Tee or top hats. Or in the kuih that is made by Mee Mee. Now how many nyonya restaurants you know don't take their kuih, mass-produced, from suppliers?

Even the nasi kerabu - you can have a choice of this or the unusually-flavoured chicken rice - is tinged blue from bunga telang.

Red doors with gold metal studs give a distinctive look to the restaurant, which has rustic-looking teak furniture from Chiengmai, Thailand. There are Chinese musical instruments hanging on the wall. A red bamboo centrepiece inside and baskets as part of the decor add up to a warm ambience. At the front is a big earthen jar of bubbling water, and on a small table there, platters of actual food which the restaurant serves.

First the Inche Kabin. In some nyonya restaurants this masquerades as merely fried chicken, but not here. The chicken, well marinated with spices, was served hot from the fryer, with crispy skin, almost melting in the mouth. This came with a piquant dip of Worcestershire sauce, to which fresh coriander stems had been ground into it, soya sauce, lemon and lime juice, some chopped shallots and some ABC sauce for a bit of zing.

Pie Tee makes a marvellous appetiser as well at Red Door. The thin Pie Tee cases somehow stayed firm and crisp even after 15 minutes. They were filled to the brim with very finely cut bangkuang braised with chicken, shallots and lots of cuttlefish strips and topped with crabmeat. A tangy home-made chilli dip was served with these.

The Chicken Pongteh was very finely done. Loads of onions had been ground for this together with bean paste, which gave a natural sweetness to the thick, creamy gravy clinging to the chunks of tender chicken, sliced black mushrooms and potatoes. Eat this with the hot chicken rice scented with lemongrass, and some sambal belacan, and you're in pongteh heaven. The Chicken Pongteh (no pork is served in this restaurant) is cooked to Mee Mee's grandma's recipe, who's a Malaccan nyonya.

Even the sambal belacan stands out - it has been pounded by hand and stirred with juices from small limes.

The Fishhead Curry here was excellent - it released fine aromas of spices and karupillai leaves that lingered in the air as you dug into it. A very meaty fishhead had been cut up and cooked in the curry, together with long beans, ladies fingers, cabbage and eggplant. There was not a lot of coconut in it, and the curry was so good you could drink it like a soup. There was a sweetness about it that came from roasted flat sole (chor hau yee), a "secret" ingredient from her mum that Mee Mee happily revealed. It had been put in a bag and simmered in the soup for curry, to which ikan bilis had been added too.

We had some Otak-otak, Malaccan nyonya style, only this was soft to the bite, hot enough with chilli and lovely with aromas of lemongrass, daun kadok and daun limau purut.

Red Door does a delicious version of Beef Rendang too, with the meat breaking up at the bite, every fibre in the tight embrace of a coconut-creamy chilli, roots and herbs mix.

Our vegetable dishes were the Kangkong Belacan which scored for its strong belacan and chilli aroma and taste, and the lotus root, celery, carrot and black fungus fried with fermented beancurd or lam yee.

You must have a taste of the Siamese Laksa here. It's the best I've eaten for a long time. The curry for this entailed hours of cooking I was told, with kembong fish blended into the gravy, and more kembong filleted for topping. It had tempting aromas from the rempah mixture, enough asam to give it a kick, and besides fish, had sotong, beancurd puffs, mint and pineapple on it.

The only dish that I had some reservations about was the Nyonya Prawns which were done Penang style, with a thick asam sauce. A little less sugar would have made them perfect.

Here you must save room for the kuih which is all homemade. We had a well turned-out Serimuka, the soft pandan topping almost melting into the pulut layer, Onde-onde where liquid gula melaka bursts into your mouth and the Pulut Inti. The last was spilling over with "inti" from the banana leaf the blue pulut was wrapped up in. The grated coconut filling was rich and luscious with gula melaka, pairing deliciously with the pulut.

Life & Times food columnist Betty Saw and I found ourselves actually picking on hand-grated coconut that was served with the ubi kayu and relishing its texture and sweet natural juices, which you wouldn't get with grated coconut you buy from the market.

"My girl (Indonesian helper at home) brought two parut (coconut scrapers) from Indonesia when she came back after her holiday," said Mee Mee.

For the high standard of food here, the dishes are very reasonably priced. The Chicken Pongteh, Beef Rendang, Nyonya Chicken Curry and Inche Kabin are all RM8.80 per regular serving, Fishhead Curry RM19.80, Otak-otak RM7.80, Pie Tee RM6.80 (for six), vegetable dishes RM7.80. The Siamese Laksa is RM9.80.

You could also eat a Nyonya meal set, with the curry chicken, beef rendang, Inche Kabin or Chicken, with chicken rice or nasi kerabu and two top hats for RM9.80 only.

If you want to hold a special function in the restaurant, you could inform them and they would lay out the tables beautifully, with banana leaves as a table runner, flowers and cloth napkins held with napkin rings.

Red Door is located at Lot F27, 1st floor, Jusco, Metro Prima Shopping Centre in Kepong. Tel: 03-6252-6186

Bon Apetit: In true-blue Nyonya cooking style