Oriental Spoon, Sooka Sentral

It is not that easy finding a halal dim sum place in the Klang Valley, let alone a good one for our departmental lunch yesterday. The 6 of us finally decided on Oriental Spoon, located in Sooka Sentral, which takes less than 5 minutes walk from KL Sentral, smack right in the middle of the city centre.

We were greeted by captivating pieces of Chinese decor and wood furniture as we entered the restaurant. As we have made reservations earlier, they seated us at a private booth with comfortable seats.

Only 3 days from Chinese New Year, it's always the Chinese Malaysian tradition to have 'yee Sang'. Yee Sang is a traditional aspicious dish that symbolises the ushering of prosperity, good healthand longevity for the lunar new year. Lou Sang is merely the act of mixing together the Yee Sang dishes with chopsticks, which consists of the usual assortment of vegetables like white radish, crispy crackers, bits of pamelo sacs, pickled cucumber and carrots mixed with crumbs of nuts and sweet sauce along with slices of raw fish/ jelly fish / abalone.

We'd pre-ordered some black pepper seafood udon and stir fried vegetables in addition to our dim sum. Everyone thought it was surprisingly 'yummy' for a halal Chinese restaurant. The udon was very well done - they were relatively generous with the servings of seafood.

Then the restaurant proceeded to serve our dimsum .....

Steamed Siew Mai

Steamed Rice Rolls with Prawns

Deep Fried yam Dumplings

Steamed 'Har Gao'

Fried Radish Cake

Overall the meal was pretty satisfying except for the 'BBQ Chicken Pao' (above), which was not at all tasty with its overly thick pastry and too little filling. On top of the pictures above, we also had steamed fish balls, beef balls and fried spring rolls, which we dished into it too quickly that I'd forgotten to take pictures. Level of service also needs to be improved as at times we had to ask the waitresses 2-3 times to get what we wanted. The meal came close to RM300 for 6 of us.

Oriental Spoon1-5, Sooka Sentral, Jalan Stesen Sentral 5, 50470, Kuala Lumpur(opposite the MRCB building). Tel: 03 – 2261 3222/ Fax: 03-2780 2055. Opening hours: 7 days a week (11 am – 8pm).

Out of 5 stars..

Overall ambience 4

Food 4 (for a halal restaurant standard)

Service 3