My cousin being a pasta fanatic decided to come to d’italiane kitchen to celebrate his birthday. Situated in a corner in Jaya 33, the entrance to this restaurant from the shopping mall was a bit hard to find as you have to walk towards the village grocer before you see the entrance on your left. But from the outside, you could just walk right in.

A simple layout with an open bar, it was a very easy going environment to dine in. The menu they had was pretty extensive covering a wide range of pastas which was quite impressive.

My cousin ordered his all time favourite dish of fettucine carbonara. The carbonara here was served in a very thick rich cream based sauce and came with a good amount of beef bacon. The beef bacon they put into this dish was very nice, not those hard dry bacon, but this was relatively soft, and had a nice smoky beef taste to it. Almost like beef jerky.

Another dish we had was the lamb shank. This is an absolutely must try. The meat was so tender, we didn’t even have to use the knife they provided to cut the meat. You can eat the lamb with just a fork, that’s how tender it was. It was as if it was slow cooked for hours with the taste infused into the meat.

We also tried the seafood platter which came heaped on a big plate. It was a very generous serve of seafood. Huge prawns, oysters, whitefish and calamari all smothered in cheese and topped off with peppercorns, black olives and chopped tomatoes. The grilled white fish was very tasty, and the calamari still retained its crispy-ness. The prawns was a little dry, but other than that it was a well satisfying meal.

I tried the risotto salmone. This risotto was a tomato based risotto and came smoke salmon and cooked salmon. I think they could have worked a bit more of the presentation to make it more appetizing. Overall not bad, but after awhile, you’ll get very jelat.

To end the meal we finished off with a nice glass of iced chocolate. One of our favourites. We loved it !!

D’italiane Kitchen

PG-01B

Ground Floor Jaya 33

No. 3 (lot 33) Jalan Semangat

Section 13,

46100 Petaling Jaya

Tel: 03 7956 3684

Fax : 03 7956 3109

Pork Free

At the suggestion of one of our friends, Kwong, Steve and I paid Unique Seafood in Section 13 a visit for a small dinner. Including Kwong’s friend, Wayne, there were just the 4 of us.

For those who don’t know, Unique Seafood is actually under the same ownership of the people who own Pantai Seafood, in Kampung Kayu Ara. They have a few other brances as well.

The difference is that this one caters to the slightly more expensive crowd, with Japanese clients favouring the place.

I let Kwong do all the ordering, as he’s been to the restaurant more often than I had, all I asked was for my Sey Teem Tai Wong (yeah I know, my spelling sucks.) and the rest I left it up to him.

First up was a sashimi/ hot broth fish dish. I say both sashimi and hot broth because they serve you the fish raw and you get to choose whether to eat it sashimi style, dipped in soy sauce, or to cook it and drink it in a herbal soup broth.

When I say raw, I mean RAW. Kwong said that they serve it right after taking it out of the tank and sometimes you can see the gills still twitching. Well for us, some of the fins were twitching. It was interesting for me since I hadn’t been served fish like this before.

Steve opted out of eating it raw after seeing it twitch so he cooked it in the broth. I on the other hand, had to try it sashimi style. The verdict? Not as soft and tender as salmon, butter fish or tuna, a little bit chewy in fact.

I then tried flash cooking the meat in the broth and eating it with the soup. The soup was really light and tasty, with just a hint of the herbs they had put in it. With the semi cooked fish being soft and flaky, it went really well in the soup.

After you’re done eating the ready sliced fish slices, they take the remainder of the fish and cut it up for you to cook in the broth. This makes the soup tastier and allows you to eat the remainder of the meat off the bone.

The second dish was ginger and spring onion fried la-la (clams). As I prefer my flavours stronger, like kum-heong style, or fried with chillies, I didn’t particularly enjoy this dish. But for those who like a lighter taste, they may have liked it more.

I’ll say it again, Sey Teem Tai Wong. My vegetable dish came and tasted pretty similar to those made in other restaurants, although it could have done with some petai and four angled beans instead of lady’s fingers.

Our second last dish, Kum-Heong style fried meat crab came. I love crab and the crab here was definately fresh. The Kum-Heong sauce didn’t go into the meat as much as I thought it would, but that could have been because the crabs Kwong chose were quite large and meaty.

Our final dish was a noodle dish, which Kwong said his grandmother loves to order, but admittedly I can’t remember what it was called. It’s either the ‘Tai Lok Meen’ or long life noodles that you usually order on your birthday.

Quite tasty but I usually order Tung Fun when I go to sea food restaurants… probably cause of the stronger flavours again.

Total cost RM280 for 4 of us. The food was nice, but a little expensive, a nice place to bring clients, family and friends for special occasions etc. It’s clean, large and bright so you do pay a bit extra for the ambience.

Unique Seafood

Lot 9B-3, Jalan Kemajuan,

Section 13,

46200 Petaling Jaya

Cuisine: Chinese, Seafood

Halal

Tel: 03 – 7960 2088