Dinner @ Nelayan Titiwangsa Restaurant

(Dear Readers, please note that this place has relocated to Gombak, where exactly I am not sure but I am not keen to find out, food quality might differ (for better or worse) from my review below. Thanks!)

Titiwangsa Restaurant

Okay.. so we frequented Titiwangsa Lake for the playground and horse riding during the weekends but never really got the chance to try out eating at Nelayan Titiwangsa Restaurant. "Famous" for its steamboat and ramadhan buffet.. but I am not really a fan of steamboat, extremely exhausting with young kids and I if I want to cook my own dinner, I wouldn't eat out, would I? 

Hubby's company would also entertain some visiting board members here, so, it must be quite good, no? So, when hubby offered to let me try Nelayan Titiwangsa Restaurant for some seafood dinner (he was too lazy to bring me to Cheras to try out Cerana Seafood), I accepted. Okay. so he did warn me "it's nothing outstanding, so don't expect too much".. thus I lowered my expectations, but even that didn't prepare me for the dinner experience.. 

Nelayan Titiwangsa Restaurant is huge.. that's a plus point but seriously empty tables abound (red flag) that you wonder how do they even fill the tables? Officially opened by Tun Mahathir in 1986 (that's about as old as my youngest sister) I am sure it was intended for a different culinary experience back then. Maybe it was meant for tourist to experience the delicious seafood of Malaysia in a traditional "kampung nelayan" (fishermen village) setting... Fast forward to 2012... and it's just a handful of locals eating dinner here mostly cos it's cheap rather than cos it's nice. The few foreigners I saw.. I felt sorry for them and I hope that they would know better than to believe that the food served here is what Malaysian culinary experience is all about. Like seriously, there are way better restaurants out there in Kg Baru and Ampang. This restaurant does not do justice to Malaysian food. 

I let hubby do the ordering and here is what we had:

Titiwangsa Restaurant: Kailan & Mushroom in Oyster Sauce

This dish came out first together with plain rice and reverse osmosis water (this water exacerbates my thirst rather than quenching it)for a good 10 minutes before the second dish appeared. This dish is actually quite ok, but I personally do not like kailan as I feel that the texture is too thick for me. They should have used baby kailan here instead as baby kailan is easier to chew. 

Titiwangsa Restaurant : Butter Prawn and yes that's sliced cucumber lining the plate

Second dish is butter prawn. That's butter prawn? More like fried prawns, can't taste the butter, can't taste much of anything actually, I was also put off by the fact that the prawns (fresh water bred - lack sweetness) is not de-veined. Aahhh.. ultimate turn off when eating prawns. That's 6 small prawns on the plate.

Titiwangsa Restaurant : Chili Crab

This dish has a minimum weight of 1 kg and no, we didn't get to choose the crabs. Firstly, that's1 kg? ok.. secondly, where is the claw cracker? hmm.. apparently, this variety of crabs has not so thick claws so you can just go at them with your teeth.. haha.. definitely not like the Singapore Chili Crabs (sigh.. how I miss that) but enjoyable enough (the only decent dish that night) more tomato-ish than I'd prefer but still ok..

Titiwangsa Restaurant : Sea bass in spicy sauce

Waited for so long for this dish. It came out after we finished everything but 1 claw of crab.. haha.. hmm.. looks appetizing enough.. eagerly I dig in, my firm favorite is the crispy part between the pectoral and pelvic fins and... the first bite is this 

Is that uncooked fish meat???? Oh my goodness.. I didn't eat another morsel.. thank you very much that totally ruined my appetite.. 

Spent the rest of the dinner chasing cats away from my kids and just trying to spot the turtles and cat fishes in the lake.. 

Truth to be told, for the price that you pay to eat at this restaurant, of course you can't be expecting fresh seafood.. our sea bass costed RM27.50.. so, I'm pretty sure it wasn't still swimming before they cooked it for us.. probably wasn't thawed completely before they started to deep fry it.. 

Ah well.. never again.. that's for sure..