Visited the outlet last weekend. Went early so getting a table was not a problem. The last time I went to Madam Kwan's was at KLCC about 2 years ago. Wanted to see if the signature dishes taste just as good.
My family ordered 2 nasi lemaks and 2 nasi bojari. For drinks, we went for something safe, iced lemon tea and bubur cha-cha.
The nasi lemak was still delicious but the portions have shrunken. Two pieces of curry chicken with more bones than meat hardly justifies the RM14 price tag.
As for the nasi bojari, not much to complain on the fried chicken although the side was over fried and the meat was dry but was well marinated. The beef rendang was obviously a rush job. The santan (coconut milk) was probably cooked in high heat to hasten the cooking process. You could smell the coconut oil in the rendang instead of the aromatic santan and spices. For RM20 a plate, I would have expected a better prepared dish since it was their signature dish.
The ice lemon tea tastes just like iced water. No smell of tea and certainly no smell of any lemon. The only option was that you are allowed to add sugar syrup to the iced mixture on your own accord. At RM6 per glass, I would have had 4 glasses of better tasting ones at any mamak stall.
The bomb of the meal would be the bubur cha-cha, a signature dessert of the restaurant. What they did was they first boiled the sweet tapioca and yam seperately. Nothing wrong with that as any recipe book will teach you that. But this restaurant took a short cut after this process. They scooped the tapioca and yam into the bowl and the added boiled (warmed?) santan and sago into the bowl and served it as bubur cha-cha. What gave it away was that the tapioca was steeped in the smell of ginger and that the tapioca tastes much sweeter than the soup, an indication that it was not slow boiled in the santan.
The whole meal cost about RM140-00 inclusive of a 10 percent service charge and a 5 percent sales tax. The only saving grace was that they offered plain water, iced or warm, to every diner free of charge.