Spoon: Taste of Asia

After being a little disappointed absolutely devasted to discover that it is not open for lunch on weekends, today was my second attempt at trekking to this relatively new Asian restaurant to cure my Mondayitis.

The shop front is basic and polished, joining the other couple of new-ish business next door. The interior is also quite a tight fit, which I imagine would be hard to navigate around and through when it is the peak mealtime hours.

The cuisine that Spoon serves is stated to be of Asian, predominantly Indonesian and Malaysian. The menu is quite extensive and offers a variety of choices to the grumbling tummy :)

Alas here I present our monster lunch list for today -

Seafood Fried Kuey Teow

(Excuse the awkward space of missing noodles in the photo. Gluttony took over real bad).

After not long of waiting and half heartedly looking at the wallpaper comprising of olden-day-looking black and white photos of Asian people, this was the first dish that was delivered. And on first taste, things looked promising with the next few dishes.
The Seafood Fried Kuey Teow consisted of stirfry flat rice noodles with prawns, squid, fish cake, egg, greens, bean sprouts and a whole load of mini cubes of pork fat.
Such an Asian thing, because no part of a pig goes to waste.

NO part.
Except what comes out of an animal.
We are the resourceful kind of people on this Earth.

The wok-hei flavour of this was very strong and we could tell from the smoky fumes and smells that were drifting from the kitchen into the dining area.
To me, I describe that smell as burning and that the kitchen is on fire.

Gado Gado

This was the one token vegetable dish. I might even have a feeling this was called based on its name. I think anything with repetition probably suggests laziness LOL.
So this Gado Gado included assorted steam vegetables with egg, potato and tofu, topped with Indonesian authentic peanut sauce. And prawn crackers just broken and flung on top.
Just a little weird, but interesting.

I had one mouthful and searched for meat and was going to have a tantrum about the lack of meat until I found out this was a vegetarian dish and then I didn't want to eat it anymore. LOLOL :)
Peanut sauce was quite sweet, not sure if that is authentic or not but the dish had an interesting flavour that is quite hard to describe.


Sliced Fish Hor Fun

The Sliced Fish Hor Fun (Flat rice noodles with fish topped with egg gravy) was quite similar to the first dish, plus the addition of the thick-ish egg sauce, minus the seafood and then plus the addition of seafood again of fish pieces.

But then again, when don't you see a typical Asian menu which has LISTS of choices: fish noodle? beef noodle? chicken noodle? combination noodle - fish, beef AND chicken?
But upon closer investigation it's the same dish with the only variation being the meat.
GENIUSSS!

But this was good to eat, with the thick sauce sealing in the heat of the dish making it nice and hot but was also a pain to eat as a result.

Hainanese Roast Chicken Rice

So...Hainanese Chicken rice ayyeee. Maybe cause this was on the other side of the table and being too fat and lazy to move myself to reach over to get this, I didn't have too much of this. Not very hainanese-y anyways.
Can't help but compare this to Chilliz chicken rice but how you can get 3 servings of that compared to one serving of this. Chilliz is AWESOME when you're broke.


This was described to be "succulent portions of chicken served with tasty chicken flavoured rice". Well I'm glad to say they got the tasty chicken flavoured rice right, cause that was the only thing good about the dish (to me). The skin was pretty crispy, which would please most people I guess.

Chicken with Marmite Sauce

Upon seeing this on the menu, my brain DEMANDED me to order it. That's cause my tastebuds always have fond recollections of how GOD DAMN DELICIOUS this is when it is made the way it was made when it was GOD DAMN DELICIOUS.
This got me soo excited but that excitement was short lived when it came with 5 pieces complete with bones still in them. Sigh! I hate bones, they are just so useless and unwanted and should just go away.

This was described as deep fried till perfection and stir fried with marmite sauce.
Personally I think its just a littleee dangerous including the word perfection along with anything.
Cause we all know nothing is perfect.

I think too much of this on its own would be hard to eat, because of how rich the sauce is. Which is probably why I found myself scoffing up the lettuce and carrot garnishes from this dish and the various other ones which all had the same garnishes.
Lettuce never tasted so good.
The sauce was good, thick, dark and rich.
I sort of licked all the sauce of and disposed of the chicken.
It looked so naked without its sauce clothed on.

Nasi Campur Indonesia

This Nasi Campur Indonesia is something new to me as I haven't seen it on a menu before. Steam rice with beef rendang, egg, sambal anchovies, peanuts and potatoes sounded pretty promising. The beef was just a little tough or maybe it was just my jaw tired from the amount of chewing I had already done prior to trying this dish.


In the end I think the component that I ate the most of from this dish was the rice.
Good old rice.
Never fails to please.

Chicken Satays

These were served as sticks of 4 for $8.50. So around $2 something a stick which is a decent price here. Apparently in Malaysia they are also around 2 something but in ringgit, meaning only around 80c? And they are probably better tasting.
Nevertheless these grilled chicken skewers with peanut sauce were still pretty decent tasting, complete with the blackened chargrilled lines on the pieces of chicken.
Not a fan of those bitter tasting carbon lines but that's just me.
Because to me it doesn't really have the "charry" flavour, its just the BURNT flavour sounding all fancy pants and all like *EAT ME*

Singapore Laksa

I liked this. There was actually the inclusion of the thin rice noodles along with the thick yellow noodles, which is what a lot of restaurants I come across do with their laksas. This laksa of "yellow noodles served in spicy curry gravy with chicken, fish cake and prawns" was very coconutty milky and creamy in flavour and I don't care if that's authentic or not but I liked it.
Ha!
*Triumphant smile*


So after being absolute pigs and stuffing our faces and stomachs to the point of explosion with food, still managed to fit desserts in. Its amazing how fat we are able to be.
I think our stomachs could fit a whole cow in there easily.


The dessert section of the menu looked mmmmm. So easy choice really.
"One of each, please". Yay!

Longan Grass Jelly - premixed

First sight of these desserts were a disappointment, I have to admit. They looked NOTHING like what was shown in the menu and looked rather small and meh.
The plastic containers didn't hold much and made it difficult to mix the desserts up.
But then this could be forgiven, cause the desserts tasted pretty damn good.
Looks like nothing when its unstirred huh?


Longan Grass Jelly - post mixing

Voila! Look how much handsomer the Longan Grass Jelly looks now! This had grass jelly, nata de coco (chewy compressed coconut juice cubes) and longans topped with crushed ice and the ever-recognisable red/pink syrup.
This was okay, but was actually the least mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm out of the 3.
Probably cause it was the least creamy and least sweet as a result.




Chendol - unmixed

The Chendol consisted of "Indonesian green jelly in coconut milk and palm sugar syrup". This was soo very good and had a very strong rich creamy texture that I ended up mixing the syruppy goodness from this into the other desserts.

Chendol - mixed

This probably set the standard pretty high for the rest of the desserts since I had this first. But for some reason it looks damn ugly compared to the other desserts and it looks damn ugly on its own as well. Like green worms slithering and wiggling away in their own murky, brown filthy crap. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.


No really, it really actually WAS soooooo MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM worms.

Es Campur - premixing

And this was what sounded so appealing to my tastebuds and got me excited, as sad as that may sound.

The Es Campur sounded exxxxotic. And indeed it was an exotic mix of avocado! Jackfruit! Nata de coco! Condensed milk! Grass Jelly! And palm sugar! All my freaking favourites, ALTOGETHER?!
I almost went a little crazy in the head.

Avocado is one of my favourite fruits, even though others insist it tastes like soap.
Then fine, I like love eating soap. It is the best tasting soap ever and I would eat soap for breakfast lunch and dinner and brush my teeth with this green soap if avocado was soap.

LIKE YOU KNOW WHAT SOAP TASTES LIKE ANYWAY! Liars.

ANYWAY. No matter how much I love soap, I don’t recall having it in a dessert. But I was willing to try anything that has avocado in it, in any shape or form. I guess the soft texture blended pretty well with the creaminess of the Es Campur. Thumbs up for the inclusion of soap.

Es Campur - post mixing

Phwoarrrrr. Such a hottie.

All in all, pretty good experience of lunch here.

Service was efficient and food came out quick for a big order near closing time. Standard pricing for a typical meal and there's always McDonalds across the road if you don't like it for half the price.