Fong Lye Restaurant

This is one of my favourite restaurant that is near to my office. Its a restaurant that offers Taiwanese cuisine, in a fine dining setting. If not because of my boss who brought me there, I wouldn't notice this eatery as the premise is located in a not-so-busy section of Desa Sri Hartamas, facing the residential terrace houses.

Just before you step into the restaurant, you will be able to see a drain-like "pond" below the wooden walkway, and there are fishes (koi) in it!

And inside, the deco is refreshing (they use almost all my favourite colours for their wall) , and the bright lighting (plus the natural sunlight) is almost perfect for food bloggers to snap away.

For appetizer, they will serve you a small plate of Fried Beancurds with Anchovies that comes in small cubes, and sweet & sour type of sauce on it. Very tasty indeed for a appetizer.

On this particular occasion, there were 9 of us, celebrating my boss' birthday. So we ordered quite a fair bit of food, more than we can finish actually. Let me show you one by one.

As most of us were girls on that day, we ordered some vegetable dishes, although me and my boss are meat-fanatics. One of those vege is the French Bean with Minced Meat. You just need to look at the colour to know that the french beans are fresh. It tasted good, and crunchy when you bite them. Even a meat-fanatic like me is converted as vege-lover.

As I mentioned before on one of my earlier review, my boss is a pork-lover. So a meal is not complete for him, without a pork dish. To pacify his lust of pork, we ordered the Deep Fried Pig Intestine. I like this one alot, it is so crispy and flavourful, without the dreadful taste of recycled cooking oil that usually comes with deep fried food.

Another impressive dish is the Salad & Battered Fried Prawns. Cooked in 2 different style but on a same plate, this is one of the dish that disappeared the fastest. The prawns were fresh, and topped with a generous amount of sinfully delicious salad dressing. Yummm....

We also ordered a fish, but I'm not sure of the name of the dish. Its a steamed fish, cooked with assorted type of vegetables and tomatoes. The gravy goes very well with the steamed rice.

One of my boss favourite is the Ma Po Tofu, a popular dish from the Szechuan (Sichuan) province. It is a combination of bean curd and minced meat, usually pork, in a spicy bean-based sauce, sometimes with other ingredients such as water chestnuts, onions or wood ear fungus. A must-try for those that love spicy Szechuan food.

Another claypot dish is the Sweet & Spicy Eggplant with Minced Meat. I love this one very much, to my own surprise as I usually don't really fancy eggplants. But the taste of this is simply wonderful, and the texture of the eggplants is so good, it almost melt in my mouth.

This unidentified dish below tasted real good too. When you eat 'em, you won't be impressed by it. But after few seconds, you'll feel a slight spicy taste in your month and your tongue will feel abit numb. My colleagues told me that taste is known as "Ma Lat". Anybody can confirm this for me?

Now, introducing my personal favourite, the "Sam Pui Chow/Sam Pui Kai" (Three Cup Wine, Three Cup Chicken). This is a traditional specialty dish of Taiwan, and its named so because of the 3 main sauces used to stew the chicken. Those three sauces are soy sauce, sesame oil and rice wine. Fong Lye's version have a slight hint of Marmite taste to it, and they added basil leaves to give it a more aromatic taste. Absolutely lovin' this!

At the end of the meal, they will serve you their complimentary house drink, which I believe is lime-based. It comes in a very cute miniature white & blue porcelain cup. I didn't like it but my colleagues seemed to enjoy it. Very refreshing apparently to them.

With such good food, it was no surprise to us when we managed to finish off every single dish on that day. It can be pricey, but in my humble opinion, its worth every single cents. The service is worth mentioning as well as the staff there are very attentive and friendly (yes they charge service tax as well ). The total damage for that day was about RM280 for 9 of us. Reasonable yes?

The restaurant is fairly empty on weekdays but its super packed on weekends especially during dinner time. So do call ahead for reservations or you might have to wait long for a table. They also have a branch on Jalan Imbi, a good news to people staying near to city centre.