KAFE VIETNAM - Bandar Puteri Puchong - A Touch Of Authentic Delicious Vietnamese Cuisine Review

There are not many restaurants in the Klang Valley that serve authentic Vietnamese food. Best Restaurant To Eat was invited for a taste of Vietnam at Kafe Vietnam @ Bandar Puteri Puchong, located at 1, Jalan Puteri 4/1, Bandar Puteri Puchong 47100 Puchong.

This little neighbourhood restaurant offers a simple décor that caters to a family dining experience.

One of only a few restaurants that serve Kopi Luwak (civet cat), the beans are collected from the wild as opposed to some which are held in captivity which force feed the cat to produce the beans. There are a number of blend that are served in the restaurant thru the ala dipping Vietnamese style.

The coffee blend is of a mixture of Northern and Southern Vietnam coffee beans with a 10% Luwak beans blend. It has a fragrant aroma with a strong coffee taste coupled with a slight chocolaty body. The taste lingers well in your mouth as you take each sip of this cuppa.

The dinner review started with some Vietnamese Salad, the first of which is GOI GA which is shredded Chicken, Onion & Herbs Salad. It has a very tangy and zesty taste with a tinge flavour of the herbs and the crunch of the peanuts.

The other Salad was the GOI BO BOP THAU i.e Beef Salad, the thinly slice meat was very tender and juicy. Serve with crispy crackers as the sides, which you eat with the salad, exact out a different texture to this dish.

The last salad that was served is the GOI RAU CAU TOM THIT – It is a Jelly, Prawn and Pork Salad. What they used is the agar –agar strip which was soften and mix with poached de-shelled shrimp with Pork meat mix in it to give you a special taste with fish sauce dressing.

You can’t say that you have Vietnamese food until you tasted the Vietnamese wrap and roll, which was served in a piece of dulang as a platter. This dish is called THAP CAM CUON.

To wrap your pieces, you first spray the wrap with some water then you place a piece of green lettuce, a leaf or 2 basil, followed by a small portion of each of the skewered BBQ minced meat, Chunky pork, prawns cake, spring roll, a little of the bee hoon, star fruit pieces and wrap it up. Eat it as it is or dip into the accompanied home made sauce. A truly Vietnamese tradition of eating wraps.

Next, we had a special Vietnamese Pancake called BANH XEO, I notice that quite a number of dishes are served with fresh lettuce and basil including this dish which is the Vietnamese preference method of eating their vegetables - FRESH. The pancake have pieces of pork belly slices which gives the pairing a unique taste.

We then moved on to try the specialty Vietnamese noodles dish of which the first is PHO BO which is Beef Clear Soup Koay Teow. The warm soup broth was very beefy in taste and aroma. With a special Koay Teow, a thinner type which was used, and the thinly slice beef, it was a hearty meal altogether.

The next noodle dish is the BO KHO – a mild spicy beef and carrot stew with Egg Noodles- The broth was very flavourful with an aromatic herbal and spicy taste. Add in the basil leaves and the raw bean sprout, you bring this noodle dish to another level.

After the noodles dish, we tried the COM CA XOI MO which is a special Fried Rice with Seared Oil Chicken. What is special about this dish is the way they cook the Chicken.

As the name suggest, the Chicken is cooked using hot oil that is seared over the chicken. Compared to deep frying, this method is much better to retain the juiciness and tenderness of the chicken meat while having a super crispy skin on the outside.

Another Rice Set dish that we sampled was the COM THIT KHO TRUNG ie Rice with Stewed Pork Belly and Egg. This pork belly stewed is cooked using Old Coconut juice.

The result is the superbly unique sweetness of the broth that lingers on our mouth long after our taste of this dish. It has the resemblance of the Teochew Style stew, but this is a much lighter and sweeter version which was the effect of the coconut juice that was used to stew this dish.

The next dish is a very special dish as the fish is from the native land of Vietnam, which is the COM CA BASA KHO TIEU – Rice with Black Pepper Basa Fish, by the way, the Basa Fish belongs to the catfish family. Although this fish is a fresh water fish, it does not have any smelly taste of mud in it. 

The smooth fish meat was cooked in a black pepper infused with premium fish sauce which was best eaten with the white rice until the last drop. Nevertheless, we needed a second order to fulfill our desire for more of this dish.

We had some side dishes which we had i.e. HEN XUC BANH DA – a special fried Safron Lala meat served with sesame crackers. The Lala are eaten with the special crackers.

Another side dish we had was the Fried Baby Oyster. I had never eaten oyster in this cooking style and it is a real experience to my taste-bud to taste the crisp batter while relishing the soft texture of the oyster from the inside.

Our dinner ends with the final dish LAU VIT NAU CHAO which is Fermented Bean Curd Duck With Yam, Kangkung & Mustard Green Hot Pot. The fermented bean curd paste was very well blended with broth and the darling of this dish it the duck to create a very delicious tasting broth. It was a very enticing and perfect end to our dinner review.

So, my search is over for a great and original Vietnam taste, as Kafe Vietnam @ Bandar Puteri Puchong will be my choice for a truly Vietnam experience. After your meal, you can also shop for some of the Vietnamese produce here too.

HOUZ WARMING CAFE @ PUCHONG – Melaka Home Cook Nyonya Food Comes to Puchong Review

What is the first food you think of when it comes to Melaka Food, to many it has to be the Nyonya Food. Well they are many version of Nyonya Food which have gone thru many changes i.e the true blue Nyonya and the improvised version.

We had the opportunity to try out a real home cooked Nyonya Melaka food, which have recently started to operate in Puchong which is HOUZ WARMING CAFE @ PUCHONG located at 5G, Jalan Puteri 1/6, Bandar Puteri Puchong, PUCHONG, Selangor

By the way, the owner cum chef is not a Baba Nyonya, as one might expect but she has mastered the skills of cooking Nyonya Melaka food ever since she was a very young teenager and cooked many simple yet appetizing Melaka specialities. 

The design of the café is a very straight forward, no-frill café that caters mostly to office workers and families around the area. 

One of the Melaka Specialities at HOUZ WARMING CAFE @ PUCHONG is the ASSAM NENAS PRAWN. Served in a clay pot, the entire dish was cooked with plentiful of quality mixed spices, some of which comes from Melaka itself. The use of salted fish adds a new dimension to this dish. 

The pineapple was cooked, until it was very soft and you can taste the pineapple juices which blended to give it a natural sourish and sweet taste. The end effect, the gravy had a strong and distinctive flavour that complemented very well with the Prawns.

This is one of the daily specials from HOUZ WARMING @PUCHONG i.e. this dish is not served everyday on its standard menu. To be able to savour this dish, you probably have to drop by on the days that this dish is being offered only as a daily special set. With a generous serving of 4 medium size prawn and if you are a small eater, this serving can be eaten by 2 person. 

The daily special sets come with a rice, a fried egg and a glass of honey jasmine tea for only RM13.90. Check out what is their daily special as we understand that there are more than 20 dishes on a rotating basis.

Another of the specialty dishes on the daily specials is PATONG CHICKEN CHOP. This dish is a Thai inspired dish. The chicken chop is first fried. The Thai sauce are then cooked and layered on the fried chicken chop.

This sauce is sweet, sour & spicy all at the same time but blended harmoniously. If you are familiar with the Masak 3 Rasa, it is somewhat similar but the use of the condiment here is obvious and gives you a satisfied taste. 

The last daily special we tried was the BUTTERED CHICKEN CHOP, this chicken chop is first coated with batter and then deep fried. The buttery sauce which has strong curry powder and leaves fragrant are cooked with butter and cheese to give you that extra creamy sauce, which is then layered at the bottom of the chicken chop.

Taste wise, it is quite similar to the Butter Prawns taste, which we are familiar with, but with a scent of cheese flavours, and the sauce was thicker and very much more creamier.

After sampling the daily special, we had some ala-carte dishes namely the HOUSE SPECIAL SAMBAL FRIED FISH.

It is a CENCARU fish, which have been deep fried and laden with a generous amount of sambal topping. Although, I find the sambal a little too subtle and light for me, as I am used to the sambal type, which has a very strong distinctive belacan taste with a lot of dried shrimp, for this kind of sambal fish.

Next, we had the ASSAM BANDUNG SEAFOOD – this is quite similar to the Assam seafood or the Assam fish which Melaka is famous for. The differences here, is the chef had added in coconut milk to cook this dish and henceforth the dish is called with BANDUNG – remember our sirap bandung. 

The use of the coconut milk makes this dish more flavourful and a little sweeter and creamier than the pure assam fish dish. You can taste the strong aroma and flavours of the seafood which have been infused into the gravy in every spoonful.

Another one of the special dishes, you can hardly find it anywhere else, is the HAKKA VINEGAR PORK. We KL people are used to the black type of VINEGAR PORK cooked with ginger, which are usually found at Bak Kut Teh stall or during confinement period of the new mothers’. 

But, here is the surprise, instead of the very sourish taste; the vinegar pork is of a sweet type with a hint of spice, as we were told that, they uses a small amount of Assam and dried chillies. Once again, this dish has a light sweet taste from the raddish, a tinge of sourish and a very light spicy taste.

On top of that it uses the white vinegar instead of the black vinegar. It will take a number of spoonful to start to like this dish, as our chain of taste for this dish is the black sourish type, which we are normally associated with.

All, the above dishes are usually found in home cooking and are suitable to be eaten with white rice.

For the noodles, we had their signature PRAWN MEE, the soup was very rich broth of prawns taste. The sharpness of soup was strong, and has the oomph factor. 

Lastly, we were offered the PORK NOODLES SOUP, but we just had the soup instead i.e. minus the noodles. The soup based was of the clear type. The soup was a recipe of over 30 years. They had a shop in IPOH selling pork noodles with this recipe. 

So, if you have a craving for some nice Melaka food, head over to HOUZ WARMING @PUCHONG to give it a try and leave us a comment or two after your visit.