This is my second visit to the Oriental Spice restaurant in Trivandrum… This time I went there with a friend/collegue for lunch… Now, me being this foodie, he had me choose the dishes as he was too confused with what to order from the menu… So, as I went thru the menu, I decided to try their Chicken Clear Soup, Whole Prawn Dim Sum, then for mains, “Nasagurian Fried Rice” caught my eye and when I asked the waiter, he basically confirmed my already existing doubt that its a typo and that its supposed to be Nasi Goreng, the Malaysian fried rice… As I mentioned these two, my friend suggested we try the Sapo as he has had that from there before and its a must try… Personally I thought of trying their Thai curry, but since Sapo also seemed to peak my interest, I decided to postpone the Thai curry for next time…
So, after about 20mins, came the soup… Both of us had the same Chicken Clear Soup…
The dominant flavor you get from this soup is that of broccoli… The soup basically consists of pieces of shredded chicken, bok choy, chinese cabbage, bell peppers coriander leaves and broccoli cooked and served in a chicken stock based broth, thats seasoned with salt and pepper… Like I said before, the flavour of broccoli felt to be very dominating in this soup and other than that, its a fine soup with fresh ingredients… I first ate all the broccoli and once that was gone, I could taste the rest of the ingredients in it… So, thats a strategy I would recommend for those who are not that fond of broccoli 🙂
Once soup was finished, the dim sum came…
As can be seen in the pic, they serve the dim sums in the steamer itself and inside it came six of the most juiciest dim sums I have ever eaten… The below pic shows what each of the individual dim sums look like… 🙂
This literally results in an explosion of flavours in your mouth as you bite into it… Inside each of these, there is one whole prawn diced and cooked in a broth with Chinese herbs and then topped with some coriander leaves and purple cabbage in the steamer… A portion of the dim sum comes with 6 bite sized dim sums like this served with a slightly spicy sauce which they call the “dim sum sauce”, which quite frankly felt like a version of the Harissa sauce that they serve at Subway outlets 🙂 ie, a nutty(peanuts I believe from the taste) chilly sauce…
As we were finishing the dim sums, our main course arrived… First is what they call in the menu as “Nasagurian Fried Rice”:
As I said before, my curiously with the name was pretty much confirmed by the waiter when he informed me that its the famous Malaysian fried rice, in which case, the name should be Nasi Goreng, which is what a “fried rice” is called in the Malay language… Also, this fried rice is so popular in Indonesia that its basically their national dish now… But as per the waiter, this is the Malaysian version… This particular kind of fried rice is unlike any other because it has a distinct combination of sweet, spicy and salty taste with a smokey component to it… We went for the chicken version and hence had pieces of shredded chicken in there… To zero in on the actual flavour, my best guess is a infusion of caramel (made from jaggery or palm sugar) and soy sauce along with a garlic and nutmeg overtone to it… The rice also appears to have onions, spring onions, tiny shrimp, eggs, coriander leaves and some chillies in it as well… This can be eaten as it is without any accompaniments… Altogether a must try 🙂
Along with the rice came the Sapo:
Sapo is a great accompaniment to the Malaysian fried rice… Its again sweet and salty with a slight sour component but the sauce seemed to have a dominant flavour of chilly (just flavour, no heat) along with ginger, garlic and lemon-grass and of-course soy… The dish consists of slices of chicken, mushrooms, onions and bell peppers cooked in this sauce along with some Chinese herbs, in a clay-pot as they mention in the menu… The end result is as can be seen in the above pic… 🙂
One again, only complaint is regarding quantity, especially of the main course dishes as even though there were the two of us, we struggled to finish what was served… Hoping to visit again soon to try more from their menu…
