The cooking, eating and travel blog of a hungry blogger from Sydney, Australia featuring original recipes, interviews and articles on all things food @ Not Quite Nigella

Category Archives: Singaporean & Malaysian

Sentosa at Crows Nest

Somehow I missed the bulletin that told me that finding a parking spot on a Saturday night in Crows Nest almost rivals finding one in Darlinghurst. Its a warm Saturday night and the last thing I feel like doing is cooking so we’ve decided on somewhere local-ish to try. Little do we realise that Crows Nest is in full swing, with every restaurant and cafe full of patrons. Sentosa is a Singaporean/Malaysian restaurant with a well loved Singaporean Chef in “Willy” (complete with mustachioed picture of him in the menu). We’re not particularly hungry tonight, more peckish so its two mains for us. Service is friendly, and we don’t have to wait long before they take our order. Alas, we tried to order the Laksa but they have just run out.

Our Beef Rendang ($17.90) arrives first, a fairly decent sized serving, aromatic of coconut. The beef is soft although not as fall apart soft as I’ve had and its gravy is rich in coconut, specifically dessicated coconut. If anything it needs lemongrass and ginger and the requisite spices. Here, while its very tasty and heady with coconut, it lacks the other dimension that the other spices and flavours give it. Heat wise, it is fairly hot but the coconut tempers this somewhat.

Our Sambal chicken ($19.80) arrives, colourful with chili and snowpeas. This is delicious, we both adore the sambal, a flavoursome mix of salty dried prawns, chili and a range of spices and flavours. The chicken breast is tender and small bite sized and the snowpeas give just the right amount of crunch. Indeed I could probably just order the Snowpea sambal happily for myself.

I am looking forward to dessert as I had heard that they do a good Gula Melaka (sago pearls in palm sugar and pandan syrup) but apparently desserts aside from plain ice cream are no longer served here which is a disappointment as I had saved some stomach room for this. We are given the complimentary orange slices and hot hand towels. Oh how I love these hand towels and wish every place gave you one. We are refreshed and well fed, ready for the long walk to the car.

Sentosa

48 Willoughby Road, Crows Nest
Tel: +61 (02) 9438 5526
Lunch until 3pm, dinner 6 – 10pm. Closed Sundays.

3 comments | May 3rd, 2008 by Not Quite Nigella

Chinta Ria, Temple of Love restaurant at Darling Harbour

Its been literally years since I visited Chinta Ria, at least 5 years to be exact, so when Gina, Teena and I go there for a girl’s weekend lunch we’re all curious to see whether things have changed. Walking through the heavy wooden doors with the sashes of colourful cloth and a large smiling buddha with incense and pineapple offerings for the gods, it appears that little has changed. As its a glorious summer’s day, we are sitting outside amongst the little garden under large umbrellas. As with all girls’ lunches, we take a while to decide what to order as catching up seems more important and the patient waiter comes several times to see whether we’re ready to order.

As its hot I feel like a salad but the menu doesn’t have any salad or cooler offerings. Fair enough, after all its Malaysian hawker food. What the menu does have are funky sounding names such as “Satchmo’s Squid”, “Blakey’s Beef”, “Ikan Melody” and “Sassy’s Duck”. We’re steered towards an entree item that always has us laughing, Parker’s Gems. And I don’t mean to offend, you do see, but Teena’s husband’s last name is Parker and we always have a giggle that we’re consuming his “gems” . Along with these, we order one of the specials: Udang Merah aka Red Prawns ($28) as well as the Fried Kway Teow ($17) and the Ayam Blues ($22.50).