Turmeric — Restaurant in Johor

Had breakfast, lunch and dinner at Tumeric during my 5D stay at Anantara Desaru. The breakfast buffet was a spread and the majority of the local and continental fare were delicious. The restaurant seemed to allocate more wait staff during the breakfast service, and all of them were attentive and swift, coping well with the overwhelming breakfast crowd. Lunch and dinner service tends to be slightly slower (but still enthusiastic) because they were operating with a pared down crew. So do expect some waiting time for your food during lunch and dinner.

My experience of the a la carte menu was positive as a whole. Nothing mind blowing but everything decently executed. Alright dishes were the Penang style char kway teow and the Thai cuisine which tends to lean towards the sweet side. The stand outs were the Malaysian fare - ikan bakar and a killer assam pedas oxtail.

One feedback for the restaurant is to probably dust and check the cleanliness of sofas after the breakfast service because the young diners often leave crumbs and shoe marks all over the chairs. This is not a unique problem to Turmeric so it’s not a biggie - but hoping this small feedback helps raise...

For a "luxury" resort the food was sub-par. Most items at the buffet counters were tasteless and overcooked. Buffet lacked variety. Mainly a bunch of stewed and fried stuff attempting to pass off as Malaysian food. There was one Char Kway Teow station, but overall a poor attempt at masquerading the lack of any other Malaysian favourites. Along with the grill station (nothing Malaysian about it), were the only 2 things saving it from a completely failure of an evening.

Desserts were mostly inedible. All the kueh were stodgy and heavy. The rainbow lapis had like super odd colours (I don't know what rainbow the chef smoked up), odd consistency, and tasted strange. Only the pandan basque cheesecake was tasty.

Staff, with few exceptions, were spacey. They were also pretty much absent. There was supposedly ice kacang but you couldn't get one even if you wanted one. The machine was behind the counter, but silent as a ghost. One boy serving the buffet counter wasn't able to name the soups available when asked. Gives new meaning to "lepak".

At 420RM for 2, it's...

Dined at Turmeric on a weekend getaway with the pregnant wife.

In Desaru it was difficult to find good, local food without risking food safety for the wife. But this place was a great find! While a little more expensive than some other eateries, their food was all at a high standard.

They provided a free plate of Keropok Lekor as an appetiser for us to start. We then had the Ikan Bakar and Tom Yum Goong the first time we were there, and cleaned up everything on our plates.

For desserts, the sago gula melaka with coconut was wonderful! However, the pisang goreng was a little bit of a letdown.

Food aside though, the service at the restaurant was amazing! Our waiter, Idrees, was attentive and there with a solution for any problem we might have. We had a small fly wandering around our table and he brought a fly spinner; I unfortunately had a fly go up my nose and he was right there with a tissue. He also offered to give us some free juices when the food came a little slowly.

So all in all a great experience if you want to experience more local food in a...