农耕记湖南菜Nong Geng Ji @ PKL - Pavilion Kuala Lumpur — Restaurant in Kuala Lumpur

This restaurant is a strange creature. It feels like it’s been transported here from a different planet - a certain Oriental planet that is. From the moment you are escorted in by an ethnic Hunan (?) hostess to the somewhat convoluted Google Translate menus (??) it’s an interesting experience, to say the least. Waiters appear with badges displaying their names (?) on small LCD badges in Chinese. If you manage to decipher the menu and make an order through the waiters however, you’ll be in for some pretty nice food.

The Sauerkraut (this should be Pickled Vegetable by the way) with Fish Soup is an excellent way to start. The soup is sufficiently sour and slightly spicy, which opens up the appetite. Fish slices were thin and fresh, with no fishy taste or smell.

Their signature dish is the Stir Fried Pork with Green Chillies and Small Abalone. This was very tasty and a great accompaniment to polish off a bowl of rice. The green chillies were fresh and crunchy with no pronounced heat. The small abalone lent a deep umami flavour to the dish. This is Highly Recommended.

Another must try dish is the “Big Shrimp with Vermicelli and Garlic” which is actually glass noodles with prawns. Served on a hot plate and mixed at the table, we were told to consume the dish before the sand-timer ran out. Anyway we did comply with the instructions and consumed it before the time ran out (lol) and it tasted truly great. The garlic flavours permeated the glass noodles and the prawns added sweetness and umami flavours. This is also Highly Recommended.

Silky Steamed Egg with Minced Meat lived up to its name and proved to be truly silky. This is a dish that will have you slurping up your bowl of rice. Recommended.

Stir fried cabbage with dried chilli is a very simple dish but almost perfectly executed here. The cabbage having a little spiciness from the chilli but retaining a nice crunch and flavour from some added soy sauce.

Flower tea in a pot would be a good option for...

If you're looking for a Tai Er wannabe that fails miserably at replicating its rival, love eating cold food and having to wait a miserable one hour for all your dishes to be served as if you were in an omakase, then look no further.

It took 45 minutes for us to get all our dishes out, and then we have to wait a further 7+5 minutes for the prawn garlic vermicelli to cook. The way they serve you gets you confused thinking maybe its like an omakase. First was the kampung chicken in tea oil which tasted very ordinary like any claypot kampung chicken ginger stirfry would taste like. We got hungry and started nibbling. It was not until 2 of us were almost done nibbling from this dish that our second dish and the rice got served. Again, at least another 20 minutes passed with us asking the waiter twice before the vermicelli got served. Mind you, the first time he told us it will be another 2 minutes. But i guess 2 minutes in Nong Geng Ji means 10 minutes in real time because thats how long we waited, only to have the dish served raw. As if that wasnt bad enough, he had troubles with the gas stove, had to swap stoves and whatnot and finallyyy the fire was on and we had to wait 7 minutes. After the 7 minutes the prawn was still raw so another staff added 5 minutes to the timer. So if you add all that up it would have been over an hour of wait time. The entire place was noisy and freezing. Makes you wonder if theyre trying to replicate the whole winter in China atmosphere for you. And their table utensils looked cool, but they were all metal, so couple that with the extremely cold AC, it means literally any and all food you place on your plate or bowl goes ice cold immediately.

The waiter hard sold us to give a 5 star review rating in exchange for a free dessert. It was a big no.

So yeah, in summary, you're paying lots for slow service, cold food, to shiver in your pants the entire dining experience, and to be bribed into giving a good review. First...

The 2-star rating is based on the following: Rui Xiang’s service was excellent, and he was very attentive throughout our dinner. The food quality was average.

However, the negative experience began with the host. He was insistent on moving us to a VIP room, despite us not requesting one. We had originally made a reservation for 10 people but arrived an hour early to add an extra person. After some difficulty retrieving our reservation, the host then insisted that it was for a private room with a minimum spending requirement.

It’s important to note that this arrangement was made by the restaurant, and there was no way for us to select or be informed of this through Oddle or Google (perhaps due to their auto-seating system, which may have allocated the room without their knowledge). The host then repeatedly suggested a long table for our group, saying, “It’s hard to share dishes, and 11 people might hit the minimum spending easily,” which was off-putting. We rejected his suggestion.

When we returned for our reservation, we were shown to a private room for 10, with a sarcastic remark, “We’ll waive the minimum spending requirement, but please don’t spend just RM100-200 since we’ve extended this room to your group.”

In the end, we spent about RM600 on our meal, but were surprised to find that the members’ discount was removed because we hadn’t met the minimum spending requirement that was preset, which we were never informed of.

We do, however, want to express our appreciation to Rui Xiang for his...