Decanter @PJ Section 17 — Restaurant in Petaling Jaya

A pleasant family type neighbourhood restaurant with western and local cuisine. I went there for Xmas Eve lunch with my family. This was our 2nd time at this restaurant. There was a Xmas set menu but we ordered ala carte because there were more options and it was better value. The Xmas set was rm118 for a soup, main course and dessert. My father's ala carte wild mushroom soup, mixed grill and peach crumble came to about rm82. My mother who loves fish and chips enjoyed her meal. My husband had the seafood platter and said it was satisfactory and filling. The prawns were large but a bit overcooked. My daughter enjoyed her duck pasta. I had the oxtail stew and I liked the rich taste, but it would have been better if it was served with toasted French loaf slices or garlic bread instead of the 2 slices of toasted white bread. For dessert, we shared apple pie and peach & banana crumble. The taste of the apple pie was sweet/sourish which my husband liked. I thought it was so-so and the pastry could have been better. It was served with a small pot of vanilla ice cream. The peach crumble came with a custard sauce which made the cobbler too sweet as there was a strong taste of condensed milk in it. The crumble seemed to be slightly undercooked. The service was good. Overall, we were satisfied and we will be returning for more meals...

We decided to try Decanter for lunch. The place was clean and cosy. We ordered a Greek salad, Caesar salad , mushroom soup and a side order of fish fingers. The waitress returned a while later to report that the Greek salad was unavailable. I don’t know why she did not have this information when taking the order. So I took a garden salad instead. The fish fingers came with mayonnaise instead of tartar sauce so I asked for tartar sauce. A second waiter who attended to us smartly went off and quickly came back with another cup of mayonnaise! When I pointed out that it was mayonnaise, he confessed that he didn’t know what tartar sauce was and explained that mayonnaise was the only ‘sauce’ available. Hmmm. Anyway the soup was good. We finished lunch and made the mistake of ordering apple pie. It was a bit tart and tasted strange. That’s when we elected to skip the coffee and decided to go next...

I wouldn’t say the food here is bad kinda bad, it is mediocre at its best. If I want to compare, of course there are better options out there but this place is affordable even though the taste is so-so.

We ordered potato soup (not in the menu, it was whatever that’s special on the day itself), fish & chips and spaghetti salmon carbonara. Potato soup was meh. Doesn’t taste like potato soup, fish & chips were decent, the spaghetti on the other hand…it was nice for the first few bites but after that, you’ll find it weird.

Like it’s lacking of something & there’s a lot of egg yolk being used. Maybe too much of cream? Either way, it wasn’t that good, it was too plain and perhaps the other dishes were better.

I’m not saying I won’t come back, maybe I would- when I need to tighten up my belt & craving for some mediocre western food that doesn’t taste much but...