Makan Time — Restaurant in Petaling Jaya

Because of reviews and youtube videos praising the place, decided to try.

Aesthetics are nice, very old school. Coffee and tea is super gao. 👌 Toast is nice. Onde-onde is tasty. The other snacks are so so. The guy waiters are attentive, and the aunty waiter/cashier is very nice. *That is the end of the good parts.

Now sorry to say, but the reviews say WOW but I didn't taste wow. In fact it's very average. Beef tendon was room temp and rubbery. Beef tendon meatball was flavorful but lembik and had a raw dough kind of texture. From my observation, there is a lack of communications with the staff as I've said the snacks has been paid for 3 times, but 3 different staff keep asking. So please talk to each other and notify that XYZ table snacks has been paid already. Now this is the most unpleasant point. One young lady waiter had this to say. "Smacks down the menu* So ready to order or not? What you want? 2 drinks only ah? You sure you can finish onot? Cendol only 9am.(other table gets served a cendol 8:25am) (calls her back to enquire how come the cendol is available early) Sigh* how many? Only 2? (I dunno about you guys but when a waiter gives me an attitude while taking my food order, it just leaves a bad taste in my mouth). And not once, not twice, not trice, but 5 times we call a waiter and only the final time the male waiter come to us to tapau. And yes you guessed it, the 4 out of 5 times it was this young lady again. I do not appreciate side eye and ignored 4 times with no word of "wait a bit", "be with you in a minute" , or some form of acknowledgement. An empty table can wait to be cleared and cleaned up later in my opinion. Don't side eye me and ignore 4 times to clean a table when no customer needs that table yet. Super understaffed, I would suggest have a dedicated cashier and dedicated waiters if not then they have to stop waiting tables and operate the cashier.

TLDR, average food. No wow factor like the reviews said. One problematic waitress that looks like she doesn't want to be there. Would I go back? No. There are...

Browsing through the Star newspaper (printed hardcopy version 😅) today. I came across a big article promoting this place serving good food and possibly one of the best cendol in town.

Being somewhat in the vicinity, we decided to try out the place as the article and the variety of simple chinese “Ipoh” style menu kinda attracted us. The hunt was on!

Arriving there just before lunch hour proved slightly disappointing as we had to join the queue and the the race for the table. But after a queue stand period of about 15 mins, we managed to get one.

We ordered a variety of dishes including sambal petai chicken chop, nasi kerabu ayam, kway teow tendon dry an kway teow tendon beef balls and of course the need the try the much bragged about cendol. Our conclusion? Here you go.

Sambal Petai Chicken chop - okay lah. Sambal was fresh and crunchy but the sambal lacked in taste, aroma and kick. Quite bland. Nothing much to shout about.

Nasi kerabu - quite okay but the chicken gravy was too thick.

Kway teow tendon and beef balls - over-rated. Dry noodles were completely bland and tasteless and guess what the soup tasted like boat noodle soup. Sweet and Thai like. I thought I was buying chinese style food but was taken aback.

Cendol - bad. And I mean bad. Ice was finely shaven which was good. Taste was bad. Their gula melaka was bitter and the entire thing was too saltish. Yup you read it… saltish. And the green cendol strips were like soaked up with green colouring with an attempt to make it more attractive. But proved to be just the opposite. Possibly one of the worser cendols eaten this year.

Overall, conclusion in that there was nothing there that made going back a need to. First...

21 November, 2023: We heard of this place from different sources, came to give it a shot, but made the mistake of coming during lunch hour, so the indoor area was packed. We sat outside and waited for a good 10 minutes before we were noticed. We ordered our food and soon, more diners flocked in. And then we noticed the servers bringing and showing what could only be the samples of their daily specials to EVERY SINGLE new customer who sat down. All except us. We were just shoved with the menu without being told there was a 'daily special' to start with, while the rest could view mock-ups of what they were! And having ordered our food already, we couldn't be bothered to make any more changes.

So onwards, to the food. As far as 'laksa' goes (regardless of whether it's from the north, south, east or whether it's curry, asam and so on), one would expect the broth to have a spicy kick that awakened the senses. The Siamese Laksa we had almost put me to sleep! Despite adding all the condiments, the taste was flat, at best. It was just watered-down and anonymous. The 'nasi kerabu' fared a little better, but the chicken rendang was a little too sweet. Let's just say we didn't have to come all the way here to have nasi kerabu. The beef rendang was really quite good especially its texture, but (again!) had too much sweetness in it.

We were also told the 'cendol' at this place was highly recommended. Honestly, having had underwhelming dishes and lacklustre service, we decided to get our sweet-fix somewhere else. Overall, this is one of those places where we'd go "Yeah, we tried it....