The Oriental Cravings — Restaurant in Petaling Jaya

First read the supposed re-opening on Malaymail, and got me really excited! So we went to relived our tastebuds of their delicious salted egg yolk bitter gourd.

The hostess was very friendly at the entrance, but everything kinda declined thereafter. First, the ambience was a little lackadaisical, because it was a wholesale bought over from the previous restaurant there. Secondly, our orders of Nam Yu fried pork, salted egg yolk bittergourd, and steam rice took about 20-30min to arrive.

At this point, my observation was that the whole service was chaotic with table orders being mixed up and those who ordered earlier were left to wait while later comers got their food first.

Thirdly, the prices are steep. The Nam Yu pork portion does not justify the price, and the bittergourd cost RM24.90. I wouldn’t mind paying upper RM20 odd for the pork if it was good and the portion reasonable; what we got were small and very thinly sliced pork that was dry and hard, and could hardly taste the fermented bean curd.

Fourthly, the service staff were quite frantic. But what’s not soo good was that the owners (especially the guy - son?) was just walking up and down the restaurant, not checking on tables that have been waiting for a long time. He saw me raised my hand to place order but did not bother coming to me. Not a good sign.

Now that I’ve come to the comment/review section. So many comments say that they aren’t from the OG Oriental Cravings… maybe...

Reminiscent of the old Oriental Craving restaurant in One Utama. Went to check it out when I stumbled upon this place in Damansara Kim.

The first thing I did when I entered, I asked the shop manager, she said that this is not the same place. This place is owned by the Chin family, who has various F&B establishments around PJ/KL. Apparently, the owner used to patronised the One Utama shop and liked many of the dishes there. This new place has a few of the customer's favourites from One Utama.

When I was working near One Utama, Oriental Cravings was my regular go-to place for lunch, at least 3 times a month. The 2 favourite dishes I usually ordered were the yam cake and the bitter gourd seaweed soup. Unfortunately, they only have the former. They did not have the soup. The shop manager advised that a number of their staff were from the One Utama place. Over the next couple of months, they will slowly bring back more of the crowd favourites from the One Utama place.

I had the yam cake, which is just as nice. Decided to try their braise belly pork beehoon. It was delicious. The deco of the place is nice and bright.

Will definitely come back again to see if they bring back my favourite bitter gourd...

Lunch here was a lovely experience, from the moment we walked in to the moment we left. We came across this restaurant by chance and we were welcomed by a lovely hostess with pink highlights in her hair, Carol I believe was her name. ( if I got the name wrong I do apologise) She seated us, gave us the menu and a short while later came to take our order. We had the Young Zhou fried rice and the Wa Tan Hor. She recommended we try the charcoal coffee and boy was that an amazing recommendation. Both the dishes was delicious and had great flavour. The highlight was their homemade sambal which I’m certain would pair really well with Hokkien noodles ( shall try this next time).

Our overall dining experience was very refreshing, not only was the food great and the ambience pleasant, the hostess was such a lovely person. She was incredibly polite not only to the customers but also to the staff. She always said ‘thank you’ and wore a smile throughout, even though she looked exhausted. Never have I come across this level of professionalism in any establishment. I would go back just for the service alone. 5 stars for sure! Thank you so much for such a...