Damansara Co. — Restaurant in San Francisco

One of the worst dining experiences of my life. First impression: glaringly bright light; freezing Noe Valley wind every time the front door opened; clattering of hard surfaces accompanied by loud rock music to the degree that my companions and I had a lot of trouble hearing each other. (I'm an avid rocker, but there's a time & place!) One tiny menu with tiny print for the table. "Green tea" had been crossed out with pencil. When we asked if they had any tea at all, the answer was "chrysanthemum"; turned out it was a cold, canned, SWEET soft drink. (This restaurant is across Church Street from a grocery store. A staff member couldn't walk over and buy some tea bags before opening?) On that note, the only primarily vegetable dish on the menu -- some kind of greens -- is served cold. This may be a delight in a tropical country, but some modification needs to be made according to location. Now, I admit knowing nothing about Malaysian fare, and the food may be authentic. But we ordered three dishes; unfortunately, I neglected to look carefully at the prices. The chicken satay was inexlicably grainy and came with about half a tablespoon of a stiff sort-of-peanutty condiment and some chopped red onion, both of which were difficult to apply to the meat. A poor rendition of a simple menu item. (The choices, BTW, are very few.) A whole crab drenched in an unknowable but very splattery red sauce and topped with some dinner rolls was served with DIY cracking tools and thin plastic gloves. (Maybe it's just me, but I dislike going to a restaurant only to be put to work.) What a mess! And the crabmeat itself was cool, not even lukewarm, as if the crustacean had been boiled, refrigerated, and then had the hot, oily liquid poured over it. THE PRICE FOR ONE CRAB WAS $100.00!! And that's before the 20% mandatory supplement plus tax. (And tip? No.) After extracting a few morsels of flavorless, cold meat, our gloves had broken through and our hands were covered with the sauce -- and the table wasn't pristine, either. Did the wait staff attempt to clean any of this up in a timely fashion? No; one of our party actually had to bus the dirty plates himself. I asked a server if they had any wipes or wet towels for cleaning our hands. After a few minutes, he came back and said they didn't. Frustrated by then, I requested that he just put some hot water on one of the cloth napkins for me/us. He came back to the table with two DIRTY kitchen towels, which I ended up using to wipe off the table myself. No, they weren't short-staffed that night; it's just that the servers had neither training, nor experience, nor intuition. After a forgettable $25.00 bowl of chili-flavored noodle soup with a little broth, one or two shrimp, half an egg, and a couple of squares of spongy tofu, our bill came to $214.00 including tax and the weird surcharge but before a tip helpfully suggested at the bottom of the...

Wow. This place served me raw chicken, TWICE!

I came during restaurant week because I love Malaysian food and they had really high ratings on google(I can’t believe I forgot to check Yelp, it is MUCH LOWER there). I was super excited because it’s hard to get good Malaysian food in the bay area.

I order the fried chicken that came with rice and curry sauce.

First bite into the chicken, it’s tasteless. Absolutely no flavor and that piece was pretty overcooked. I take a bite of a second piece, and it’s raw and bright pink inside. I instantly feel really disgusted and notified the server. No apology, just basically said I’ll get you new ones. We wait for a bit and the new chicken arrives. I cut into it, and it’s even more raw than the first piece. Bright pink, with pink juice flowing out, and the meat sticking to the bone. At this point I’m mortified and I let another server know. This time she was apologetic and offered $10 off and remake the chicken a third time. At this point, I have no faith in this restaurant and I just wanted to leave. You would think after the first complaint of the chicken being raw, they would be more careful and temp the chicken but getting it wrong 2 times in a row is unacceptable. How can one piece be overcooked and the other be raw? Pick a struggle already.

The curry sauce, also tasteless, pretty much tasted like curry scented water. Imagine curry flavored LaCroix but warm and thick. The sambal is $2 each and they’re all tasteless. Sambal is supposed to be fragrant and spicy. The sambal that they served was the most bland sambal I’ve ever tried.

Moral of the story— everything is wrong at this restaurant. Serving food safe, cooked meat is the bare minimum for any food establishment and this place has failed multiple times. Absolutely...

Their Bak Kut Teh was so comforting, loved it. I like how it came with a side of collard greens and yau cha kueh. The bkt dish has to be pre-ordered btw (they send out emails informing when it is available). And they have the sweet soy sauce available to eat with your bkt too! That was a nice touch.

I couldn't really eat the beef Rendang dish because it was too spicy for me (my tolerance for hot food is quite low, lol). Sadly the char kuey teow lacked the "wok hei"-ness, but most if not all Malaysian restaurants in the US do lack this. Hard to properly cook char kuey teow on a wok with blazing fire in these restaurants, not like in Malaysia where they have the proper facilities/outdoor area for it.

Their satay was pretty good. It had the satay flavor.

Their hot milk tea was surprisingly pleasantly good. I said surprisingly just because they use non-dairy creamer and only lightly sweetened. For me personally, usually non-dairy stuff don't taste as good, and when people say lightly sweetened, I've experience watered down drinks. But this one, I enjoyed!

My guilty treat was their air bandung (pink rose milk). ❤️

I wish the dishes weren't so pricey though, makes it difficult to be able to come back as often as we'd like. But we get it, having a business in...