Village Park Restaurant (Nasi Lemak)
I rarely ever go for Nasi Lemak during lunch time. The reason for this is because Nasi Lemak during lunch often involves going to a food court or cafe where the food is overpriced and none too good. This is especially true when you compare it to the roadside stalls that open early in the morning where you can get great Nasi Lemak with beef rendang for RM2.00. Nonetheless, Tuesday was an exception when I went to Village Park Restaurant with a friend for lunch.
The place is located in Damansara Uptown, walking distance from Uptown 1. If you’re walking from Uptown 1’s main lobby, head up the street till you come to a T-junction, and cross the road to the shoplots on the opposite side. The restaurant is to the left most side of the row of shops.
We arrived at the shop at 12.45pm and managed to find a table without much difficulty. My friend told me that the place was usually crowded for lunch. Less than 10 minutes after he made that observation, a throng of people arrived. It was a good thing that we decided to do an early lunch. Otherwise, it would have been impossible to get a seat, contending with the 1.00pm lunch time mob.
Anyway, like all Nasi Lemak places, they have all the dishes on display at a counter. You pick and choose what you like. A basic Nasi Lemak (one bowl of rice, half an egg, ikan bilis [anchovies], peanuts, cucumber, and sambal) goes for RM2.00 while the condiments that you can choose from ranges in price, from RM1.70 for a scoop of sambal petai, up to RM4.20 for a largish piece of deep fried chicken. The sambal petai looked tempting but I decided to forego that and went with the Beef Rendang instead.
For me, I look at several criterias when comparing Nasi Lemak. First and foremost, the rice must be fresh and piping hot. Seeing steam rise from your plate (or packet) of nasi lemak is a turnon when shooting for gastronomic orgasm. While some people like their rice to be soft, I prefer mine to be firm. The rice should not stick to each other in clumps, overcooked with too much water. Instead, it should fall loosely together. The amount of coconut milk (santan) used in cooking the rice is also important. Without this, there’s really no point in calling it nasi lemak. Don’t be conned into paying a nasi lemak premium at places that serves you white rice. The rice must also be cooked with enough santan to give it a fragrant flavour, but not too much that it would induce a heart attack.
Next on my list is the sambal and rendangs. For me, the absolute defacto rule for good sambal and rendang is that it must be spicy. Forget those sweet watery crap that they try to pass off as sambal. Real sambal should be thick with onions and some ikan bilis, numb your tongue and gullet on the way down, and finally settle into a nice warm burning sensation in the pit of your stomach. That’s a sure sign of good sambal. The same goes for rendang, except that instead of onions, the rendang should be thick with gerisik (fried coconut shavings).
Well, I’m happy to say that Village Park’s Nasi Lemak fulfils my criterias for good nasi lemak. The rice was hot, fragrant, and tasty. The sambal was spicy. The beef rendang was spicier and steaming hot. The portion of beef rendang that they served was quite large, by any standards. However, I could have done with a little more rice. One scooped bowl of rice is just not enough, and disproportional to the serving size of the accompanying dishes. I wonder if they charge for extra rice.
My Nasi Lemak with Beef Rendang set me back by RM5.00, while my friend had Nasi Lemak with Sambal Petai and Fried Chicken for RM7.50. About the double the price of your roadside nasi lemak, but not bad considering the food and serving. Aside from Nasi Lemak, Village Park also serves noodles and fried stuff from their kitchen. I heard that the Mee Soto was good and the Mee Rebus that passed by in front of me looked mighty taste.
While I’m still not a fan of Nasi Lemak for lunch, I definitely recommend the place if you find yourself in the area and craving for it. However, you might like to get there early to beat the crowd.
Village Park Restaurant (Damansara Uptown)
5, Jalan SS21/37,
Damansara Utama,
47400 Petaling Jaya, Selangor.
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chengsim Said,
April 1, 2006 @ 6:59 am
i usually prefer my nasi lemak with beef rendang. omg. the taste is beyond words but im cutting down from all those nasi lemak splendour. i wanna lose 2 kgs!
ANTI-VILLAGE PARK. Said,
November 5, 2009 @ 1:17 am
Was at Village Park today afternoon around 1.30pm, a very bad experience and end up with order nothing and left.
My friends like to go there, and I was there few times already, the nasi lemak is just normal.
Today again, I arrived earlier than my friends, sit a table far away from the counter(alongs the corridor), the table was messy, so I stand and wait, then a waiter come and clean it, after cleaned, he told me that he go and bring over the menu to me.
Due to I was received a call from customer few minutes ago, ask me to check an urgent mail sent by her, so I open up my LAPTOP with my Celcom Broadband to download that mail. During the time I see the waiter walk towards me with the menu, but suddenly he turn back into the shops…I feel weird, but thought that maybe he forgot something else, so I continue downloading my mail. After I done download my mail, I start realize that I sitting there around 10mins, menu still not coming.
I also notice that there’s an empty table just in front of the main entrance, so I decided to shut down my laptop and walk over to the table. Because it takes time to shut down the laptop, so I carrying it on my hand and walk towards, see an Old Man carrying a cleaning cloth towards the table and want to clean it for me initially, but suddenly he stared at my laptop, show me two hands and bad face, then walk away from the table and stand beside. I suddenly ‘HANG’ for few seconds, and remembered that my friend told me this place not allow to use LAPTOP. So I keep my laptop and stand up, then that uncle suddenly sit at my place and seems like want to chase me out from the place. That uncle(heard that is the owner) really too rude, he may have his own rules, but I didn’t use his electricity or wifi, and never disturb his business because I only use for few minutes. He might be right for generating himself a good business turnover but definitely very wrong due to his bad very attitude. I will definitely banned this place for my life time.
If there’s really a in-house rules at his shop, he may come to me politely and tell me that I cannot use laptop at the place,(some more I’m just carrying it with my hand and standing, is not surfing over there for few hours.) Now everyone talk about internet, even government do support in some Wifi project to encourage residents to have more knowledge in internet & computers, so what he do is totally opposite with the generation and environment already.
All the readers please imagine, what’s your response if you’re the one who got such a reaction from that uncle ? “SIAO SIAO” sit down, keep the laptop and call the Uncle nicely and ask him to clean table for you and make an order ?
Wondering why there’s so many people so stupid still want to go for such a bad service restaurant for the so called tasty food ? Actually there’s quite a lot of food stall,restaurant are like that uncle, they thought business is good, so they treat customer very badly because they don’t mind to miss a customer, because many stupid people still like to eat my food, come pay me the money, even I treat them badly. Why not we choose to pay for those good service(at least not treat u rudely), yet good food places ?
This shop information should be removed from all the Malaysia internet sites or blogs because it may misleading some tourist come to the place, and what if they treat the tourists like that also ?This will give a very bad impression to the outsider that Malaysian is all like that.
P/S : If you not believe me, try bring over your laptop, and open it up on the table, then I can guarantee you got the same ’service’ as me, but make sure you’re at the place that botak uncle can see you.