Porky Goodness - EEST's new non-halal menu at The Westin KL.

EEST is now non-halal! The new menu was rolled out on the 16th of March, apparently because of popular demand, so the darling and I take a detour from our usual haunt at the Westin (i.e. Prego) to see how the 猪油 affects the food :)


Upon stepping into the restaurant, it's clear that only the menu has been revamped - the decorations are untouched. EEST also has an open kitchen, which makes the restaurant relatively noisy. I like, though - somehow eating chinese food, must have some "noise" then only got the proper ambience to eat, ha ha.


EEST now advertises itself as serving 5 different cuisine (Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Malaysian and Vietnamese), but the bulk of the dishes are Chinese. After ordering we're served with complementary pastries - these are delicious! Crispy and with a delicious hot char siu bao-ish flavored chicken filling. Cheese crust on the top was an interesting twist, too.

I guess this is sort of the Chinese equivalent of the amuse bouche?


Anyway on to the food! The Wok Fried Rice with Seafood and XO Paste (MYR28.00) is a bit mixed. The texture and oil level was excellent, but on the flipside there was not enough flavor and tasted rather bland. It's OK for eating with other dishes, but as a stand-alone you'd probably get rather tired of the (lack of) taste.


Salted Fish with Smoked Bacon and Lap Cheong (MYR32.00) was better, with some nice tasting gravy and delicious bacon slices. Amount of dried chili was OK too - enough kick without being too spicy. One criticism that both the darling and I agreed on was that there wasn't enough salted fish taste - you had to really concentrate to taste any.


Finally, we had the Master Tossed Hakka noodle with Roasted Pork Belly (MYR32.00). The noodles were, well, noodles - nice and springy, and the roast pork had been 'stewed' long enough so that the skin was juicy. However, there was also a lot of gravy - and the gravy was a tad bit salty (to put it nicely) - so it was a little challenging towards the end of the dish when there wasn't enough noodles to cover up the saltiness of the sauce.


Reading the menu was quite amusing - I've never seen a Chinese food menu that mentions such things as Wagyu and Black Angus beef. In any case, dinner for the both of us came up to $53-ish (after 50% Starwood Privilege discount). For that price it's a good deal, but if you're not an SP member I think the food needs a little bit of work to justify paying full price.

The darling and I have previously visited EEST for the King's Kitchen Club and dimsum buffet: KKK event at EEST at the Westin KL, and you can also check out eatdrinkkl's review.