The Soup Restaurant @ 1-Utama Shopping Centre

Originating from Singapore, The Soup Restaurant established its first outlet in Malaysia at the newly renovated Old Wing of 1-Utama Shopping Centre a few months ago. With its circular doorway framed by faux bamboo plants against intricate bold red partitions inside, you certainly won't miss it.

The name itself can be quite misleading as one will tend to think this place serves only soups. Well, soups are their specialities, I guess but it's funny how I have never ordered any of their soups in the numerous times I have dined here.

What really worth raving here is their famed Samsui Ginger Chicken (RM38 & RM68 for small & big portions respectively). Pieces of deboned poached chicken, deliciously flavoured, are arranged in a circle and served with a piquant ginger dip. A plate of ice-cold lettuce leaves is also served and the idea is to wrap a piece of the boneless chicken, top it with some of the minced ginger paste before popping it into your mouth. The chicken is smooth and tender with a nice bite of chewiness in it, indicating the delicate skills needed in the poaching method to yield such an excellent texture.

Most of the other dishes featured in their menu spell "homeliness" in the theme. Simple comfort food that I grew up eating. Dishes like Steamed Minced Pork with Salted Fish (RM16), Sweet Potato Leaves with Sambal Belacan (RM15.80), French Beans saute'ed with Dried Shrimps (RM15.80) and Claypot Tofu (RM12.80). All these dishes are great to go with a bowl (or two) of plain rice. The pork is minced manually by hand and this results in a texture that's not too fine which is excellent for steaming. This was exactly how it's done back home when my mother used to cook this dish regularly.

On another occasion we decided to try their venison, so we ordered the Black Pepper Venison. The slices of venison were smooth and tender and imparted great "wok hei" in their smokey nuances. The fragrant black pepper dotted the meat and the slices of Bombay onions added some sweetness to the dish. We mopped up everything on the plate, onions and all. The portioning here tends to be on the light side so we decided to order another version — Venison with Ginger & Spring Onions. Between the two, the Black Pepper Venison was preferred due to its stronger appetizing flavours.

For yet another meal, we had just the Samsui Chicken with a plate of their Ginger Fried Rice. The fried rice had chunks of chicken in it with lots of eggs and well flavoured with chopped ginger. Simple ingredients yet it's one of the better fried rice I've had for some time. Of course, a meal here is never complete without that plate of poached Samsui Chicken. I noticed that almost every table there had this dish on it!

Soup Restaurant
Lot G210A, Ground Floor
1-Utama Shopping Centre
No.1 Lebuh Bandar Utama
47800 Petaling Jaya
Tel: 03-7727-2788
Fax: 03-7727-2755

This post is written by PureGlutton whose passion for food is often tantamount to gluttony. Many would ask "is that passion or is that pure gluttony?" Find out on http://pureglutton.com.