Tokyo comes to Selayang.. Restoran Tokyo Selayang!
Eating out on the weekends is a real "thing" with my family. It is when the chef of the house (i.e. mom) gets to take a rest and the family get to pile into the car, and go off to find a good restaurant to have dinner at. We normally end up at a Dai Chow restaurant and dinner goes on for a couple of hours at least, accompanied by tons of laughter and noise - just the way the Chinese like to eat. And if you're wondering what Dai Chow is, it is a local phenomenon - our local version of Hong Kong's Tai Pai Dongs - streetside, open-air dining, where piping hot meat and vegetable dishes are churned out at an alarming rate, by male cooks behind large woks. Super hot, furnace like heat from the wok, cooks the dishes and gives them that characteristic smoky flavour we call 'wok hei'. At home, it is hard to reproduce this sort of wok-hei, for obvious reasons, and so families normally end up eating out, if they are looking for a satisfying dai-chow meal.
One of the nicest restaurants we like to visit is called Restaurant Selayang Tokyo.
So which is it? Selayang or Tokyo?
Well, this restaurant has actually been around for a rather long time. It used to be called, just plain Restoran Tokyo. Now it seems, the place is completely renovated – airconditioned and all, and the owners saw it fit to upgrade the name as well – Restoran Selayang Tokyo. Just incase you were going to mistake it for being in Japan, it is really in Selayang.
And the specialty here? Well, where do we start?
Let’s try, pork knuckle and river prawns, as the tip of the iceberg. And then work our way down the list- steamed fish, massive crab claws, tofu, vegetables and fried rice - you have just stumbled upon chinese dai-chow paradise.
You will notice the huge kitchen up front, where many cooks are hard at work. Passing by the kitchen, you can’t help but notice that the place is a furnace. I guess that’s how they get the wok-hei out of the wok and into your food!
This local deep fried tofu, dish that’s crispy on the outside, soft and white on the inside, topped with crushed peanuts, julienned turnip, cucumber and drizzled with a sweet and sour chili sauce is a great appetite stimulant.
Mun Chee Sau, or Braised Pork Knuckle – Crunchy on outside, soft and tender on inside. The sauce is a thick, gooey brown sauce that’s probably partly made from pork lard and its own pork juices as well. Terrific artery clogging stuff. And the reason it is braised is to encourage the meat to tenderize, the fat to soften, and give it that melt in your mouth texture. It is then deep fried one last time to make it crispy on the outside. And even if you don't eat pig skin, it is worth having a bite or two of the crispy skin, the wobbly cartilage and the silky soft meat. When they bring out the pork knuckle dish, it always fills the restaurant with heavenly aromas of roasted pork and five-spices. The finished result is meltingly tender pork with a fantastic sauce.
The gooey richness of salty-duck egg yolks is infused with the sweetness of crabs can only mean one thing - Salted egg yolk crabs! There's no other way to eat this, than to suck and lick the yolk off the shell, before you proceed to suck the life and white flesh out of the crab. What a ridiculously fattening, cholesterol laden and superbly tasty dish. The claws are definitely the best part.
Sei Dai Tin Wong – 4 types of veges
Again, the theme here seems to be oily, fatty and super tasty! Belacan fried ladies fingers, long beans, aubergine and four angled bean.
Pak Sok Kong
This fish used to be a cheap fish, that swimmed in the kampung river and drains – so says my dad.. and he tells me this every single time we pay money (“too much” he says) for this fresh water fish. The best part of the Pak Sok Kong, is of course, just behind the gills – super fatty (and it ain’t omega3, just fish fat) but insanely tasty. Don’t come to this restaurant if you are not prepared to pay your dues in fat.
Add:
Restoran Selayang Tokyo
7456 Jalan 1,
Taman Selayang Baru,
68100 Batu Caves,
Selangor
Tel: (603) 6138 99312
GPS: 3.246930,101.658423
The authors of this post are C&C and they also write for their website CCFoodTravel.com
