Following all the hype about this new joint in town (well, fairly new), I finally had the opportunity to pay a visit during this trip back home. We decided to celebrate my mom's birthday early by trying out this restaurant.
Most of the blog posts, reviews, friends' comments about this place were good, so we were waiting with anticipation to enjoy nice food in this place as they do not come cheap.
Menu |
It all started well with an interesting looking menu which was specially designed to look like a lifestyle magazine. On the second page was an article about the many great achievements and experiences of the chef/owner of Party Play.
As we were browsing through the pages, we found it rather difficult to see clearly what they have to offer as the menu was dominated by photos and the descriptions were randomly put all over the photos! Have a look at the menu and you can see what I mean.
After much effort, we finally decided on the Classic Lamb Shoulder and Meat Lover Platter for 2.
Watermelon Juice |
Oh! and of course we ordered some drinks too while waiting for our food to come.
My parents ordered the pineapple juice as they looked nice on the drinks menu while I went for the watermelon juice (my favourite).
Well, were we not disappointed when the drinks arrived and all we had was HALF filled (small) round glasses of juice which cost RM6 and RM8 each! The size of the glass was not really the biggest issue, what thrown us was the fact that the juice tasted like it was made from squash but was advertised on the menu as FRESH pineapple juice!
Lamb Shoulder |
Well, we thought that all will be forgiven by how good the food would be.
So I was really excited when my Classic Lamb Shoulder arrived. I was delighted with the look of the delicious looking char-grilled lamb shoulders and that creamy mash potatoes.
I could not wait to put my knife into the lamb. Well, well, well, did I have a job trying to cut the tough piece of lamb on a plate that kept rotating like a flying saucer on the table! Aha! you guessed right, the plate was not flat on the bottom, hence the plate was spinning like a turntable (like those you find on a round table in a Chinese restaurant).
After we managed to get the kitchen to change my plate, I still had difficulties cutting into the tough lamb and I suspect that it must have been over-cooked.
So, I spent all evening trying to chew my dinner so that I can swallow it without risking any indigestion later.
Even my creamy mash was a little bit of a disappointment, especially when mash potato is one of my favourite side dishes. The mash still had bits of potatoes pieces in it, maybe it was meant to be that way but to me, a good mash should be all smooth and silky ie NO potato pieces left in it!
Meat Lover Platter |
NB apologies for the over-exposed photo of the Meat Lover Platter.
I shall not say much about the Meat Lover Platter for 2 as I have nothing good to say about it either. Look at page 8 of the menu.
Doesn't it look amazing on that wooden block just like a Ploughman's Lunch?
Well, look at the photo above. Instead of serving all the different types of meat separately on the dish, so that we can enjoy the different meat individually; the steak, lamb, chicken and sausage were all piled up in one big heap that we couldn't even tell what is what!
What was shocking as well, was that the rack of lamb was not trimmed to reveal the bones and to remove the excess fat as that is a basic 'French' rack of lamb preparation method.
We expected more from a restaurant of this 'stature' (and pricing)!
On that note, you can safely guess that we shall not be going back to this restaurant again and nor shall we recommend it to any friends!
Being dissatisfied with our dinner, we decided to go to hawker stalls at Tanjung Aru Beach for some local food.
Coconut |
Sate |
Chicken and Beef Sate with Coconut water - local, cheap and simply the better food!