Melur & Thyme

This post was supposed to upload last week but for some reason (obviously procrastination), I delayed it until today, it was a working Monday and when I needed a day off so I asked whether some of my friends can accompany me and together, we took a day off to KLCC for a day, it was near lunch when we reached so let’s try something different this time!

We spotted this restaurant named Melur & Thyme when we are browsing through some selection near the digital directory portal or machine, The restaurant name, “Melur & Thyme”, I thought the word “Melur” is a Malay word which means “Jasmine”, wouldn’t supposed to be “Jasmine & Thyme” there must be a solid reason behind this? Check their official website for the reason is what everyone would do.

It turns out that this restaurant is aiming in offering a mixture of East and West culture I guess? Having a traditional processes and experiences while adding an air of modern elegance. That explains why the word “Melur” as East and “Thyme” as West is used together, like Yin and yang I supposed?

The restaurant is crowded during lunch hour, the waiters and waitress are moving in and out from the counter, we manage to get ourselves a table luckily after a few minutes of standing at the waiting area.  As we were ordering, there are some of the dishes there is unavailable, not sure why, most of the dessert section are unavailable, so we only left with mains courses and a slight disappointment.

This is what we had ordered:

Food

• Grilled herb chicken (RM 29.00) – Boneless chicken breast marinated with thyme and spices, sous vide to perfection and served with vegetables, mash potato, cilantro garlic oil and thyme sauce
• Carbonara with smoked duck (28.00) ­– Traditional rich creamy carbonara sauce with duck eggs blanketing spinach tagliatelle and topped with juicy slice of smoked duck
• Plancha seafood spaghetti (RM 37.00) – Pasta cooked with homemade plancha sauce, served with grilled prawn and flower crab

*government tax and service charges are not included for the above prices.

The food we ordered were all western cuisine this time because my friend preferred having western cuisine but having a glance through their menu, they do serve Nasi Lemak, Hokkien Mee, Curry mee and other famous Eastern cuisine available in Malaysia too.

The architecture here is one of the thing worth mentionable, as I search online; the interior designer who did this is the same person who involved in designing the ABC (ACME Bar & Coffee) interior, modern and a soft touch of old western style in my opinion. 

The design of the lights along the wall reminds me of the oil lamp where there is a silver metal plate behind the lights

The bartender place, there is some silver lining art on the wall it only appear when there are lights there to be reflect, the ceiling has an bevel metal decoration, cool.

As you look around you might notice a white marble wall with a black metal line in creating a feeling of a sketch or doodle from a pen on paper, the whole feeling is to achieve an illusion of a spacious space, again it reminds me of the old Chinese coffee shop where they place a huge mirror at the end of their shop.

Not long of waiting our food is served actually is way faster than our drinks

Carbonara smoked duck, by the looks of it I like the texture of the duck meat, the rough surface from the meat kept me continuing chewing. The Carbonara as usual, it was creamy accompany with the tagliatelle, an Italian flat type of pasta. There are 2 thin slice of bread, it was crispy when bite.

I personally like this dish; I like the after grilled texture from the outer skin of the chicken, and the breast part is what I liked as well. With the thyme as their main ingredient here the overall chicken taste lemony with slight peppery mix with other spices the taste was pretty tempting.

Crispy flower crab which you can just eat with its shell, this dish was normal, just prawns and crabs with spaghetti and their homemade sauce.

Melur & Thyme, having the combination of East and West cuisine located within one of the entrance of KLCC is indeed had a catchy name, they would have name it all in English “Jasmine & Thyme” but to be consistent on what their restaurant’s purpose which is the mixture of East and West, they dare to make the choice in naming it “Melur” which means “Jasmine” in Malay language. 

Food  7/10

Price 6/10
Presentation 7/10
Environment 8/10

Below are the details of the restaurant.

Melur & Thyme, 
G03H-I Level Ground, Suria KLCC,
Kuala Lumpur City Centre,
50088 Kuala Lumpur

Tel        : +603 - 2181 8001

Fax       : 03 - 2181 8002

Email    : admin@melurandthyme.com

Website: www.melurandthyme.com

Opening Hours
8:00AM to 10:00PM
7 days a week
Open on public holidays

Ole Ole Bali - Empire Shopping Gallery

Hey everyone, last week my friend and I went to a place with a very strong cultural theme from their country, Ole Ole Bali. We went to Empire Mall near Subang area for an early lunch. Ole Ole Bali has one of the coolest decoration I had visited so far, every little details are there to remind you about Bali, I think their goal is to let their customer to temporary escape from the busy working life for a short moment and travel our minds to their authentic Baliness lifestyle cuisine. Alright enough talking and show some photos for you guys!

The logo clearly indicate the symbol of Bali, that triangular shape like is the shape of a temple from Bali located at the Gunung Kawi Temple, it is a Balinese Hinduism temple about balance and a symbol of life and faith. You could hear the flowing water coming out from the three squares, it creates a feeling of tranquility before entering the restaurant.

The restaurant is not very crowded, as we arrived quite early, around 12PM so I think it is normal to have such little amount of customer in that hour.

Upon entering I noticed the light decoration, as I recall I think that is the tool used in fishing made out of complete cane, quite clever for mixing and transforming it into a usable decoration yet aesthetic tool.

Nice authentic plate coaster there

After we sat down we begin ordering our goods, I wanted to try out their popular cuisine, the Nasi Campur because I saw a lot of good reviews on that.

Below is the goods we had ordered:

Food

• Siap Bumbu (RM 33.00) – Balinese Roast Chicken with Lemongrass Marinate.
• Nasi Campur (RM 37.00) – Combination of Balinese Grilled Lemongrass Prawns, Squid, Fish, Choice of Beef or Chicken Renuang and Sate Lilit, served with Lawar Kacang (Beans Salad), Rempeyek (Anchovy Crackers), Sambel Terasi and Sambel Matah.

Drinks

• Pulut Hitam (RM 12.00) – Black Glutinous, Coconut Milk and Palm Sugar, authentic Balinese flavor.
• Avocado (RM 12.00)

*government tax and service charges are not included for the above prices.

After we had finished order, I decided to go for a quick tour around the restaurant because I noticed some nice decorations which not many restaurant will have.

Tables with candle lights welcoming customer with warm and delightful environment.

The statue is an elephant, maybe due to Hinduism belief I suppose? It does suits the whole environment well.

The big background of the painting, might be a part of scenery from the history of Bali.

The restaurant also prepared a place for those who like to enjoy their meal with the sun shine, it was noon and the sun is way too bright and hot but there are also people sitting there having their meal despite the hot weather.

They even made a tree like figure using the traditional fishing cane tool, can’t get enough of surprise from them, good job.

So after finishing my tour I walk back to my seat, I can see the staffs are busying preparing the customers’ good, some of them speak Indonesia language (Bahasa Indonesia) to each other, so I guess they are originally from Bali?

Finally our good are served, I got myself a chicken Nasi campur, look at all the small ingredients that forms up and become a whole complete awesome nice cuisine!

The grilled fish and the squid has is nice to chew, oh and the prawns as well.

The sate lilit has a very good lemongrass stick fragrance and was very tempting, very well-seasoned so I wish they offer two sate lilits instead of one.

Next will be my friend’s Siap Bumbu

The ingredients is more or less the same, just that my friend has a nice big roasted chicken and a scoop of yellow rice.

The roasted chicken has a good amount of dry rendang taste and smell, delicious to have if you like rendang food!

The avocado drink that I order

This is just a normal avocado drink but it is also nice to have it as it is sweet and creamy.

My friend’s pulut hitam

“Pulut” means “Glutinous rice”, “Hitam” means “Black” so literally means Black glutinous rice, the reason my friend ordered this is because not many restaurant serve this drinks, the green “ribbon” on top is “Pandan” a tropical plant found in South East Asian named Pandanus amaryllifolius. The drink is refreshing at its best, easy to finish it without you even notice.

Ole Ole Bali has good environment and the food is not so spicy overall for us, so do not worry about it, I think they tune down for those who does not usually have spicy food regularly such as western foreigners. Be sure to give it a try if you guys haven’t try before.

• Food 7/10
• Price 8/10
• Presentation 9/10
• Environment 9/10

Below are the details of the restaurant.

Ole-Ole Bali @ Empire Subang Gallery

LG 27, Lower Ground Floor,

Empire Shopping Gallery,

Jalan SS16/1, 47500 Subang Jaya,

Selangor

Tel: + 601-5022 2620

Operating hours: 10AM to 10PM daily