COCONUTS CRITICS TABLE — After a long day at work, Darren Chin probably curses Masterchef. I can imagine him groaning, ‘Gosh, it’s so hard to impress people these days! Today I heard this young punk commenting that the my quenelle of mangosteen sorbet should be wasn’t shaped perfectly. Not like on Masterchef. God.’
Darren Chin is the culinary whiz behind DC Restaurant. Beautiful people are waxing lyrical, the media is going wild, it’s packed every night, with spots filled up two weeks ahead.
When I asked a waitress what ‘colantro’ was, Darren himself came by with an actual colantro leaf, and explained it was a kind of long leaf coriander. That was nice.
The problem with the hype — aided in no small part by a price tag close to the national median salary and Masterchef mania — is that people expect a batshit crazy unrealistically beyond fantastic experience. DC is dangling an invitation to nitpick, and we grabbed it.
The evening began in a very awesome way with the bread service. Extra points because the baker himself personally presents the bread, and because the baker is tall, handsome and has tattoos all down one arm.
Baker Marc explained that he innovates a few new recipes every week. That night’s inventions included one with thyme, honey and nigella seeds; and another with cheese and raisins. Freshly baked and served with copious amounts of Pamplie unpasteurised truffle butter (refillable, and very generous on the truffle) we’re off to a great start.
Unpasteurised Pamplie truffle butter from Poitue-Charentes
Choosing what to eat at DC is easy. You don’t. It’s all chosen for you. Your only choice is whether to go for the five-course tasting menu (RM298 per person) or the seven-course (RM368 per person). The seven-course has a couple of extra entrées. If you’re feeling hungry and have a few hundred bucks to spare, you can opt for ‘supplements’ — more on that later.
The beverage menu arrives with a dedicated wine captain. We quickly skip past the Dom Perignon Rose Vintage 2003 (RM1,800 per bottle) range of alcohols to the last page — Hildon still premium natural mineral water (RM16). Authentically English, proclaims the bottle.
“Tastes like water,” proclaims my dining partner.
The courses are well-paced, with about half of them presented by Darren himself. To name them as they appear on the menu all would take up the entire allowable wordcount of this article, so I’ll stick to the highlights. And the lowlights.
Five kinds of bread by resident baker Marc. A bit like the magic porridge pot, this basket keeps refilling.
So let’s skip, skip, skip along to… the third course — Sabah soft shell crab. The crunch of the charcoal tempura coat broke away to reveal a loose, juicy filling of crab. Creamy hollandaise with a twist of sweet basil made each mouthful a carnival of happy surprises. Yum.
A few of courses later, enter the pigeon —- AOP Anjou French pigeon, to be exact. Meaning the bird on my plate has the enviable distinction of being certifiably born and raised in Anjou, France, by virtue of which it will taste like no other pigeon in the world.
A rather badly taken picture of the Sabah soft shell crab. See the black blob at the end? That’s it. Sharply in focus, however, is the ulam salad, which I believe was put into the combo to justify claims of ‘Asian touches’ in the menu
This dish was wow. Two ample portions of breast, slow roasted to a deep, succulent red, flanked by some lip-smackingly tasty pigeon legs, a hearty serve of luscious mentaiko mushrooms and a big dollop of celeriac purée to round it all off.
Next, the Rougié foie gras. Served as a supplement to the Black Angus main course, this 50g slice of gastronomical heaven is practically a steal at RM60 (compared to the other supplements, that is). To assuage my guilt and dispel disturbing mental images of gagging, force-fed ducks, I had a good read of the Rougie website beforehand (‘farming’ section).
Black Angus fillet, aged 150 days, seasoned with 14 spices; Spinach ravioli and the delectable Rougié foie gras.
While the Black Angus was definitely a superior cut of meat and cooked to a perfect medium rare, the sidekick foie gras outshone it completely in terms of taste, punch and plain ole deliciousness.
Ok, done with the highlights.
Wait, what? Am I saying the rest of the courses weren’t mindblowingly extraordinary? Err, sorry, but yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying. They weren’t bad, just not as good as I had hoped.
The Maine lobster-scallop rouelle looked beautiful, with its delicate membrane of spinach and generous sprinkling of gold flakes on the top. Biting into it, though, pretty much felt like biting into an oversized crabstick ball from the local dim sum shop. It floated in a too-sweet Yuzu sauce that kind of killed my tastebuds.
Maine lobster-scallop rouelle, with jellied lobster consommé and Yuzu gel
Luckily a swig of authentically English mineral water perked them up again. And in case you’re wondering, gold flakes don’t taste of anything whatsoever.
The oyster, flown so many thousands of miles from the shallows of the Irish seas, was wonderful. I would have gleefully chugged down half a dozen. But its companion, the grilled abalone, despite being draped in a most artistic way on its bed of cappelini, was tough and tasteless.
Irish oysters with jellied ponzu, cucumber and seaweed caviar. The grilled abalone in the foreground was served with cold cappelini.
I was fortunate to have been able to extract the shred of mollusc stuck in my teeth relatively gracefully, under the guise of a prolonged cough.
Maybe, by chance, I got served a wizened specimen, because my dining partner found no fault with his.
We forked over an extra RM168 for half a Brittany blue lobster to accompany my DC Signature seafood medley. Dumped unceremoniously amongst the rest of the seafood on the platter, my point five of a crustacean looked sad and undignified. A tad chewy too, which I suspect means it spent a little too long on Mr Saucepan. Didn’t love the presentation.
A medley it was, but a rather dissonant one, with haphazardly strewn seafood, drenched with a foamy rust coloured seafood emulsion. There were some dots of green sauce here and there, which the menu declared to be watercress-almond purée, but it didn’t actually add anything to the visual appeal of the dish.
Dessert was a non-event, with the nervous little pastry chef seemingly anxious to dump her dish on us and make a quick exit. We also had the cheese trolley, the highlight of which was the stately old bow-tied French man who wheeled it in. The cheeses themselves were rather dried out and hard around the edges.
Well, I guess travelling 10 thousand miles does that to you. It was also disappointing that the lone accompanying strawberry was rubbery and bland, and blueberries shrunken.
And more. Our third serve of Pamplie butter was so hard we couldn’t spread it (yes, we actually had three serves. What pigs). The waitress couldn’t answer many of our questions about the food, or identify the ingredients. The amuse course was served left to right for me, and right to left for my partner. And — the quenelle of mangosteen sorbet wasn’t perfectly shaped.
Thanks Masterchef, you taught me well.
But despite the little things I nitpicked on, DC Restaurant is a gorgeous experience. With seven chefs cooking for eight tables, and at least five other staff (I kind of lost count) dutifully attending to your every whim, classy music, dimmed lights, wafts of sophisticated conversation drifting from the nearby tables — you come out feeling like a million bucks. Minus a thousand or so.
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