Sunday, June 10, 2012

RESTAURANT: Albee's Kitchen


A friend of mine has been talking about a Malaysian restaurant in Campsie ever since it opened. Not being one to frequent Campsie (I doubt I'd be able to pick it out on a map), I've never been. He's taken other friends have shared his enthusiasm, which has made this place somewhat mythical. But it's not as simple as just going to Campsie and trying the food. No, one must first become a man before going to Campsie and eating Malaysian food.

Apparently this place gets packed during peak times, so it was fortunate that we went between lunch and dinner and could spread our wings. The menu is bloody massive, covering the standard Malay dishes like char kway teow, laksa, Hainanese chicken rice, satay and fish head soup, and stuff I've never seen in writing before, like butter oat chicken, milky creamy pork rib and marmite chicken.

Curiosity orders the latter, which turns out to be a nice crunchy chicken, almost like a sweet and sour chicken. We also start with curry puffs which are huge, stuffed with egg and vegetables, and delicious. The pastry is perfectly crunchy.

Pandan wrapped chicken sounds like a winner and comes highly recommended, but I'm turned off by a few pieces being undercooked which causes a pool of blood to form at the bottom of the bowl.

It's hard to go past char kway teow, so we don't. It's a decent version with the big plus of added clams, but not one that will set the world on fire. A little char missing, the chinese sausage not integrating with the rest of the dish and average prawns add up.

Though it's better than the hokkian noodles (pictured), whose tasty noodles are let down by a sauce none of us really enjoy and tiny shrimp with little flavour. Not even chunks of pork lard could save it.

A visit to a Malaysian joint isn't complete without an order (or more) of satay. Here, they're well marinated with turmeric dominating and come with more, peanut heavy sauce on the side. Very tasty all in all.

On the side we also get the four treasure--two types of beans, eggplant and okra stir fried in a pungent sambal--which is quite tasty.

A few hits and a few misses, but it's still easy to see why this place is popular. Good prices, authentic food, quick service and a mind-boggling selection of dishes for the local Campsians. Though, I feel that the standard of Malaysian food has been rapidly increasing lately and at the moment this place doesn't quite have enough to make me want to make a special journey for it.


RATING: Okay, may go back [?]

Albee's Kitchen on Urbanspoon

1 comment:

John Sang said...

don't waste your time, this place is horrible, I had a seafood laska and beef rendang.

Service: if you dont order a drink they'll be slow in giving you free water.

Ambience: lets put it its more confortable squatting on a rufugee boat from Vietnam, we had to walk past the kitchen, 4 small back rooms to sit with 6 ugly mainlanders people

Food: seriously disaapointing Laska was like curry paste with water, no cocunt or chilli flavour like the famous chinese maly on hunter st in the city. The laska from normal food courts is better.

Beef rendang was cold, small serving. beef was not fall apart.

I would no recommend or go back.