Food For Thought 226 - Aziamendi 88 @ The Mandarin Oriental Kuala Lumpur • Sassy Urbanite's Diary

A lot of people would have blogged about this exceptional dining experience when the Mandarin Grill at The Mandarin Oriental transformed into Kuala Lumpur’s most exclusive and creative dining venue from 22 July to 31 October 2015. This pop up restaurant is brought over by Eneko Atxa, Spain’s youngest ever 3 Michelin Star Chef and has recently been voted 19th Top Chef in the World by San Pellegrino. I was told that Chef Eneko was only in town for the 1st few days during the opening, but left his protege, Chef de Cuisine Alex Burger, from Aziamendi, Phuket for this unique dining experience.
The reservation process was quite a pain to go through with a lot of email exchanges, and they even asked for credit card consent form to be filled and photocopy of credit card in order to receive a confirmed booking. I guess Malaysians have yet to earn the trust of the fine dining restaurants since they are so afraid of last minute cancelling. I was quite grumpy going through it but was glad that I did it because the meal was absolutely fantastic.
We had the 5 course lunch with wine pairing menu for RM298 per person, which I thought it was good value for money since we are only paying another RM100 for 4 glasses of great wines. After ordering a sparking water to compliment our meal, our food came swiftly without much wait, a bit rush in my opinion, probably I just wanted more time to savour the extremely delicate and tasty food served while finding the perfect angle for the nice photographs. At first I was kinda worried if the meal portion would too small for Big Teddy, but it turned out that they gave difference complimentary bread for each courses and they were so filling I had to stop at 2 1/2. So it was a filling meal indeed, and after 4 full serving of wines I was feeling pretty happy on a Saturday afternoon. Each of the 5 courses was so creatively designed and put together it was almost like admiring edible fine art. My favourite was the signature Garden and the Grilled Tuna, Fried Eggs, Marmitako and Flowers, although was left a little disappointed when we were told that the signature Strawberries and Roses dessert was changed to Dulcey Chocolate and Peanut, Salted Caramel Ice Cream. Nonetheless, the lunch was still fabulous and exceptionally good. Well, that’s mainly due to it was possibly the 1st time Malaysian shore has seen a 3 Michelin Star cuisine. Let’s hope we will see more of it coming in the future….