Antara Restaurant

WHY GO

What happens when you take well-known Malaysian dishes and tweak them using premium produce to give them a more contemporary flavour and appearance? You get Antara’s modern Malaysian cuisine.

WHAT TO ORDER

For appetisers, the belachan and asam chicken wings are a big favourite, with the tangy tamarind providing a mellow profile to the often-overpowering flavour of belachan. The wild fern salad with salmon caviar and crabmeat is unique and lightly spiced, not overpowering the seafood.

The dried scallop popiah meanwhile, provide an interactive dining experience as diners roll the popiahs at their table. About 10 ingredients including turnip, beans, shallots, tofu and ground peanuts are presented in tiffins.

Another favourite is the Sarawak laksa, offered with either marron or Boston lobster. The distinctive prawn and chicken broth is less voluminous than in most laksas of the variety to provide a semi-dry style where the rice vermicelli dominates.

A delicious and rich dessert best shared by two is the Pakistani mango pavlova with rich whipped and thickened cream plus candied lime rind. This is wickedly delicious with a perfectly cooked meringue pavlova and very rich from the copious amounts of Chantilly cream.