Chung Sam Restaurant - asam fish

Smokin' SOB normally doesn't get ecstatic about food; his philosophy in life is to eat to live rather than live to eat (unlike the rest of us). So when he mentioned to me, about a month back, that he had just eaten same "damn good f*#^ing good fish", I knew that it had to be something really special.

Unfortunately, the restaurant doesn't open for lunch, and the Makan Club doesn't do dinners, so we were unable to enjoy Smokin' SOB's out-of-body experience.

So naturally, when he suggested dinner today at Chung Sam Restaurant, I couldn't say no. :-)

Chung Sam is hardly what one would call a restaurant. It's more like an open-concept shack. The "kitchen" is in the centre, and the tables surround the kitchen. The problem with seeing the kitchen is that one can easily be tempted by the array of food ordered by others. Take Richard, for example. Richard loves crabs, and his attention was on the crabs throughout the night. Unfortunately, all the crabs were booked by another table, so the poor chap could only salivate. I've never seen anyone look so miserable.

But the star attraction at this restaurant is the asam (tamarind) fish. The fish is first deep fried in a wok, then placed on a lotus leaf. The sauce (prepared beforehand) made of tamarind juice, chillies and belacan is then poured over the fish together with sliced onions. The "package" is then wrapped up and deep fried again to allow the flavours to envelope the fish. It was served hot and it was certainly delicious.


Smokin' SOB was right. It was damn good f*#^ing good fish. :-)


(Note: If you'd like to sample the fish, do go there early as they run out of the sauce pretty fast. We had arrived at 8.15pm, and we were the last customers to get the asam fish.)

Chung Sam Restaurant
No. 3, Jalan Anggor,
4th Mile, Off Jalan Klang Lama (coming from KL, just before the Tmn Desa exit),
58100 KL
Tel: 03-7822291/012-3685164