Pang's Kitchen at Taman Desa: Review

From Happy Valley to Taman Desa: Hong Kong’s one-Michelin-starred Pang’s Kitchen opens its first foreign offshoot this month – a team of Malaysians has coaxed the HK restaurant’s founders into letting KL have a taste of their original recipes, including boiled pigeon soup with sea cucumber, stewed pork knuckle with sour plums in claypot, & preserved duck with taro.

Cantonese Cooking that Spans Nearly 150 Dishes

Pang’s Kitchen has an encyclopaedic repertoire of mainly Cantonese cooking that spans nearly 150 dishes; two of us barely managed to finish three percent of the menu, but our favourites were probably the super-thick scrambled egg whites with scallops, which confidently straddled the line between firm & fluffy (RM38), & the steamed prawns on a bed of sticky-hot glutinous rice that we couldn’t stop devouring, carbs be damned (RM38). We were eager to also enjoy the restaurant’s signature sweet-sour pork with strawberries, but it was a little too cloying for our liking (RM28). For fans of Pang’s Kitchen in HK, it may be reassuring to note that the outlet’s owners plan to make regular trips to KL to ensure standards stay consistent.

Go ga-ga for garlic: Pang’s Kitchen’s crispy chicken speciality (RM28 for half) & ‘bi feng tang’ typhoon shelter crabs (market price, but we had two crabs for about RM50, including a roe-filled one) are both liberally showered with fried allium sativum. Pinot Grigio & Shiraz can be ordered from the Voizsup restaurant-bar next door, which shares the same Malaysian operators.