Eating in Kuala Lumpur - Lunch at EEST at The Westin

EEST at The Westin is one of the most stylish restaurants in KL. The interior is really amazing. The dining areas are lavishly decorated and furnished, and the stylish open kitchen gives you a full view of what the chefs are doing. If you like you can even sit at the kitchen counter, where you can see how all your dishes are prepared.

Touted as a Pan-Asian fusion restaurant, it serves food from several Asian cuisines - Chinese, Vietnamese, Thai, Malaysian and Japanese. It's a great concept, as there's something for everyone.

We went for the "Hurry Slowly Pan Asian Bento" lunch - a set lunch based on the Japanese bento concept. There are 5 different sets to choose from, depending on the cuisine that you like. I would have liked to mix and match a bit, but this was not possible. It would have been a great improvement to the concept.

We ordered the Japanese and Vietnamese Set. Both sets came with a soup. For the Japanese it was a simple miso soup. For the Vietnamese it was beef pho with a prawn dumpling. The pho broth didn't have the deep and rich umami flavour of a good pho, but it was quite good. The dumpling made it a bit more substantial.

The Japanese Set came with garlic fried rice, tempura prawns, terriyaki salmon and age dashi tofu. All the items were good, especially the tofu which is quite unusual - it was jade green in colour and garnished with some garlic chips on top. The tofu was flavoured with some kind of fresh vegie, I couldn't quite figure out what it was.

The Vietnamese Set came with rice paper crab rolls, the classic sugar cane prawn stick, stir fried choy sum and some grilled meat on a steamed minced meat with egg. I liked everything except the choy sum which reminded me of too many home-cooked dinners. The most interesting was the grilled meat and the steamed egg and mince custard. As this is a halal restaurant they can't use pork. But it looked like pork, and tasted like pork. Kudos to the chef for pulling this neat trick off !

Dessert was mochi ice cream and banana with sage coconut cream. Again the Vietnamese dessert wins over with a more complex taste and mix of textures. The bananas had been caramelized, topped with coconut cream mixed with sago pearls, and sweetened with palm sugar. I'll bet just listening to that list of ingredients is enough to make any foodie salivate. And it was sensational - I wish there was more !

The Bento Lunch at EEST is an interesting experience, and very good value for money. The sets are all priced at RM 42.00 ++. You can't beat that in such a nice restaurant.