Dining Club

First published in Options, The Edge, March 21, 2015

A dining experience elevated to the level of a private club

Since opening in Oct 2014, Restaurant DC by Darren Chin has been making waves.  Chin’s story is well known – working in his father Dave Chin’s restaurant Dave’s Bistro in One Utama, followed by a stint at Cordeon Bleu in Paris.  Reviewers, media and friends who have sampled the fare at the restaurant have filed glowing, and sometimes gushing, reports.

Located unobtrusively in a row of shoplots in KL’s tony TTDI housing area, the façade of DC is so unassuming as to be easy to miss: a blank black front broken by a narrow panel window, a locked door, a menu in a glass case.  It looks like a private club, and this impression is carried through the whole dining experience. Downstairs is a bar-like area not yet pressed into service, and on the top floor is a bakery and plans for a cooking school; the dining room is located on the middle floor.

A black clad concierge escorted us upstairs to “La Salle” (The room), which provides a relaxed, easy ambiance: neutral off-white walls, a floor in pale wood and coloured cement, a ceiling echoing the pattern on the floor, and spotlights suspended on irregular polygon frames, a shape repeated in the restaurant logo and business card.  Small gilded birds perched on wooden boughs overlook diners from the walls, and tables with white tablecloths are laid out for service. Dark curtains hang on one wall and also separate the dining area from the kitchen, enclosed within frosted glass with a clear panel to look into the steel-clad kitchen astir with up to half a dozen cooks, and the man himself presiding.  Curtain rails in the ceiling provide the option of walling off areas for privacy.

The waiters, dressed in black, make easy conversation, knowledgeable about the food, and confident in themselves, reinforcing the impression of a private club. There is no a la carte menu; DC provides a tasting menu which changes by the week. If you don’t like what’s on offer for this week, just wait for next week.  

A basket of house-made bread with a lump of butter started the dining experience. The breads were worthy of mention: the light sourdough, the poppy-seed bread, with its crunchy crust, coarse texture, and the petite, perfect croissant with its fluffy interior were bites of discovery of texture and nuanced flavour, the soft awakenings of taste buds. The butter, an appellation of origin (AOP) beurre de charantes butter, was lethally smooth and may have spoilt my appreciation of lesser butters for a while to come.  I even had seconds of the bread and butter.

The amuse bouche was no throwaway offering:  arranged on a white plate was a mini foie gras ganache sandwich (a little pearl of smoothness), an Irish premium oyster cloaked in a froth of champage sauce (a burst of potent, mineral flavour complemented by a few leaves from the astonishing oyster plant) and a guinea fowl confit crowned by basil cream (a complexly beguiling mesh of multiple tastes).

The first course was a lobster bisque, the simple description of which hid the complexity of the dish.  A white sole fillet rested on a small bed of steamed julienned vegetables, and thin peach slices, in a dark pool of thick bisque.  The first mouthful elicted a murmur of appreciation, for it was rich and intense, liquified lobster essence, with the other ingredients providing a textural palette: the mild white fish, the freshness of the vegetables and peach slices, with the tiniest hint of Szechuan peppers to tickle the tongue, all providing for a clever interplay centered on the bisque.

We’d opted for the 3-course menu, and the next item was the mains. Mine was the Seafood Medley, which was a combination of Hokkaido scallops with pan seared locally line-caught ikan kurau, sourced from Pulau Ketam. The fish was dark and thick, contrasting with the pale white of the scallops, presented in a thick opaque yellow lime honey hollandaise sauce, with bright green accents matched by raw spinach leaves.  The scallops were tender, fat and deliciously sweet, contrasting with the muscular coarseness of the ikan kurau, a yin-yang combination of light and dark, smooth and rough, blended effortlessly by the smoothly creamy hollandaise sauce.

The other main was Seared Lamb short loin.  It was served in medium rare slices, glistening pink inside.  The redness of the meat was matched by beetroot and little nuggets of something unidentifiable, but they provided a playful contrast to the meat. Little fregula pearls nestled beneath the meat, which was dressed in a dark bordelaise sauce.  The meat was robust, but beautifully tender, with the bordelaise and supporting ingredients combining for a complex medley of bloody colours and tastes.

A short sweet apple sorbet and apple jelly followed, heralding dessert.

The dessert was a peach sherbet on a crumbled crust, a mango parfait with a shell of saffron glaze and drops of raspberry sauce, arranged to eho each other in shape and presentation, with contrasting colours – pink, yellow and dark red.   Sweet raspberry on cold, layered mango parfait, complemented by peach sherbet: it was a sweet ending to what felt like an almost customised dining experience. The meal, the ambiance, the practiced waiters as hosts, made for a leisurely journey of gustatory and visual delights orchestrated masterfully by the conductor.

Restaurant DC provides a special, yet playful dining experience. A constantly-changing menu with carefully selected ingredients and clever presentations are exquisitely executed with classical French cooking techniques.

The cost of dining: the 3-course meal as described cost RM248+ per person, with a full four-course being RM368+ per person, but I’ve never heard anyone who dined there demur about the price.

Restaurant DC,

No 44, Persiaran Zaaba,

Taman Tun Dr Ismail,

60000 Kuala Lumpur

Tel: 03-77310502

Email: info@restaurant-dc.com

www.restaurant-dc.com

Opening hours:  7.30pm till late,

Closed on Mondays and Tuesdays