Creative Balance

First published in Options, The Edge Malaysia on July 18, 2016

Providing creative dishes in a fuss-free and quietly accomplished manner

Well established in the Jalan Batai enclave, Sitka serves breakfast, lunch and dinner, with a Tasting Menu on Fridays and Saturday. The restaurant started with lunches only, slowly extending the menu to dinner and tasting menus. Upstairs is the more private Sitka Studio, which only serves a Tasting menu with a philosophy of local sourcing and foraging.

Like the spruce tree that provides the title inspiration, the décor is simple to the point of starkness, without being cold. Bare cement surfaces, wooden floor, exposed ceiling wiring, black table-tops and a wall graphic with the spartan lines of tree trunks, are lit with the warmth of exposed filament bulbs.  It’s clean-cut, honest, unfussy, and intimately welcoming, with only a few tables.

We found the food to be original without being deliberately so, with clean presentations, making for a sense of quiet accomplishment with little flair and gesture, where the whole often exceeds the sum of the parts.

Take the salads we tried. The Aubergine and Portobello salad (Rm25) saw a salty-sweet-umami combination of marinated fresh vegetables sprinkled over with millet and a carrot dressing - a wholesome, satisfying harmony of flavours and textures.

The Salt-Baked Beets with Citrus Salad (Rm23) was more exciting, the stronger flavours heralded by the bright colours of orange slices and beetroot chunks.  Chickpeas and hummus provided a balance, making for another harmonious combination that worked better than the individual ingredients suggested.

In the section on Flat Breads, we tried the Spiced Lamb (Rm32), a classic combination of lamb combined with fresh mint leaves and mashed green peas. The pulled shoulder lamb was moist and tender, yet meaty, the natural flavor enhanced by the mint-pea combination, with crusty bread providing a neutral filling element with a contrasting texture.

We found the Chilli Lobster Gnocchi (Rm40) to be quite creative. It combined local puffed tofu which you find in local wet markets, and a dark green vegetable with lobster gnocchi in a mild chilli sauce. East meets west, the result being happy comity. The coarse textured tofu contrasted with the smooth gnocchi and even smoother cooked vegetables, nor was the chilli sauce discordant, as one might expect – it was mild and appetizing, and worked very well in the mix of unusual ingredients.

The Roast Seabass (Rm40) seemed almost mundane by comparison. The fish was meaty and fresh, its texture a counterpoint to honey glazed carrots, with peanuts providing some nutty highlights. The barbeque sauce didn’t mask the fish but didn’t elevate it either, making for a safe and predictable offering.

Another classic tackled by the restaurant was the Aged Burger (Rm40) which sounded ordinary enough – melted Swiss cheese, pickles, onion jam and a chunk of dark meat sandwiched between two halves of a bun.  This was my personal favourite: satisfyingly dense meat, with a distinctively muscular flavor, superbly complemented by the other ingredients. Many restaurants serve excellent burgers, yet this stood out on the satisfaction scale, and that said something about the quality of the aged meat.

Full but without the over-the-top feeling, we tried out the desserts and were not disappointed, the same creativeness in the main dishes asserting itself here as well.  Dark Chocolate Cremeux – Peanut (Rm24) was mistaken for something else, thanks to the rich, cold and dense base, which tasted almost like super-thick ice-cream, with what tasted like a raspberry topping, with its sourish notes, complemented by crushed peanuts and crumbled chocolate. It wasn’t as rich as it sounds, but concentrated in a sort of efficient way.

The understated White Chocolate Cream (Rm24) was a standout, combining soft, creamy white chocolate, with a crumble, topped with fresh sorrel leaves and a Thai basil sauce. It was an unusual combination, beautifully smooth and mild – neither too sweet nor creamy, and quite exotic.

Finally, the Brownie Ice-cream Sandwich (Rm24) rounded out a satisfying and creatively interesting meal, with cold raspberry ice-cream sandwiched between nutty brownies. Expected, but no less satisfying.

I liked Sitka for its unpretentiousness and honest approach to food, neither trying to impress or be too ambitious. There were unusual ingredient combinations, not for the sake of being different, but in the cause of completeness.  It seems trite to suggest that form follows function in the service of taste, but that was the impression I took away.

Sitka Restaurant,

8-5 jalan batai, Damansara heights
50490 kuala lumpur
info@sitkarestaurant.com
Tel: +60 32011 1117, +6014 9688 949

www.sitkarestaurant.com

Business Hours: 9am – 10pm daily