Ming Palace

This was a favorite Chinese restaurant of Anita's family since she was young. As far as she can remember, this has been the spot. Anita's father was an army officer and they as a family used to live at MinDef nearby. The restaurant users to be the flagship of Ming Court Hotel. For the past 10 years or so, the hotel was taken over by the Corus Group and has been renamed accordingly. However, they still retained a couple of famous eatery there - The Ming Palace where we ate last night, and Kimuro, a Japanese restaurant who served a mean tappenyaki - shamed that I did not like tappenyaki, even thought I love Japanese food in general. I just probably prefer them raw maybe.

Last Monday was Idlan's seventh birthday, while Thursday was Mum-in-laws. It was her idea to have Chinese and the choice was obvious. Ming Palace it was.

The food there has been consistent for the last few years. The Peking Duck was excellent although we did not have it last night. The steam cod was heavenly, although expensive. The buttered prawn was not too bad either. In fact, the food were reasonable across the menu. We had soup to start things off, and for the last 10 years, I have been against shark fin soup, so I had some corn and crabmeat soup, which was a firm favourite. We ordered seven items amongst us last night, a variety of beef, chicken, prawns, vegetables and fish. The Kung pow beef was excellent, a new find for us.. Lemon chicken was good as well. The disappointment was the vegetables. The asparagus was rather overcooked. I did not taste the fish as we ordered steamed Latin last night, and I got this thing with fresh-water fish!

We had an excellent time. My brother-in-law was also present. We we're really too full to order any desserts. From what I know, the main attraction of the place was the excellent din sum lunch they offer. I have sampled them on a couple of occasions and the service was quick and friendly. In fact, the waiters and waitresses the knew Irfan and Idlan by now. In fact a few of them watched them grew up over the years, and remembered how t prepare their favourite Chinese Fried Rice.

I must confess that it was not the cheapest joint in town. In fact, do be careful if you were ordering for fish and you may be caught staring at the bill ........ Certainly for the business types, the private rooms offered privacy.

Corus Hotel is located along Jalan Ampang, opposite KLCC and right next to the now oh-so-quiet Avenue K. Ming Palace was located on the first floor of the hotel. The parking can be a pain as they charge you RM 10 per entry!