Banquet (no, not another wedding!)

A few things came to mind when I first heard about a new restaurant called Banquet at Bangsar Village 2. Chinese. Red table cloth. Tea. Pork. Wrong, wrong, wrong and wrong. Banquet is half French, half Malaysian. If it were a man, he may have been called Antoine Wong or something to that effect. Sister to Café Café, the menu comprises dishes from Café Café’s French-styled menu combined with some local favourites like mee jawa, rojak and mee siam. Where Café Café is dark, mysterious and has an old world feel to it, Banquet is the opposite. It is bright, cheery, girlie and borderline kitsch.

We sat in the smoking area much to the relief of Lu as he intended to chain smoke through lunch. The smoking area is a glass cocoon of mirrors, white wicker chairs. white banquet chairs and white washed floor boards. Yes, the colour scheme here is white with dots of green in the form of artificial trees in planters that cordon off the non-smoking area. I wasn’t particularly hungry and toyed with the idea of having a healthy nicoise salad but then greed set in and I ordered butter fish with honey mustard sauce instead. It was sublime! I guess I was expecting it to be overcooked as I've experienced in quite a few places. It was cooked to perfection, meaty white chunks of fish falling apart in moist delicate flakes. The sauce was a tad sweet but wasn't even necessary as the fish was lovely on its own. It was a perfect portion for someone who wasn’t hungry.

Sis, who is not a big fan of salad, ordered rocket salad with pear and walnuts AND loved it! She was most impressed by the delicate attention given to the salad. The shavings of cheese were paper thin, as were long skinny slices of pear. There was also some funny little bits in there which we thought were walnuts but tasted more like fat. Mmmm! Lu ordered seafood spaghetti which was neither good nor bad. Like FBB says, pasta is pasta. The tomato based risotto reminded me of baby food with all the diced vegetables swimming in an ocean of soft rice. Quite unfortunate. I don't like tomato based risottos but as far as texture and taste goes, it was pretty good. For dessert, the four of us shared crepes with vanilla ice cream. Best crepes I’ve had in awhile. They were thin and drizzled very lightly with syrup. Very good, and so light you can just keep eating and eating. The only thing lacking was the quality of the ice cream. It really wasn't very good. The bill came up to RM210 which included 3 ice lemon teas, a Heineken and a side order of garlic mushrooms (too boring to blog about). Its fairly expensive for lunch but unless you want to eat at the stalls and kopi tiams that seems to be the case these days. I'm interested in coming back to try the Asian stuff especially the rojak. We noticed 3 separate orders going out while we were there. Must be good right?