Cheng Ho Restaurant, Chinese Islamic Seafood

This restaurant at Wangsa Maju owned by the legendary Malaysian rocker, Amy Search had been in the limelight for quite some time. Even the Malaysian Islamic Party's spiritual leader, Tuan Guru Nik Aziz had had his lunch there in the presence of Amy himself. I could have never imagined that getting a table at the restaurant was so difficult until I went there myself.

Two Saturdays ago, 26 July 2008, my family and I went there to have our dinner. We arrived at the restaurant around 8 pm and saw several people were hanging around the front door talking to a waiter. When we approached the waiter, we were told that there were 5 more groups of people in front of us waiting for their table and we could be waiting to about an hour to be seated. My sons were so hungry that we had to abandon our plan to have dinner there and went to have our dinner elsewhere.

The next day, Sunday 27 July 2008, we tried our luck again and went to the restaurant for lunch. We arrived at about 2.20 pm (it was a late lunch outing indeed) and we could see a full house of people enjoying their lunch inside the restaurant. When we came near to the door, only then we saw the "Closed" signed at the door, well it was our mistake that we did not read the restaurant operating hours the other night.

Today, Sunday 2 August 2008 we were smarter. It was a belated birthday celebration for my eldest son and we made sure we had our reservation for lunch at the elusive Restoran Cheng Ho. We reached there sharp at 12 noons and saw an empty restaurant. This was not right we thought as we had our reservation. Well we were early as the restaurant only opened at 12.15 pm. We hang around for a while and eagerly went inside when the restaurant was opened. We had a sumptuous lunch of shark fin and crab meat soup, steamed garoupa Nyonya style, buttered shrimps, black pepper minced meat, kailan veggies with salted eggs, oysters with egg omelets, deep fried minced chicken with cashew nuts, squid fritters and plain rice. The food was delicious and we did not leave anything behind. The service was splendid and the waiters were friendly.

Nonetheless, there were a few things I hope Amy or his management team could do to make the restaurant better. Even though the restaurant has a wide array of main dishes menu but they served us only fruits for desert. I wished there could have been a lot more varieties to choose from. I found the drinks menu were a bit odd, only fruit juices and ice blended drinks were available. Neither hot drinks nor canned drinks were available except the customary bottomless Chinese tea. Well albeit all these, we had an enjoyable lunch, could have been better if Amy was there to serve us himself, better luck next time.