de templer Restaurant - The Authentic Chinese Muslim Cuisine

Last Friday, I had dinner with my family at this restaurant. It is located at Jalan Melati Utama, 4, Melati Utama, Setapak, Kuala Lumpur, along the MRR2 highway in front of Platinum Victory Condominiums. We had crabmeat and shark fin soup, sizzling prawn, deep-fried cuttlefish, dried chilli chicken, brinjals with salted eggs, fried eggs with big onions and plain rice.

While having our dinner, my eldest son and I were curious as we thought the restaurant is run by Chinese Muslims, however it was not seem to us they were Chinese Muslims, probably converts. I then had a chat with one of the waitresses and from the way she provided the information to me, she seems to me as part of the business establishment, more so that her facial feature looks like one of the more senior person operating the restaurant. She told me that there are four partners of the restaurant, three Malay Muslims and one Chinese non-Muslim. The operator is the Chinese partner but the three Malay Muslims were not there at the restaurant. She told us the restaurant had only started operations at this location on Sunday 24 August 2008.

From the brochure she gave to us, we knew that the restaurant had already started operation as Jinjang Fish Head in 1999, specialising in Thong San fish head and vegetables. It then opened up its second branch in Kepong and the third branch in Rawang. Throughout this period, the restaurant also appeared in Chinese language TV programmes such as 8TV "Ho Chiak" and Astro Wah Li Tai "1 Day 5 Meal". Realising the potential of Halal market, de templer Restaurant was established as a joint venture with the three Malay partners.

Unlike Cheng Ho Restaurant which we had lunch a month ago (which was featured in my earlier blog posting), de templer Restaurant is very spacious, twice the size of Cheng Ho Restaurant. However unlike Cheng Ho Restaurant, there were not many customers at de templer Restaurant when we were there. However I would say that the food was more delicious and the service was much better at Cheng Ho. Nonetheless, I would confess that the brinjals with salted eggs at de templer was the most delicious brinjals that I ever had. Similar to Cheng Ho, de templer also does not serve any dessert, but we had plenty of choice on drinks, which we did not have at Cheng Ho.