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Friday 26 December 2014

Maria's SteakCafe @ Bangsar

For my Christmas get-together with my friends, we decided to have our Christmas dinner at a place well-known for its steaks, Maria's Steak Cafe @ Bangsar.

Maria's steakhouses first opened in Ipoh about 15 years ago before venturing into KL with a branch in Damansara Perdana.  Their latest outlet in Bangsar was opened about 8 months ago.

As we had plans to proceed to another venue for desserts, we didn't want to overstuff ourselves here to make sure we still have room to 'stomach' our desserts later.
 
With that in mind, we decided to share our starters starting with the Oxtail Soup @ RM20.  Although this is the most expensive soup on their menu, it turned out really good.  The oxtail was really tender and the soup...thick and delicious.  
 
This was served with 2 slices of toasted garlic baguette.  It was nice and well needed to mop up the very last drop of soup.
 
The other soup we ordered was the Mushroom Soup @ RM9.50.  We actually had 2 orders of this as it's a crowd pleaser with the kids.  The soup was creamy with a nice dose of mushroom flavour...no complaints on this heart warming soup.

This was accompanied by an extra order of Garlic Bread (5 pcs) @ RM7.50.

For our main courses, we started off with none other than what they're famous for....steaks, of course, and my choice was a 200g slab of Australian Chilled Black Angus @ RM96 (RM48/100g).  [#Note: For those on a budget, there are lower priced steaks of Australian Chilled Rib Eye (@ RM52) and Fillet (@ RM59) or, if you have a 'bigger' wallet, go for their Australian Wagyu 5 (@ RM80/100g) or Wagyu 7 (@ RM95/100g) with sizes of around 200g.]

The Black Angus was perfectly executed to medium rare as requested (in fact, they recommend that you have it cooked to medium done at most and nothing beyond that).  [#Tip: Rare or medium rare is the best way to eat a good piece of steak but many of us would probably not be so comfortable with rare.]  One bite into the meat and you'll go....this is an honestly good slab of meat.  The meat itself was really tasty and juicy and the beautiful sear on the meat and char on the edges added a tremendous smoky flavour to the meat.

The only thing that I didn't appreciate was the cuts in the meat (as if they were used to check the doneness of the meat) as it wasn't aesthetically pleasant looking (plus the cuts could have caused some juices to leak out from the meat).  They do provide a sauce (on the side) but I strongly suggest that you eat it on its own to savour every bite of the oh-so-flavourful steak.  [#Tip: I don't know what sauce that was but it was very pungent and pretty horrible (I suspect it's mustard)...so, I'd stay the hell away from it!]

The steak is served with sautéed vegetables of potatoes, French beans, Japanese cucumber, carrots, cherry tomatoes and button mushrooms.

Our next main was the NZ Roast Leg of Lamb @ RM35 served with their traditional brown sauce and sautéed vegetables.

This came with a pretty generous amount of lamb slices which were tender with just a slight tinge of gaminess (but that's just me as I'm not that into lamb).  The well cooked brown sauce was what I liked most about this dish.

The Grilled Salmon Fillet @ RM45 was next.  The salmon was fresh but a tad overdone for my liking.  What made it all better was the tangy and refreshing tangerine sauce that came with the salmon.  It was also served with the same sautéed vegetables.

The salmon was decent, just that I had better salmon elsewhere (like at Fisherman's Cove and The Pressroom).  It was missing the crispy skin and the pinkish centre that I liked.

The Grilled Chicken @ RM20 was the choice of another in my dining party.  It comes with sautéed vegetables (again) and a choice of honey mustard or mushroom sauce.  This is the one with honey mustard sauce which was good.

There's nothing to complain about this dish, it's chicken (but, thankfully, it's not breast meat).  It's a value-for-money dish and (probably) the cheapest main on the menu.

The last main was the Chicken Parmigiana @ RM26.50 which is a bread-crumbed pc of chicken topped with a tomato salsa sauce and cheese.  This was the least successful dish as I found the chicken to be on the dry side but something kids will probably enjoy coz it's crumbed and fried and topped with melted cheese.

We refrained from ordering any drinks here as we knew we'd be drinking at the dessert place.  But we did end our dinner with a dessert 'teaser' first!! ;)  I brought the Godiva chocolates (that I got from a neighbour earlier on) and shared it with my friends.

This one is from their Truffle Flight series (there are 6 in the series from what I gather from the little brochure inside)...a very good way to tempt you further:

1)  Nut Lovers Truffle Flight Tasting Experience
2)  Dark Decadence Truffle Flight Tasting Experience
3)  Milk Chocolate Lovers Truffle Flight Tasting Experience
4)  Cake Flight Tasting Experience
5)  Heavenly Mousse Truffle Flight Tasting Experience
6)  Ultimate Dessert Truffle Flight Tasting Experience
 
The one we had is from the "Heavenly Mousse Truffle Flight Tasting Experience" series.  Inside, the mousse was made up of dark chocolate vanilla, milk chocolate, strawberry, lemon, peach and cafe au lait.  These are darn good chocolates I must say....and it was 'heaven in a bite' as the name suggests! =)
 
P/S: And then, I received even more chocolates from my neighbours (many thanks)....the Godiva milk chocolate is absolutely divine!
 
Last, but not least, we had our gift exchange....the perfect ending to our meal.  With that done, we moved on to our next anticipated venue for our sweet indulgence ;-)
 
My Personal Opinion

Maria's is definitely up there among the many good steak places....but their prices tip the higher end of the scale.  Their other more budget-value dishes (though still pleasant in taste) are not as enticing compared to their steaks.  If someone in your eating party doesn't eat beef (however), lamb would be the next logical choice.

So, is this place worth another visit?  Of course, but I would stick to what they do best (and taste best) here.....and that's their steaks!!

It's the most wonderful time of the year!

Maria's SteakCafé
58 Jalan Maarof
Bangsar Baru
59100 Kuala Lumpur
Tel: 03-2282 2220
 

21 comments:

  1. I love steak so I must check out Maris's SteakCafe! I tried Wagyu beef once before and wow! Loved it but I can't afford it hah..hah... Your neighbour is so generous to give you lots of chocolate :)

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    1. Yes, I love Wagyu too but it's so damn expensive! The chocolates are from US and Australia when my neighbour's children come home to visit their parents.

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  2. Lovely! The salmon's mighty expensive though compared to here - slice not all that big some more. Chicken's very cheap and the lamb too! Not sure about the angus beef, never had that - too expensive so I would rather go for something else. Same with wagyu, can live without it.

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    1. RM50 is the average price for a pc of salmon here (can be higher at more premium restaurants). Once you've eaten wagyu and angus though, you'd know that the taste is not quite the same with other usual steaks...so, give it a try...at least once! ;)

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  3. Your neighbour is awesome! They actually give you something that is delectable rather than useless junks! :D
    I'm not a beef person when in Malaysia, I try to avoid ordering them here, but it does look like a wonderful piece of meat.

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    1. Yeah, my neighbours are very kind...they always given me 'imported' goodies :) Not all beef here is not up to mark you know...you just have to choose the right restaurants!

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    2. It's not about quality. I guess it is semi-religious. My mom bans us from eating beef due to religious reasons, so I (try my best) avoided beef out of habit all this while. I only eat steak in the US because it is a representative cuisine over there.

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    3. Oh, I see...it's a religious thing (with some Buddhists)...I can totally understand. I thought you meant you only eat steak in US (and not here) because of the quality ;)

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  4. protein power! it'd actually be interesting to sample the black angus and the regular/cheaper cut side by side, to see whether there's a significant difference for our taste buds to warrant the upgrade in price. it's quite jaw-dropping how steak prices seem to have soared in the past 10 years :) ooo, i didn't know godiva has those tasting flight boxes ... what a cool idea... especially for those of us with no discipline, we'd wanna try them all! :D

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    1. There's definitely a difference between the expensive and the cheaper cuts of meat. I find the more expensive meat has more flavour in the meat itself =) It's a real bummer for us steak lovers that prices have increased so much :( Yeah, the entire Godiva tasting series look delectable!

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  5. Normally those who don't like to eat beef will also don't like to eat lamb. Guess they could have the chicken instead.

    How many persons in your party? Looks like a lot of food.

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    1. I'm not one of those normal ones you describe, I guess....I love, love, love to eat beef but don't like lamb as much (there's no gaminess in beef whatsoever).

      Just 5 mains & 3 soups for 5 adults (+ 4 young kids) isn't a lot of food (in our books) coz we were saving our stomachs for dessert at another place.

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    2. Oh for so many people, then it isn't a lot of food. I thought fewer than that. Beef no gaminess? But there are many people who can't take the strong taste of beef (though I am no one of them). If the beef I eat does not have beef taste, I don't like it at all. I laugh when people tell me that you must try the beef there, very nice, no beef taste at all because they love to eat beef without the strong taste of beef. I ask them to better go eat chicken. So bad of me hor. Hahaha!

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    3. Actually, good beef does have beef taste but is not gamey ("sow" in Chinese?) at all (I think that's what people are trying to say). I do like lamb if it doesn't taste gamey...but can't find many (really good quality ones) that don't taste that way..

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    4. You lost me there. :) To me gamey taste is like strong duck meat taste, strong lamb taste, strong beef taste, strong taste of liver like taste. I find pork and chicken especially their fat very sow.

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    5. Gamey is used to describe the very strong flavour in meat (usually in venison, beef and lamb). The Chinese like to describe it as "sow" (that's what my m-i-l says whenever she eats beef or lamb). I have bought beef from the supermarket (which tasted gamey when I cooked it) but when I eat a good pc of steak (from well known steakhouses), it doesn't taste gamey at all. Perhaps, gamey has a very different meaning for you.

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    6. Liver taste is supposed to be gamey. Do you like to eat liver?

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    7. I love to eat both pork and chicken liver! It doesn't taste gamey to me.

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    8. Ah, I guess your definition of gamer is different because many people describe gamer taste is like beef liver taste.

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  6. Ooh that Godiva ending looks divine. :-)

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    1. Ooo...they are! Can't seem to find the same ones here though.

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