When Frogs Meet Clams … (Lala Chong Seafood Restaurant @ Ara Damansara)
December 9, 2010 | 16,983 viewsFine time to be writing a piece on KL food for a change? Yup, almost a week now since I have settled down here in the city pumped with adrenaline from dusk til dawn. Still have yet to fully go on an eating spree, for unlike Ipoh, food hunting in KL can only be done after office hours (if you’re lucky and not caught in the jam for hours, or stuck in the office staring into the blank soul of a computer wishing to close that deal), OR on the weekends or public holidays.
That is, if you’re still left standing from the 5 tormenting days of tough, labourious work.
Nah …. I was exaggerating. Truth is, almost everyone is in the holiday mood. From school children to working adults desperately seeking to clear their remaining leave, I wouldn’t be surprised if the traffic double come 2011.
Anyway, enough rambling already. Set that napkin into place and let’s do this, once more. Drool with me, people ……
Lala Chong Seafood Restaurant has its history dating back maybe a decade or two ago, growing immensely popular since their days at the Subang airport. With a name like Lala Chong, you might have been thinking of either the boss dresses like one (hehe, go ask your Chinese pal), or they really mean business when it comes to their ‘lala’ clams.
To find this restaurant takes a great deal of effort. Unless you’re equipped with a GPS device, or have friends staying in and around Ara Damansara, or you’re just a plain lost soul stumbling around and found nirvana (almost) when your eyes stare in disbelief at the sheer number of people dining at Lala Chong.
A restaurant literally tucked in the middle of nowhere, yet attracting the crowd in hordes. Okay, so they don’t come carted in trucks or cartwheels, for short of a Lamborghini/Porsche, you can see the rich, the famous (almost) and the middle income ones going all out and feast like no tomorrow here at Lala Chong.
Tells a lot when the Chinese restaurant does not even serve pork (yes, they’re pork free, but not sure of the halal status). A must order at Lala Chong naturally is their “Siong Tong La La” or steamed clams in a Chinese wine broth. Routinely, we do see ‘dai chow’ restaurants serving this dish, albeit with a variety of different clams. But at Lala Chong, they use the smaller ones, supposedly sweeter with a better texture; almost to a crunch. And I was told that they could whip up a mean fried beehoon (rice vermicelli noodles) with lala clams, though we settled for conventional white rice to go with our dishes.
Surprisingly, we were not impressed with the clams. Yes, they were fresh (albeit there was an unmistakably fishy tinge to the clams), and they came in abundance at a reasonably price of RM12/USD4 per portion. The broth was a light, warming concoction of Chinese cooking wine and ginger. But we felt that something was lacking, maybe the taste did not linger as we would have expected the flavoursome broth to be.
The other dishes we ordered were their signature stir fried ‘pucuk paku’ or wild ferns in a spicy sambal sauce, with tuna. Yes, shredded tuna from cans in the mix; an almost illogical combination yet worked to an extent. The greens had this metallic, almost acerbic nuance to them though, piercing the tastebud in the process.
We went for the patin fish initially, but were told later that the smallest one was more than 1kg. And there were only 3 of us, hence the waitress recommended us to change our order. And so, we settled for the frogs.
Eating in a seafood restaurant and we had FROGS? A reminiscence of a post recently, when we had wild animals in Lawan Kuda, the frogs at Lala Chong were unbelievably fat and tasty. Yes, cooked in a simple ‘kung pao’ style (savoury and spicy, in a sticky, dark sauce with dried chillies), the tender meaty frog legs were even better than Geylang’s frog specialist.
No, not the Geylang Frog Porridge in SS2, I mean the REAL Geylang in Singapore. Surprise, surprise.
Anyway, heard that the butter crabs at Lala Chong are to die for. And you’re supposed to get some mantou buns to wipe the delicious sauces from the claypot to fully savour the rich, creamy sauce coating the crabs. I am already set for a revisit to find out. Join me, anyone? 🙂
Lala Chong Seafood Restaurant
31, Jalan PJU 1A/5A,
Ara Damansara,
47301, Petaling Jaya, Selangor.
Telephone : 603-7845 1250.
GPS Coordinates : 3.123811,101.572098
Google Map to Lala Chong Seafood Restaurant
hey, welcome to KL! dinner so near my home..are you staying around this area? we might be neighbours! haha
[Reply]
J2Kfm Reply:
December 10th, 2010 at 8:41 am
Yeah, I am staying around Ara Damansara! Talk about coincidence? Or potentially …. a gluttons meet up every now and then?
[Reply]
Yeah, welcome to KL! 🙂
Usually seafood restaurants r more fun in big groups! Then can try more stuff…
[Reply]
J2Kfm Reply:
December 10th, 2010 at 8:40 am
Yeah yeah ….! So when are we going for a seafood session then? 🙂
[Reply]
J the chocoholic Reply:
December 10th, 2010 at 6:37 pm
When r u free? Maybe next week? 🙂
[Reply]
J2Kfm Reply:
December 10th, 2010 at 11:33 pm
Next week sure thing …. DM me on Twitter then we talk ya?
Haven’t been to this outlet ever since they moved from the airport! Goes to show how long ago was my last visit! LOL! So how are you settling down in KL? Do come over Puchong during weekends or something!! 🙂
[Reply]
J2Kfm Reply:
December 10th, 2010 at 11:34 pm
Good, Puchong’s like a territory uncharted. Good to know that you’re the food guide there …. hehe ….
[Reply]
You reached KL already? Hey, welcome to KL.. Enjoy your stay in this big city 🙂
I’m afraid of frog’s meat but it looks good in this post, it looks like chicken meat to me.. haha 😀
[Reply]
J2Kfm Reply:
December 10th, 2010 at 11:33 pm
The frogs were good! Yeah I am in KL already.
[Reply]
sadly, despite having lived in kl since 1999, i haven’t been to lala chong (neither its previous location nor its current one!). must rectify that oversight one of these days!
and yeah, welcome to kl! hope to bump into u sometime 😀
[Reply]
J2Kfm Reply:
December 10th, 2010 at 11:33 pm
Sure Sean! Can’t wait to go makan like you. Though you’re ….. crazily eating away. 6 meals a day?
[Reply]
Service is excellent but a big thumb down for the food, pepper crab tasteless, fish over cooked & somemore over CHARGED!!
[Reply]
I prefer the shiong tong lala in Boston Baru, Klang although one have to wait at least an hour before it’s served.
[Reply]
J2Kfm Reply:
November 11th, 2011 at 1:40 pm
Yes! The noodles there are nice too, but the wait….. was horrendous.
[Reply]
DON’T GO TO LALA CHONG! This was the most awful rip-off that we’ve experienced in many years! I went there for a Father’s Day celebration yesterday,and the service was horrendously slow, rude & terrible. Waiters kept ignoring us, we had to remind them to bring the food and drinks many times, and in the end we had to refill our own tea, and get our own drinks, glasses, and cutlery from the service areas. The utensils were icky and dirty. We even cleared our own table!
The food was bad too. They got a few dishes in our order wrong, and served it so late, that we had finished our meal and were ready to leave by the time they served us the crabs. Oh, and the food was cold.
All in all, a bad experience, and one that we had to pay through the nose for. I’m not a competitor, just a truly unsatisfied customer. Don’t patronize this lousy place!
[Reply]
I went to lala chong restaurant at near to sg kayu… and bill was RM56 for two of us. rm18 for lala, not tasteful or nice compared to ipoh cooked. rm15 for a fu yong egg and leong sui. rm 12 for a vege. LOL…. its very expensive, and they would not give us a proper bill. cincai write on paper. WTH. wont be going back ! and do not recommend !
[Reply]
LA LA (CLAMS) NOT FRESH AND ARROGANT BOSS!!
We went there for dinner and ordered the LA LA (CLAMS) with ginger wine. Despite the dish were not enough wine and ginger and the LA LA was small the major disappointment is the LA LA were not fresh and immediately after the first bite we made a complaints to the boss. It was shocking to us that the boss told us it was PERFECTLY NORMAL to have 1 or 2 LA LA that is not fresh after he tasted himself and walked away!
We left the dish without eating it at all and when the bill came , the LA LA were included in the bill. We paid, left and swore that we wont go back again anymore! The food is expensive, ignorant and arrogant boss, nothing to shout about the food and it was my first time and last to visit this place.
[Reply]