Kuala Lumpur - Restoran Sri Paandi

When I was in Malaysia, I kept insisting to my day, the first day I arrived that I wanted Indian food, specifically South Indian food. My dad wanted to take me to a place called 'Raja's' but my uncle insisted we should go to this other place instead, specifically for the banana leaf rice.

Apparently there are two Indian places on this street, one opened then another...with the same name as the first. It apparently got a bit messy, lawyers were brought in and this restaurant got to keep the name and seems to be the busier of the two places.

So it's kind of hard to keep track of everything that we ate. It wasn't too busy, but we were a table of about 20 people and I don't think the restaurant is used to dealing with so many customers at once! As a result, the service was quite gruff and very brusque and there was a lot of shouting and nodding and hand gestures going on throughout the night, although since I wasn't ordering (since the rest of my family can speak bahasa and hence, communicate far more effectively), to me it was really quite hilarious and there was a very lively bustle. Although I would definitely wouldn't plan on bringing a date here anytime soon...

Aaah...I love fresh cold coconut juice fresh from the coconut in Asia, so sweet and so good for you!

It's kind of difficult to explain the food here. It's South Indian, so less of that tandoori and rogan josh and more dahl curries and dosai. Throughout the night we ordered an assortment of roti and dosai, then pots with a cariety of dahl curries would be placed on our tables for us to ladle onto our trays.

Then of course for the meat lovers the servers would come around with a tray, with several small plates of lamb or chicken curry.

Or fried chicken. These in particular were absolutely delicious, you know they're totally coated in oil and absolutely terrible for you but you can help but devour it in about two bites. They're super crispy around the outside and just delicious. The plates being so small and with so many of us there, we were constantly ordering more plates!

Whilst the roti was lovely and came out fairly promptly, the majority of the dahl was fairly mediocre, except for one that I think had tomatoes in it as well, with a great bit of bite. The curries also seemed to take a while to get to us and always got to us fairly cold. Overall not very memorable. The dosai also took absolutely forever to get out to me, I was quite annoyed by this as I really was quite ravenous!

So I earlier mentioned banana leaf rice, which is pretty much as literal as you can get...almost. They give you a banana leaf instead of a plate, they put rice on it, a couple of condiments including beanshoots and cucumber raita and of course, an assortment of dahl curries. Not so many places do it this way anymore, instead using plastic mats or just resorting to plates, which doesn't quite have the same feel if you ask me personally. Oh and of course, you eat with your fingers.

And when you're finished, wrap up your plate and pop your drink on top, so they don't accidentally come around and top you up with more!

Whilst definitely a fun experience and quite a novelty, the food itself certainly wasn't spectacular. Doubt I'd go back and will definitely get Dad to take me to Raja's next time....

Sri Paandi

36 Jalan Tun Mohd Fuad 1

60000 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia