Restoran Imbi Oversea

When you ask local taxi uncles to recommend a famous Chinese restaurant serving Cantonese cuisines in KL, they will mention 2 names, Restoran Sek Yuen and Restoran Overseas. Since we have been to Sek Yuen before, we decided to head to Overseas Restoran this round

As a highly popular restaurant amongst the locals, we made sure to call them beforehand to make a reservation for a table. Located in Jalan Imbi, Restoran Overseas was established in the 1970s and has 7 outlets across Malaysia. With accolades from multiple culinary awards, the restaurant is packed the moment they open doors for dinner service. The main dining hall caters to smaller tables of guests with round tables and plush sofa seats while most of the space is dedicated to private rooms for a larger capacity of guests

The huge fish tank in the main dining hall showcases many live seafood which is available for order to be cooked in various different styles. You can also see the roast duck and pork at the window next to the tanks

For a start, I ordered individual portions of braised seafood soup with beancurd to warm the stomach. The soup was served in small white porcelain containers and was priced at MYR 23 per person. Personally, not taking into consideration exchange rates, the soup was quite pricey at MYR23 for this serving size and there was not much seafood in the soup itself. The taste was balanced but not extraordinary and there was really nothing else other than tofu, meat, dried scallops and bits of other seafood

We were told this is one of their signature dishes and a pre-order needed to be made as it runs out extremely fast. We were lucky we did an order when we call to reserve a table as we witnessed the next table who did not manage to get this dish as it has ran out. Their version of the honey-glazed char siew is more on the charred side with a great balance of fat and lean meat. The char siew was on the sweet side but it was overall still delicious

The other item we made pre-order was the roast duck at MYR 90. We did not order the signature London roast duck which was about MYR100 more. The duck was pretty big in size and came nicely displayed on the platter. The meat was tender and flavourful with quite a strong herbal taste from the sauce. Overall, the roast duck was delicious although I have had some better ones elsewhere

As my mum loves eating fish, I ordered a freshly caught grouper priced at market rate and cooked in deep-fried sweet and sour style. I can’t remember the actual spent on the fish but it was quite affordable. I really like that the fish is served with the meat already cut out into bite-size pieces so it was really easy to eat without having to dig into the fish for meat. The fish meat was extremely fresh since it was caught from the tank and cooked immediately. They coated the fish with thin batter so the fish was crispy but not heavy with flour. The sauce has stronger sour notes than sweet and I like that it was very appetizing

To balance up the meal, I also ordered the braised homemade beancurd with luffa vegetable which was served in a cute white porcelain hotpot. There was a total of 5 pieces of beancurd and a few pieces of luffa vegetable soaking in the braising sauce. The tofu has a nice fried skin with a soft inside. There was a strong soybean fragrance in the tofu since it was homemade and not factory-made. The dish was light but palatable with the luffa giving a nice texture when eaten with the beancurd together

This next dish; the braised pork belly with salted fish in a clay pot came highly recommended by local friends and the server. As we already ordered many dishes, we ordered a small one to try and this dish was such a letdown. It took quite a few for this dish to be served and they over-seasoned the dish with dark soy sauce and the fragrance of the salted fish was not released into the pork. Instead, the dish was just extremely salty and oily and the pork belly was crunched up and charred. Being Cantonese, we had high expectations of this dish and we were all disappointed and did not finish this dish

Overall, Restoran Overseas has a nice atmosphere and the service staff is also very friendly and helpful. Some of the dishes were generally ok but I wouldn’t say they have the best Cantonese dishes. Their style is also very different from Sek Yuen as Sek Yuen serves more homely, old-school traditional recipes while Overseas has a slightly more modern menu

Address: 84-88, Jln Imbi, Bukit Bintang, 55100 Kuala Lumpur, Wilayah Persekutuan Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Operating hours: 11.30 am to 3 pm and 5.30 pm to 11 pm