La bouche

Although Malaysia is still far, far away from our nearest neighbor Singapore when it comes to culinary adventures to be had, I am glad to say there is a distinct upward trend in the number of new standalone cafes, bakeries and eateries which have come up in the past few years.

I was at one such new place this Wednesday, when my wonderful, talented Art Director friend Teck invited me out to lunch at a place called The Big Mouth (www.TheBigMouth.com.my) located at 24-1 Jalan USJ9/5N, Subang Jaya, Selangor.

It’s barely a month old, and it follows the trend of interesting ID, using for its focal point, a ceiling mounted web of light bulbs. With its chilled display right out front, it gives one the impression of a bakery, which may not work in its favour because the lunch crowd in USJ wants food, not sweeties.

Still, for this initial period, they had a guy out front handing out flyers enticing passersby to try their set lunch. Why on earth they’d call them BooBoo Lunch is way beyond me. I am sure though that less linguistically discerning individuals will think RM12.80 nett for a boo boo is a good price. There are three options – the Light, Crispy and Italiano. The first features caesar salad with crispy garlic bread or aromatic skewer with garden green (sic), served with aromatic brew coffee or fine Earl Grey Tea. The Crispy set offers crispy Cordon Blue (sic again) with buttered rice or crispy breaded fish fillet with either lemon or peach ice tea. The Italiano set is a choice of chicken curry pizza or chicken Bolognese pasta with iced coffee.

Teck and I decided to tackle the ala carte menu. He went for the pan-seared chicken with barbecue sauce, while I, post Kit’s amazing chicken and pork chop dinner, went for the cordon bleu. We shared a smoked duck salad which was a Waldorf-style tossed salad with green apples (with their skins on, phooey!)  and Romaine lettuce and three passably thick slices of duck. While passable, it could have won a lot more points with skinned Granny Smiths, and the same amount of duck shaved to wafer thin slices.

A little finesse would have helped this duck salad along.

The meals came on large white presentation plates, with individual white china sauceboats for the sauces. Teck commented his barbecue sauce was more like pasta sauce, complete with tomato cubes. Both our entrees came with a laughable amount of fries and coleslaw.

Pan-seared chicken which was pretty darn good.

However, the chicken was surprisingly good. Mine was golden, with just enough of an ooze to coat each bite of the Cordon Bleu. Teck’s was nicely done as well, tender and succulent.
The thing I liked most about The Big Mouth was the water. They did not balk when asked for iced water. It came in large glasses – the 500 ml kind – and was lemon scented. These little things are the make or break point for restaurants, for me. I don’t mind paying for drinks, but I don’t, as a rule, drink anything but water. I drink a lot with my meals and it rankles to have to pay RM5 for a bottle of distilled water which hardly satiates.

For this, if nothing else, I’ll be bringing people back to this joint. Oh, and to try the desserts in the chiller as well, since Teck was on a keep fit regime! Our meal cost? RM43.50. Not bad, all things considered.