Deep-fried Vegetarianism

Eru is my favourite place for comfort cuisine. When I crave fried foods, I suggest to myself that I am better off eating fried veggies than fried anything else, and thus give myself license to drag my lunch pals to our vegetarian haunt. 

Looks like prawn noodles, but tastes nothing like it.

This time round I was suckered into trying the vegetarian prawn noodles. Bad idea! You can make tofu taste like chicken with enough flavor enhancers, but there is no way proper prawn stock can be made without the crustacean. As such, for the first time ever at Eru, I left the dish half eaten. If it was not called prawn noodles, it may have been palatable, but the disharmony between name and the taste association in the mind totally blew it for me. A waste of my RM5.90! 

The Cantonese fried noodles is a much better choice.

The usual fried Cantonese style noodles fared much better, with its nest of crisp, delicate fine rice noodle. A much better choice for RM6.90. 

Bean curd sheets masquerading as fowl.

The crisp bean curd sheets used to be called ‘roasted duck’ but they thought better of it. It tastes nothing like duck, but simulates the deep brown puffiness of the skin of a roast duck. It is very fine and flaky, and very enjoyable. A good choice for an RM8 dish. 

The constant favourite: butter abalone mushrooms.

The butter abalone mushrooms are a hot favourite with my dining friends. We just adore the crunch of the oatmeal and fried curry leaves which coat these flat fungi. The addition of lemon zest and fried dried red chilies make the RM13 dish very moreish. 

The seaweed roll is also a good option, as it offers a lot more in taste and texture than regular turnip and carrot stuffed spring rolls. The rolls are wrapped in seaweed which is again wrapped in a thin pastry and deep fried (notice the trend?). 

Eru offers a range of herbal teas and Oriental drinks ranging from Pu-Er tea and roselle which is served with the whole flower heads intact. It’s a little odd chewing these strangely crunchy, sweet-sour red blossoms, but they are a good palate cleaner for RM4.