Global flavours

MALAYSIAN TWIST

The "Malaysian-inspired menu" of Fatty Crab has won many fans in the United States for its creative use of traditional Malaysian ingredients. It was interesting to see how my more Asian-trained taste buds would react.

To start with, we ordered the razor clams in Tianjin preserved cabbage, Chinese celery and galangal (HK$50). The galangal was obviously toned down to allow the natural flavour of the razor clams to shine through.

Having had the real grilled Jalan Alor chicken wings (HK$90 for three) before, the temptation to try the Fatty Crab version was too great to resist. This version was overpoweringly smokier. The seared sea scallops with green mango and papaya salad (HK$120) were refreshingly light.

Disappointingly, they were out of crabs even though it was only 7.30pm, so we had to settle for the chilli lobster (HK$450). One of the joys of having the real Malaysian chilli crab is that the crab meat is fully soaked in the pungent chilli sauce. The lobster here sat on a base of thick curry paste, and the only way you could get the curry flavour on the meat was to dip it in the sauce, which actually tasted better on the thick, buttery toast that came on the side.

The surprise of the evening was the char kway teow (HK$130), which was inspiration taken to new heights and looked like a hybrid of fried kway teow (flat rice noodles), Indian mee goreng and Indonesian nasi goreng. Winnie Chung