Mission

Mission: To respond thoughtfully and responsibly to my experiences of drinking and dining at restaurants with regard to the quality, service, preparation, presentation and overall experience received thereat. The standpoint is one who respects the crafts of the chef and sommelier and who seeks to understand their choices in the kitchen and cellar and grow in knowledge. In this, I will seek to be fair, reasoned, direct and constructive and aim to keep my ego in check on our mutual journeys through the worlds of food and wine.

Tuesday, January 3, 2017

Fat Olive Garage - good, not great...

Tapas Plate - this was well tasty
December 20th 2016

Got regaled upon by Texas to try this place. They had had a wonderful time and suggested we get the gang together and go. Of course!

Fat Olive Garage is located in Dataran Prima, near the Tropicana in Petaling Jaya and was a long way round trip via Waze to get there due to evening traffic on the main roads. But we got there on time and, following a phone call to the place to establish its exact location, sat with the mostly already arrived gang and started to sup the wines. The actual frontage is hidden from the main road by a hedge of bushes hiding the car parking, so it is easy to miss. Which we did first time round, though Waze was absolutely spot on for its location.

Inside felt a bit basic and rustic, though the tables were long wooden affairs and looked for all the world like something out of a Game of Thrones castle. The kitchen was along one side and seating looked available for about 30 or 40 max. There is an upstairs which is mostly bakery equipment and the two toilets. 

Foodwise, the twelve of us decided to share a Tapas Platter, a Meat Platter and a Paella. Of these, the Tapas was excellent in terms of variety and taste - go back for this one. The Meat was ordinary to fair (though the vegetables were very good) and the Paella also felt ordinary. Not quite enough in the way of zing in the thing and more farmhouse than bodega. So it goes. 
The Meat Platter - four meats with
various sauces and veggies

Including a global corkage of RM300, it all worked out at RM160 each. Corkage otherwise would have been RM50 a bottle (we finished nine). 

Hugely friendly service from the Maitress D' who was also Chief Food Deliverer and spent half the latter part of the night packing food for takeaway. Given the cooking equipment I saw upstairs on a visit to the toilet, there is clearly some serious investment here. Chef is young, and for me needs time to cook up and perfect some kind of signature dish. Not that anything was bad, and the party atmosphere we created with our Xmas songs on the Beatbox made it huge fun. It just felt like a long way to travel for hearty but ultimately ordinary food. It is difficult not to compare with Marta's Kitchen in Sri Hartamas which does a similar style menu and which does a hugely tasty range of Spanish cuisine dishes (although watch for parking as DBKL are lethal on Friday nights - best to grin and bear the parking fee in the Service Block where the restaurant is located). The Fat Olive Paella has possibilities, as does the Meat Platter but both need finesse and character to justify the trek. Notwithstanding, Fat Olive Garage is definitely worth an expedition just to taste the authentic Spanish style food that Chef prepares and perhaps one to watch for the future. Hope they make it. 

Fat Olive Food Garage
B-G-17, Menara Prima, Jalan PJU 1/39, 
Dataran Prima, Petaling Jaya. 
Tel: 03-7887-5068


Big Fun at Fat Olive!!


Merry Christmas!!
  
Seafood Paella - somehow did not stun...

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