Takeaway:
As at 22 Oct 2017, Chocha Foodstore is a mixed bag of a cafe. Some dishes were good the last time we tried them (especially the cincalok fried chicken and the cold brewed tea) but others lacked seasoning and spark…and the eye-watering prices added insult to the injury. There’s a neat little bar on top though (Botak Liquor Bar in its current iteration) and it’s one of the prettiest cafes in KL.
Chocha is a new resto-cafe-bar a couple of doors down from PS 150 and Merchant’s Lane that has quickly become one of my favourite places in KL (interior-wise). Here’s why.
I’m not a huge fan of tea. I get my caffeine fix from coffee. But a good tea brew still excites me in ways coffee just can’t – teas tend to span a much more diverse (and less subtle!) range of flavours. At Chocha, they serve everything from lapsang souchong (deliciously smoky with a deep, mellow body) to dong ding jin xuan (a fresh, fruity oolong) to a cold brew version of dong ding oolong. And they’re all fantastic. The tea is reason enough to visit this beautiful eatery that sits in a restored, reclaimed former brothel. There are herbs and plants everywhere, high ceilings, bare brick walls, the whole works. It’s a gorgeous, contemplative place well matched by the equally slow pace of tea-drinking. Relative to coffee, that is.
The food itself is a bit of a toss-up at the moment. While they’re tweaking the menu and getting the kitchen in gear (for August, they’ll be closing at 6pm instead of 9pm), some of the dishes don’t quite hit the mark. Case in point, the “Chinese pesto flat noodle” below:
It sounds delicious on the menu. Housemade noodle, ulam pesto (with ulam partially picked from the garden), charred capsicum, semi-dried tomato, peanut, sesame seed. Shades of Sitka, eh?
Taste-wise though, it doesn’t quite hit the mark. It’s hard to make out the pesto at all, the capsicums are soggy and wilted instead of crisp and charred, and the peanuts and sesame seed compound a very, very dry dish. Without the tea and water at the table, it would’ve been pretty hard to get this entire plate down.
The base of the dish, the housemade noodles themselves, are good. They’re promising. And Chocha‘s kitchen clearly knows that, since they’ve spun it out into 3 of the 5 main dishes on the menu. It’s pan mee with a satisfying bite, a rough tumbled sheen to an already rough hawker food that has polished itself down through the years to the point where the typical hawker store dishes out factory-rolled noodles while the new Chocha labours away in the methods of old. But that’s part of the shtick, isn’t it? This is locavorism and Pollan homecooking and the narrative of conscious consumerism, hand-pulled and instafiltered through 20-something influencers to 20-something upper middle class Malaysians.
Side-rant aside, it’s a pity that Chocha have yet to do something more interesting with what they have. The ulam pesto tasted pretty great too…the little of it that I managed to taste at all. It’s ultimately a plate that left me wishing they spent a bit more time on fine-tuning it, especially given the price (RM20).
The aglio olio with roast duck breast fared slightly better, with a rather tasty spiced duck confit pared with garlic confit, thai basil and lemongrass. Unfortunately, the last 3 ingredients were again almost entirely missing from the taste profile. Although it did remind me to oven-roast some garlic for my pasta next time.
Oh, and the duck was alright. But do you know Ah Bong’s Italian in Singapore? Yeah, yeah, I’ll write about it next time – all you need to know for now is they serve stunning food for cheap and their duck confit is sublime.
Back to Chocha though, it’s not all doom and gloom. Their Cincalok fried chicken with summer salsa is as advertised. The salsa is alright. The house tomato chutney is incredible. And the chicken itself is even better.
Druggists Beer Bar in Singapore serves a delectable Har Cheong Gai (prawn paste chicken) to go with their top-tier beer. Chocha‘s Cincalok fried chicken comes across as Malaysia’s formidable equivalent. It’s a dish of pure, concentrated bliss. The chicken is juicy, succulent and has the subtle salty briny taste of cincalok deeply infused, the skin is satisfyingly crunchy and crispy without being overly battered, and that homemade tomato chutney brings it to another level. We can only hope that the upcoming bar dishes out some top notch craft beers to go with this beauty (though we hear it may be a wine bar).
In short, go for the fried chicken and the tea. They’re some of the best in town. And hey, maybe the rest of the dishes will get better as they tweak the recipes. We’re certainly going to keep trying until they do. Also, who’s we? I’m alone as fuck ayyy lmaooo
KL isn’t exactly the prettiest of cities nowadays. Chocha and their ilk are doing their best to slowly change that. Give them a helping hand.
No taste, Dewakan is far far better.
Obviously , you or your team has no culinary skills or palate
It’s almost as if people are capable of having different opinions without direct comparisons.
Obviously, you must have a lot of luxury time on your hands. Do tell me how might I achieve your grand lifestyle.