Lai Po Heen

Unclaimed

Food cooked by a proper chef using quality ingredients. A must return on my next trip to Kuala Lumpur. Lai Po Heen is a restaurant on Floor 1 of the Mandarin Oriental Kuala Lumpur, reachable from KL Sentral Station on the LRT red line with a stop at KLCC Station. Yes, this is the same station for the Petronas Towers. From KLCC Station, it is about a 6 minute walk to Mandarin Oriental. The Musang King pancakes are a must order if you are a durian lover. It is fresh durian wrapped with fresh cream. Delicious. Comes three pieces for each order. Another excellent dish is the vegetable and scallop stir fry. Excellent. I watched the chef prepare this dish for someone else and there were so many steps to making this delectable dish. The fish maw soup was also very good. If you want tea, I would not choose Pu Er Tea. The waitress said that it was the most popular tea there. (Even the Ly Eng Sreng 12 monkeys brand Jasmine Tea I had recently at Malis Restaurant in Siem Reap, Cambodia was one hundred percent better than this Pu Er). The biggest miss are the Celtuce dumplings, supposedly a dumpling made of different kinds of vegetables. The vegetables inside are crunchy, but the wrap (reddish in color) is one gooey mess, and the taste is far from satisfying. They probably need a different type of wrapping, with maybe a simple soy sheet wrap or something. The last thing I should mention is that the service is chaotic. I had to wait a long time for food. And the room was not even full. I hate to think how it would be if it was a full house. The first dish brought out was the fried radish cake, with the Siew Mai and Scallop dumplings not coming for another ten minutes. There is no syncing of dishes. If you want a run of the mill dim sum place that’s for a lower budget, check out Restoran Jin Xuan in Kuchai Lama. I’ve been there once and it is okay but I prefer Lai Po Heen.

We booked a table in advance. The lunch was served pretty fast. Friendly staff and service is good. The food is good and delicious, but the price is slightly pricey. Serving portion is just nice for 4 paxs. We ordered mostly dim sum. We will be back to order other dishes especially the desserts.

Wow, the Chinese food here is indeed wow!! We ordered Peking duck and the duck meat was used to cook a plate of fried rice! The fried rice was filled with wok Hei and they were so fragrant and delicious. Salted Egg Fish Skin was a good appetizer. This plate of vegetables was soothing and warming while the durian dessert was a great dish to wrap up the night.