Village Roast Duck, The Gardens Mall, Mid Valley City, Kuala Lumpur (KL)

Address:
LG-205, LG Floor, The Gardens Mall, Lingkaran Syed Putra, 59200 Kuala Lumpur, Wilayah Persekutuan Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Opening Hours:
Daily, 10am - 10pm (I presume. Mall opening times?)

Time Visited:
6pm, weekends on Saturday.

Attire worn:
Casual

Item(s) Ordered (Photos taken as inconspicuous as possible with my phone):
House Special Fried Ricec and Fresh Apple Juice

After a long day of walking around at Mid Valley, I decided to detour towards Village Roast Duck to try the food there. At first, I felt quite intimidated to walk in because it look so posh and catered for big families instead of a party for 1 but after mustering up a bit of courage from walking around a few times (looking suspiciously like an idiot or someone that has a bomb), I let the lady in the front seat me as a one person diner.

There weren't a whole lot of choices if you're gonna dine alone because most of it are dishes to order and probably less than 10 items in the menu that are either fried rice or noodle dishes. And so I go for the most basic of all and ordered fried rice with an apple juice to go with it.

The Apple Juice was pleasantly delightful. You can tell that it's freshly squeezed apples and that it's authentic. There's a little bit of a salty taste that intermingles with the sweet taste that makes this drink worthwhile to go for. Just a little after that, I was served with a vegetable soup which I found out that it's complimentary and am given to all customers who dine there.

The soup although is not over the top, it does show it's characteristics clearly and is strong in it's taste. Not bad for a free soup in contrast to the many restaurants that serve their watered down soup for free.

The Fried Rice appeared longer than I expected and I was looking forward to devour it due to my hungriness. Fried rice usually look plain in nature no matter how you try to beautify it. The only thing you can do is decorate it with the vegetables around it and so I can see a bit of an effort on their part to do so but it still looks pretty plain. I was hoping being a posh restaurant like this, it would have the fried rice quality like Din Tai Fung which I love it. Unfortunately, the fried rice falls short of my expectation. It's decent but it lacks the wow factor. Merely your usual plain fried rice. That's some tough cracker-y bits in it which I'm not sure what it is. Maybe pork rind but I can't be sure. It's just tasteless and really tough to bite on and annoying as hell to bite at it because it's so hard. Or maybe because I have no teeth. LOL.

Aside from it being fried with lots of ingredients, this kind of fried rice taste can easily be obtained from any Chinese restaurant outside for 3 times less the price. It may be much more unhealthy and less fresher ingredients but it taste just as good if not better.

In addition to free soup, all diners are given a free dessert as well. Gui Ling Gau. There should be an accompanying honey to sweeten it up but I'm not sure why I was the only one who wasn't serve with it and so I couldn't pour any on my dessert to sweeten it up. Anyway, it didn't matter. It's not bitter anyway and taste good on it's own. Soft jelly texture but firm enough to not fall apart as a whole.

Total Wallet Damage:
RM32.50. RM18.90 for the fried rice, RM9 for the Apple Juice and 10% service charge with 6% GST imposed.

Final Verdict:
6/10. Although I quite like the ambiance, it's a little intimidating for a person of one too. The fried rice was nothing spectacular and I could go for similar fried rice elsewhere for 3 times less for the price I paid for but I like their Apple Juice. It's much better than the one I had at Metal Box, Empire Damansara.