Indulging @ Hotel Maya, Kuala Lumpur

Last Friday, we did a lot of indulging at the wonderful Hotel Maya. Splashie Boy was invited for a seminar organised by the big M in the afternoon and they were so sweet to include the partners as well. While they worked, a few of us got to indulge in a luxurious massage at the spa.



The hotel had recently revamped itself and it's now touted as a "boutique urban resort". I love their new look with pools of water, crystal lights blinking and their impressive iron wrought spiral staircase. They are also famous for this hydrotherapy pool which is heated and said to help massage your body for a rejuvenating experience.



Once the serious work was done, there was a cocktail reception for everyone to relax and get to know each other. Then it was back to the ballroom for dinner accompanied by a quartet of musicians. It wasn't Hoobastank singing the Reason but they were really good and extremely romantic. We started out with appetizers that you can help yourself. Since everything was yummy and the pictures turned out great, I'm featuring each one rather than resizing them smaller. First appetizer was the yellow fin tuna on vermicelli noodle salad. The tuna was slightly cooked on it's sides and sprinkled with black and white sesame seeds. Pretty good especially with slices of gari (pickled ginger) on top of it.



Hotel Maya's Still Waters restaurant is famous for Japanese sosaku ("creative") cuisine which is a fusion of Japanese traditional dishes with modern Australian, French and Asian. One of it's signature dishes is this California summer roll with dipping sauce that has prawns, crabmeat, avocado and lettuce wrapped in nori and Vietnamese rice paper. It's topped with flying fish roe or tobiko and each bite is heavenly.

We all liked these cute pacific oysters in bloody mary shot. Pop them into your mouth for a shot of ooomph to start out your weekend with a bang! Someone on our table had quite a few so I guess he's having a great work out during the weekend.



Last appetizer of the night was the prawn salad with gazpacho salsa which did not impress us much. It was pretty bland although the prawns were fresh.

Next course was the Cream of Yellow Pumpkin with sun dried tomato paste swirled in it -extremely nice and filling. Then we had a scoop of icey cold lime sorbet to clear our palate for the main course.



The main course was a choice between two items - the beef and fish. I had the fish which was grilled salmon served with black truffle sauce (see those teeny black bits on the fish, its the truffle shavings). It was served with cherry tomatoes, asparagus spears and braised shitake mushrooms. Another plus point was the duck foie gras gyoza placed on top of the salmon. You can't really see the gyoza in this picture as it's hidden by the vermicelli decoration. My salmon was cooked just right and everything was sublime.



Splashie Boy had the grilled beef tenderloin which came with the same items. Here you can see the duck foie gras gyoza on top of it. The beef was slightly dry but the wait staff went around with extra sauce.

One thing I must mention, the hotel does superb chocolate pralines. I had a dark chocolate one during the cocktail which was filling with a wonderful plain chocolate filling. For desserts, we were given platters of chocolate pralines of different flavours. The white ones had a lovely peanut butter filling while the hazelnuts coated in chocolate at the far end were also great.

I was quite full from the main course so I nibbled on the desserts and fruits. They served a mini tiramisu topped with half a strawberry and chocolate shavings. It was more cream versus cake in the tiramisu.

There was blueberry crumble on a spoon which was dissapointing. The blueberry reminded me of the fruit topping I get from bake shops that was topped with a crumbly biscuit topping. This was my least favourite of the whole dinner.

The raspberry and chocolate mousse cake came topped with a pretty cape gooseberry. I love these gooseberries with their little brown cape and their bright orange colour. The cake was interlaced with chocolate sponge layers which was very nice and light.

Besides the good food, we had excellent hosts who provided fantastic company throughout the night. Only small thing that marred the evening was of course the lack of rendition of the song The Reason by Hoobastank. Hence for all you fans who missed it that night, here's an extract from the song (which is incidentally the bits I like):

I'm not a perfect person

There's many things I wish I didn't do

But I continue learning

I never meant to do those things to you

And so I have to say before I go

That I just want you to know

I've found a reason for me

To change who I used to be

A reason to start over new

and the reason is you

Thanks for the lovely time Big M.

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