Sao Nam @ Empire Subang

Was walking along Empire mall at Subang and chanced upon this Vietnamese Fine Dining Restaurant (or so they say)... It boasted an award winning chef and a pretty interesting menu...

I started the meal with a traditional vietnamese tea... It was a combination of a variety of spices which somewhat felt familiar to me but yet I couldn't quite put my finger on it. It started off quite pungent but as you drank it more it became quite pleasant.

As for the food, we started off with a combo platter... Overall each item felt under seasoned and the usual sugarcane prawn paste was replaced by lemongrass instead... Although I do quite like the taste of lemongrass so I wasn't complaining but I think it does reduce the sweetness it could have had if the sugarcane was used... The manager of the restaurant was nice enough to explain to us how we should eat the dish with the condiments that came with it but I really dislike the taste of basil and it just made things taste worse. I just feel that when you put certain herbs which have a pungent flavour to it, it makes the dish lose the rest of it's flavour. We then ordered a fish cooked with dill in claypot which was served with noodles... (can't quite remember the dish's name). The fish wasn't entirely the freshest fish around and the tonne of basil thrown in did not help the taste... It just made every mouthful basil-ey.... Eww.... Yes it was supposed to be cooked with dill and there was a lot of dill too but when compared, the basil won hands down...

Then came the recommended beef in bamboo which looked promising... Until you look closer and it was once again filled with basil... Uuurrgghh... the entire meal was feeling like a one note.... :( It the chef did not get his basil delivery for the day, he might not be able to cook anything... Although I do understand that basil is quite a staple in the vietnamese diet but it cant be in everything right? If we were to just extract the taste of basil out of these dishes, the flavours are actually not too bad....

The final dish of the day was the red noodle served with a soup... it came with crushed prawn crackers and nuts... This was the only dish without the basil. This was definitely the redeeming dish for this restaurant. I really like this noodle. Not sure whether it is because of the basil overload so anything without taste good or it really was good...

Oh well, don't think I will try it again anytime soon but I think if you really like basil then this is definitely the place for you.

Sao Nam
Empire Shopping Gallery
Imperial Vietnamese Cuisine
Jalan 16/1, SS16,
47500 Subang Jaya,
Selangor