“What? The meal was RM147.50? Seriously?”
That was Ahmad Azrai’s exclamation upon seeing the bill at Masala Wheels a couple of Saturdays ago.
It caught the supervisor Kalidas by surprise, and he offered to go through the bill again.
Azrai or Roy, however, assured him he was stunned at how cheap it was.
“I have spent more on one meal just on myself. I was expecting the bill to be more than RM200 considering the amount of food and drinks we ordered!” said Azrai.
Indeed, for what the five of us ordered – crab masala, two plates of mutton varuvel, chicken 65, fried tenggiri, two plates of lamb cutlets, fried cauliflower plus the assortment of condiments and sambal which accompanied the banana leaf sets and copious drinks – it was money well spent.
I have to confess something. Although I love Indian food, mutton varuval being my favourite, I’m not a fan of banana leaf rice (BLR).
Blasphemous, I know, but I’m picky about vegetables.
I’m not a fan of the cheap vegetables many BLR restaurants serve with their meals and they have the audacity to charge upwards of RM7.
Add on a meat/seafood dish and you are looking at forking out between RM15 and 25, minus drinks.
And unlike the ‘old days’, BLR sets now don’t come with many of the sides/condiments and chips apart from papadam.
That’s why I prefer places like Restoran Rasie in Subang Jaya where they still serve meals on plates and you can pick and choose your vegetables – if you are so inclined. And man, the vegetables there are delicious, one of the rare times you see more vegetables than meat on my plate.
Anyway, Masala Wheels has long been something I wanted to try as I have heard good things about it (including its vegetables!).
It so happened the five of us – Azrai, Mary Ahin, Sujartha Kumar, Dawn Chan and I – met up there for an unplanned catch-up session.
We decided to try a dish each and asked the server, Raj, for a menu. Instead, he brought out a tray with many dishes (main image).
We could pick and choose what we wanted. The fish and chicken 65 were fried to order and as such, were not on the tray presented to us.
I opted for the Masala crab. It was so delicious that I didn’t even take any of the six curries available for my first helping of rice.
That’s right, you can choose from six curries – vegetarian (onion, dhal and yoghurt) and non-vegetarian (crab, chicken and mutton).
As an illustration of how generous the helping was, the other four tasted the masala and gave the thumbs up.
I was impressed by the basic BLR set – four types of vegetables and four types of chutney and sambal plus a cup of white payasam and papadam.
Mary had the Chicken 65 while Sujartha had the fried tenggiri. Azrai took the mutton varuval and Chan the cutlets – which were so good, we ordered another plate to share.
Azrai said the mutton varuval was tender and nicely seasoned and the spices robust.
Mary and Sujartha said the chicken and fish were nice as they were freshly cooked.
If there is one complaint it is that the dishes, apart from the fish and chicken, were at room temperature. It would definitely have been tastier if they were warmer.
The curries too were lukewarm. While not thick, they weren’t watered down. It ticked all the right boxes but could have been so much better warmer.
I guess we made a mistake going there after normal lunch hours.
Overall, it was a good meal with good friends who hadn’t seen each other for a long time.
A word of warning. Although it was Saturday, parking wasn’t easy so I shudder to think what it would be like on weekdays.
Oh, Masala Wheels has biryani meals on Sundays, so another excuse to go there once more.
Masala Wheels
2, Jalan 1/3A, Section 1,
Old Town, Petaling Jaya, Selangor.
Operating hours: 11.30am till 4pm daily
Contact Number: +603-74964991
