Part Two of our Citta Mall exploration: After a middling brunch at Baci, we crossed the corridor for a midday meal at Gourmandis, one of the extremely few outlets here that offer booze.
Gourmandis' food is of the "fusion" bent, blending Eastern & Western sensibilities. The tempura soft-shell crab with bearnaise & red wine reduction sounded promising and looked hearty but tasted like typical soft-shell crab. Nothing more, nothing less.
Rigatoni carbonara with crispy beef bacon & fresh basil. One of those pastas that customers might chew absent-mindedly for a few minutes, and when it's finished, their only recollection would be, "it was OK." In all fairness, we would have loved this 15 years ago, when carbonara was relatively new in KL.
Squid ink linguine in curry laksa with prawns, calamari, clams, chicken, egg, tauhu pok & fuchuk. Alas, the pasta was limp, the broth was weak, and the seafood was less than satisfyingly fresh.
Carta Vieja Origen Chardonnay (Chile) & Santa Magherita Cuvee Pinot Rosso (Italy).
Singapore Sling & Tequila Sunrise cocktails. Cheap, but tasted nearly like mocktails.
Cafe Puci (rum, amaretto almond, espresso) & Long Island Iced Tea.
A note of caution: like Baci, Gourmandis has no credit card facilities so far (though both will, eventually). And like Baci, Gourmandis only informed us of its cash-only conditions when we were settling the bill, not while we were ordering. This could have been inconvenient, since the mall currently only has one ATM-equipped outlet.
Gourmandis,
Citta Mall, Mall, Jalan PJU 1A/48, Ara Damansara.
