Friday we're in love: Sitka Studio, the space above Damansara Heights' Sitka restaurant, now opens for dinner at the end of every workweek, promising the perfect way to unwind over a meal. Once a week, only on Fridays, Sitka's main culinary team decamps upstairs to the Studio, which hums with life, laughter and pulsating music throughout these few hours, flanked by an open kitchen that spawns a stream of thoughtful temptations, across the Scandinavian-souled room from a bar where natural wines, whiskey sours and mango Mojitos flow forth all night long.
Sitka Studio's Friday night lights shine on a modern-minded tasting menu that starts at RM195++ (inclusive purely of food). The selection changes each month; March's affair (still available this Friday, March 30) kicks off with crackling-good sourdough bread coupled with indulgently sensual cultured butter, before seguing into a tiny tart to remember, crisply brittle with tofu skin at the first bite, smooth and sumptuous with chicken parfait at the next chew, lingeringly sweet and tangy with pickled grapes at the final swallow - a beautiful balance concentrated in little more than a mouthful.
The Sitka brand's ethos of emphasising local produce remains intact here, epitomised by vegetables cultivated in the Malaysian peninsula and seafood primarily netted near our shores. Crunchy stalks of baby kailan are grilled and glazed with the sweet-saltiness of kelp, the umami factor amplified with brushes of smoked confit egg yolk; steamed sea bass surfaces in a creamy pool of calamansi vinegar butter, rounded out with morsels of sea prawns and trout roe; firm shells of cavatelli take on unmistakably Chinese nuances, coated in inky squid bolognese spiked with Shaoxing wine and black beans.
The kom-brulee is the ideal close to a string of courses that fuel both the imagination and the conversation, sprucing up an immaculately crafted creme brulee with the crumbliness of briny kombucha and earthy seeds. All in all, for fans of Sitka's chefs, this is a sterling way to see them put their skills to further use, complementing the bao-and-small-plates experience at the main restaurant below. Many thanks to Sitka Studio for having us.
Sitka Studio
8-5A Jalan Batai, Damansara Heights, 50490 Kuala Lumpur.
Text or WhatsApp reservations: +6017-277-7848 or +6016-382-6336
Reservations Link: https://sitkastudio.dinesuperb.com/
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