Monday, April 27, 2015

Limestone's Fine Dining (revisited)

 
Finally done with my assignments, and time to clear off backlog food reviews. The revisit to Limestone's was for my birthday meal with my family. I was here once more than a year ago from a set dinner purchased from Groupon. Hence, I did not snap any photos on the dining ambiance this time. Perhaps the complimentary crusty bread with herbed butter swirls would be an abrupt opening as we jump start to their ala carte lunch menu offered.

 
The lunch menu is reasonably priced with wide range of items from soups, appetizers, salads, pasta, risotto, bread wraps, poultry and seafood. Firstly, a perennial favourite of mine; The Ratatouille Soup scored very well with dad. He is not a fan of “tomato” soup but I insisted he tried it. And he was hooked. The appearance of a “tomato soup” is actually a blended vegetable stew which includes eggplants, onions, carrots and capsicums and finally spiced with paprika. RM9.90 for a soup but it was something very different.



I have to pick a starter form the set lunch, so I went for another soup which is the Turkey Pot Stew. Not available in the ala carte menu, the soup shared similar tomato broth from the Ratatouille soup base albeit lighter but slightly saltier. It comes with diced vegetables, shredded turkey meat (culprit for the saltiness perhaps?) and an interesting puff pastry top. The pastry top actually serves as a lid and it covered the whole bowl of soup completely upon serving.


This is the Grilled Chicken with Chickpea Salad. The whole chicken thigh is slightly charred by pan-grilling it, resulting so a slight crispy and charred skin while maintaining a juicy tender meat within. The brown sauce accompanied the poultry well both gastronomically and aesthetically. A small portion of salad with chickpeas replaced the customary fries or coleslaw which you normally get if you are paying just a mere RM14.90 for a chicken chop elsewhere. For this price tag, the effort in food presentation and the taste, this deserves a 5 star rating for me. 


The King Prawn Risotto is one of their Chef’s recommended dishes. Risotto is an Italian dish which uses short grain rice which has high ability to absorb water and release starch at the same time, resulting into a thick and smooth creamy consistent rice dish. The menu description of it being slow cooked with prawn bisque and deep fried prawn further made me decide that I shall pick this during this visit. Served in orangey hue from blended prawn shells/heads/bodies, the risotto also has generous serving of shrimps simmered together before 2 medium sized prawns are majestically placed at the center. For RM23, this is a steal. 


Fried Fish with Home Made Potatoes Fritters was the name given in the menu. The presentation outcome seems to be different from the menu description of “served with black sesame seed sauce and homemade potato fritters”. Well, it appeared to be potatoes wedges to me somehow. Anyway, the fish fillet was well executed despite the serving size wasn’t that petite and graceful compared to the grilled chicken. The fish fillet was definitely NOT Dory fish. It was flaky, slightly moist and fresh definitely. The serving of vinegared salad added a refreshing touch to the majority fried components


The Grilled Lamb with Homemade pasta is also one of the mains to be chosen from the 3 course set lunch. A generous portion of lamb shoulder was grilled with mustard and herbs. Nothing really spectacular but it was very well done. I was wondering could it be a serving of salad was missing in this dish? Take note of the empty space in the plate

The Crepe Suzette being RM17.50 was a bit pricey if can probably order a chicken chop for slightly lesser. This French dessert was also a bit letdown in terms of presentation as the pancake was quite bland and dependent heavily on the liquored orange sauce reduction. The vanilla ice cream was good though. 


The same vanilla ice cream appeared on top of the Fruity Walnut Cake which came as the dessert for the set lunch. Somehow the dining experience, which was near flawless right from the start did not end on a high note as their dessert range need much polishing. Besides sorbet and crème brulee, they only offer a few variants of cake of the day. Nevertheless, I will definitely return again for lunch (as they offer a more premium menu during dinner) to have try on Paella (Spanish rice), Burittos or even evaluate their Eggs Benedict perhaps. In the meantime, I would be keeping an eye on Groupon as their set menus in Groupon is just RM22 for 2 course meal while walk-in customers are charge RM31.