Iftar at Bumbu Desa KLCC

This year, the family Iftar was at Bumbu Desa, KLCC. It was yours truly given the task to pick the venue. My first choice was supposed to be Restoran Warisan near Dataran Merdeka. Unfortunately, despite numerous attempt at calling, no one picked up the phone.

I tried my luck with a few other places but they were all fully booked. During lunchtime today, I headed over to KLCC to make the booking as again, nobody answered the restaurant number, nor the supposedly Iftar booking hotline. I went straight to book the tables and made the food order for Iftar as they only cater for ala carte. They did not have a Ramadhan buffet.

Not expecting much, we gathered at the venue just before 7pm, surprised to see that all the order was already on the table. Cold. The place was packed, so we just sat down, ordered drinks and chatted until Iftar time. And that was when the second surprise came in.

The food was actually quite nice. Better than we hoped for as the expectation was rock bottom to start with. They offer Sumatran - Sunda and Padang - cuisine. Most of the item in the menu were already familiar to us. Sufficed to say, even their sambal and vegetable were very well prepared. Their specialty dish was ayam bakar. It looked plain, but the meat was really succulent. They also had a variety of tempeh - a Java offering. There were also grilled prawns which was lightly buttered, again a must-try.

The place had a reputation for bad service. It was packed, but we got what we ordered for. Not much ground for us to complain about service tonight really.

Unfortunately, the lack of a Ramadhan menu made ordering for food rather awkward. There were no starters, and at the end we did not bother to order desserts. They did bot Wen offer dates for us. Room was at a premium. There were not much room to maneuver in and out of our seats. We had to leave early since the surau was five floors down. The children were getting loud by then. And the price was not exactly cheap either.

Even if the food was nice, I wouldn't recommend the venue for Iftar mainly due to the way the menu was set up. Ordering ala carte for Iftar lead you to either under or overestimate the amount of food to order. Plus, you had to order in advance to make sure there weren't any wait for the food. Even Spice of India next door had a special Iftar menu. And don't bother calling the restaurant beforehand to make a booking. Nobody would bother to pick up, and you might as well just come personally you make the booking.

I thought I also include this video taken after Iftar with the children on the ride.