54 Restaurant

Food

We chose from the a-la carte menu, which seems to contain a mixture of Malaysian and western dishes. We stuck with the Western dishes.

• Roti Jala (£5.50) - Fishnet style pancake served with potato curry - I was surprised by how hot the curry was – this has loads of different spices, and definitely not toned down for Western tastes. Whether those spices work together is another story. I felt that this had too many flavours going, but definitely delivers a hit that you need to mop up with the pancakes.
• Penang Assam Laksa (£6.50) - Piquant fish soup with rice roodles & bunga kantan - again, very hot! I was pleasantly surprised that the flavours were very authentic, just like the ones we had at the hawker stalls! What was strange though was the amount of noodles and vegetables that was pack into this, so that instead of having a soup with vegetables, it was more like having a vegetable with a hot sauce.
• Rendang daging atau kambing (£14.50) Lamb shank rendang in spicy coconut - I was pleased that this came with a whole lamb shank, and more importantly, the meat melted off the bone. Unfortunately this was let down by a too salty sauce.
• Nasi Lemak (£13.50) - this came with the biggest prawns I have ever seen, again, in a very hot, but very yummy sauce. The sauce for the rendang chicken was really different to the lamb shank rending. Good…because it was much less salty and had much more fragrance.

We wanted to have banana fritters, sago pudding or red bean for dessert, but they had “run out” of all three, so we opted for Ice Cream & Sorbet (£4.50) -homemade selection – changes frequently Coconut, lemon, blueberry sorbet, and Pistachio, durian ice cream, banana sorbet. This turned out to be a really good choice. All the ice cream was made there, really tasty and fresh.

Rating - 6.5

Atmosphere

The place was filled, with westerners. The décor is very strange… kinda new age, kinda Asianised, with some dark blue lighting, a reflection from the bar, going on . They have a small bar and an open kitchen. The tables are quite cramped, so not the most inviting place, better to eat and leave. They have these Asian style clothes as table runners too, which was strange as you can get that very dirty.

Rating - 1.5

Service

They certainly don’t have enough waiters. I had to ask for my water to be refilled 3 times before it was done. After we were told none of our desserts were available, they forgot to change it on the bill, so we had to ask for it to be recalculated. Food arrived promptly though.

Rating - 2.5

C-factor

Not the cheapest Malaysian, but bang on for the setting and the quality.

Rating - 1.5

Brownie Points - 12

Info

54 Farringdon Road
London
EC1R 3BL
Phone +44 (0) 20 7336 0603
Website