Restaurant Guizhou Garden, Pudu

4 of us. Dinner time. Raining dogs, cats and whatever animals easily found on Kuala Lumpur city soil. Bad traffic jam, of course. You get the idea.

We were unable to decide what to have around Pudu area. The easiest choice would be Teochew porridge but 2 of us were not keen on rice and I wanted to try other restaurants there. So, after walking along the row of shops, we found ourselves staring into a spanking clean bright air-conditioned patronless restaurant wondering whether to risk it. You know what they say about quiet empty restaurants but then again we noticed other shops were like that at that time. Maybe the heavy downpour was keeping most diners away. Upon spotting us, the Manager (mm.. a position like a Head Waiter/Captain) quickly came to open the door and ushered us in. Menus were presented, tea was poured and the manager started rattling on about their specialties/choices of food/recommendations.

We decided on a hotpot with 2 choices of soup ie. herbal and malat("spicy hot"). Yes, we were going for a sweaty affair.

Oh, a couple of spoonful of soup (your own preference of which) is to be added to the small bowl of condiments. It's dip.

On that night, a sliced tong-shan fish (ikan keli?) was given free. As for other ingredients, we chose beef balls, pork balls, straw mushrooms, golden mushrooms, chinese cabbage, lamb meat slices, chicken meat slices, lotus root, homemade tauhu.On top of that, we tried 2 of their specialty dishes.

Fried Brake (that's how it's named in the menu!) Vegetables with Cured Meat @RM18.The green vege is green onion. The rest was Brake Vege which tasted like err.. twigs. Reminded me of a Mr Bean episode where he served his guests with freshly broken twigs dipped in Bovril (I think). Definitely not a dish to order again. For us, that is. The only thing I can recall about the cured meat, which was sliced and not obvious in the picture as the colouring was similar to the Brake Vege, is it's very salty.

Special Blood Bean Curd Miao with celery @ RM15 Blood Bean Curd Miao is the black pieces in the picture. Tasted similar to 'heong cheong', Chinese Hakka stuffed intestine. Salty, flavourful, and you get to choose the vegetable to be cooked with. The manager recommended celery. Good call. 2 bowls of steamed white rice was ordered due to this dish!

Desserts? Looks like candy?They were moist pink towels offered after the meal.

Good environment, good service. Did I mention the waitresses were in customs? After they've cleared the table, we sat there chit-chatting for almost 3 hours. They didn't mind since only a sprinkle of diners came in. Anyway, having people at tables do look so much more inviting to potential patrons outside, right? When we left at almost 10pm, we saw the restaurant next door which serves similar food was full! Hmm.. we missed the jackpot? O well, at least we did enjoy the meal.

This was our bill:- and this is how you locate the place.