Kotaraya Elsternwick

239 Glen Huntly Rd, Elsternwick VIC 3185.

Visited: 15th Jan 2012

Kotaraya is a multi-Asian cuisine Malaysian restaurant.  We have been coming to Kotaraya Elsternwick for years now, however not as often as I'd like, only because of its location out of the way from the CBD.  I was going to do a review on this restaurant sooner, but the last time I was here I forgot to take pictures before we all dug in!  LOL

See the multi-culinary award Wall of Fame?

Kotaraya is open seven days a week and Public Holidays, except Saturday lunch.  They have a list of lunch specials for $9.50 - we usually come on Sundays for the ever popular Hainanese chicken rice, which is available at the Elsternwick branch only.  If you want it, you should come early or they may run out.

Hainanese Chicken Rice $9.50

The chicken rice is perfectly seasoned and infused with ginger, comes with chilli and dark soy sauce.  The steamed chicken is wonderfully tender and juicy, complemented with a bowl of steaming hot soup.

MerlinFan had her Curry Laksa, which she believes is the best curry laksa in Melbourne by far.  Mouth-wateringly delicious, it comes with a generous amount of prawn, chicken, fishcake, fried tofu, bean sprouts, eggplant, and half a boiled egg.  It comes in two types of noodles, the thin rice vermicelli (bee-hoon type) and thick wheat flour noodles (udon type).  I can't find the perfect words of describe this, but the curry is just what Malaysians would describe as really "lemak" (creamy would be the closest translation) and totally satisfying.

Curry Laksa $9.50

Rice vermicelli and udon

The char hor fun is on the lunch special menu as well and is one of our usuals too.  Rice noodles in beautiful egg gravy, with seafood, chicken and fishcake.

Char hor fun $9.50

Now, the only thing I did manage to take pictures of the last time we were here was the dessert.  We had the banana fritter with ice cream and kueh dada (crepe filled with coconut) with ice cream for $6.00 each.

Kueh dada (left) and banana fritter (right)

This is no ordinary banana fritter - instead, the mashed banana is served wrapped in this crepe.  The kueh dada has grated caramelised coconut filling inside, with a pandan flavoured crepe wrapping it, hence the vibrant green colour.  Both of these crepes came with vanilla ice cream with chocolate topping - there was a minty taste here, however our party of five at the time couldn't quite discern whether the mint came from the chocolate topping or the ice cream itself. Either way, the desserts were very nice on its own and will definitely satisfy your sweet tooth, but I'm not quite sure whether it necessarily fit together with that minty aftertaste.

Other nice dishes would be the char kueh tiaw and nasi lemak which are amongst our other "usuals."  Now if only they opened a branch in the CBD...