Dapur Dahlia

I love Malaysian food so its a wonder that I hadn't already been to Dapur Dahlia in my travels! I decided that VGirl and her boyfriend, Zbag, JGirl, Dr S., and myself, should all head here for dinner one day.

Dapur Dahlia is a bit hard to spot, its pretty near to the Pizza Hut/Night Owl store in Upper Mount Gravatt so keep an eye out for that. Parking is a bit limited since its not particularly a big shopping lot. This restaurant is super popular, while the Indian restaurant beside it had barely any customers the entire time we were there. Perhaps they should expand that way?

This place!

The restaurant is extremely small by the way, not to mention the furniture is pretty small and uncomfortable to sit on. We had to wait about 20 minutes to get a table simply for the fact that there are only about . . . 8 tables in the entire place, the majority of which end up being put together due to limited tabletop space. In short, I hate this tiny restaurant's atmosphere!

Here is their collection of menus.

We all got random drinks. VGirl got this Soda Bandung, aka iced rose water soda. It's bright pink and icy cold, it also tastes exactly like creaming soda, surprise!

Fave for VGirl

I got the traditional teh ais, thick black tea and condensed milk thats been stretched. Zero stretching here, there is no foamy top at all! That being said its delicious, but what more do you expect from condensed milk drinks?

Love condensed milk

Zbag picked ais limau, a black tea with lime juice added. It was a very refreshing and sweet iced tea flavour.

Yummy

I made VGirl get the Maggi migoreng as opposed to the regular migoreng, this is because I wanted to eat Maggi noodles over hokkien noodles. Also it was the chef's special! This is even though VGirl would only allow me a small mouthful of the noodles. She said it was delicious and finished it before the rest of the dishes were even put down. When I asked her if she wanted another serve, she declined but spent a lot of time inquiring after other peoples meals, so maybe I should have gotten one . . . oh the vegetables in this dish were bean sprouts, carrot, cabbage and gai lan!

Yassss

I got the ayam goreng and beef rendang nasi lemak! I love nasi lemak because it allows me to pick and choose bits off the menu that I want to try without having to actually order that dish as a main! So yeah I picked fried chicken of course and beef rendang! To be truthful, since I started making beef rendang, I've never found one as good as my own. I love the sauce super dense, full of spices and coconut and the beef to fall apart. This was okay. The fried chicken reminds me of home with the way the winglet is still kept on it! That's the good bit, there's so much skin on there to eat! I enjoyed the sambal that they had here as well as the fact that the egg was a medium boil, no dodgy iron grey ring for me thanks!

<3 nasi lemak

Chicken satay, the way it should be! Charred, fat skewers of chicken absolutely doused in finger licking satay sauce accompanied with cucumber and red onion! They come four to a serve, so there was enough for everyone to eat one and get

Ideal number, so easily divisible!

This is their roti telur bawang aka egg and onion flatbread that comes with dahl, lentil curry, and a curry gravy, chicken! I feel like that sentence has a lot of commas in there but I'm too lazy to fix it, so please endure! Dr S., and JGirl both enjoyed this!

!

However, they also ordered roti jala aka net bread, which also came with a curry gravy and chicken curry. I have no idea why they basically ordered the same dish twice to share. I don't understand the appeal of roti jala because its meant to go with curry dishes as a means of sopping or picking up curry. So why would you use a bread that has so many holes in it to do that? Doesn't that seem fundamentally arduous somehow? Like eating soup with a spoon?

?_?

CBoy got the seafood laksa. It is a massive, massive bowl! It comes with lots of prawns, calamari, fish cakes, three types of noodle, flat rice, egg and a homemade rice starch noodle as well as a very rich and flavourful coconut broth! He did not finish this bowl by the way, it defeated him!

Truck size bowl

We got the cendol as our shareable dessert, bright green pandan noodles, shaved ice and palm sugar syrup! I like that they actually used real palm sugar, you can taste the caramel sweetness of it. I had to scoff this down as everyone else was too full and wanted to go home and sleep.

Refreshing!

Dapur Dahlia 
Atmosphere: 3, I hate this tiny restaurant. Please expand more!
Service: 5, nothing special.
Food: 7, average! The drinks are pretty good as are the dishes barring the roti. The serving size is solid and the pricing is pretty cheap. Give this place a shot, I'd say!