Raju Restaurant @ Jalan Gasing, Petaling Jaya

As it is a public holiday today, decided to head out to have a good banana leaf meal. Usually on a working day, it is almost impossible to have such a meal as I always find it difficult to keep myself awake after such a heavy meal. Today's destination was Raju Restaurant which is located on Jalan Chantek, off Jalan Gasing in Petaling Jaya.

Raju Restaurant at Jalan Chantek

This restaurant is not difficult to find. Once you turn into Jalan Chantek via Jalan Gasing just before the famous Buddhist Temple, there is only one row of shops and this shop is located right at the end of the row. There is another Tamil Restaurant by the name of Moorthys just beside this. However, sighting it is quite simple as it is the most packed restaurant here.

Indoor and Outdoor Seating Available

Parking can be quite a challenge here as there is limited parking bays available. Parking on the curb side can also be dangerous especially on weekdays as the City Council do tow the vehicles parked outside these limitedly available bays. As you can see from the above photo, the place is usually packed, regardless a working day or holiday.

Fish & Chicken Fried On Request

Choose Your Meat Here

Right in front of this restaurant, you would find this counter filled with marinated fish and chicken. There would also be some prawns, crabs and squid. You could choose your selection and then it would be weighed, fried and the delivered to your seat. Please bear in mind that this can take quite a while too. Sometimes as there is limited number of employees and huge crowd at this restaurant, you may not get what you had actually chosen and this is a little disheartening.

Basic Meal @ RM 6.00

Once you grab a seat, it takes a while for the waiters to attend to you. You may be calling them or a number of them and they would just play a deaf ear to your call but eventually they would come to you. The fastest you should expect someone to come to your table to take your orders is 15 minutes. Once the order is taken, they would then place the banana leaf, followed by the rice and vegetables. However, customer satisfaction is not of concern here as they have too many customers coming in. As you could see that my leaf is torn and that is not acceptable at all, however, they were adamant not to change it. It is at this point that you should remind them that you had already ordered some fried items which they would then mistakenly pick up the wrong one hence the size could be smaller or bigger. However, as it is weighed, you would be charged with the right piece that was sent to you. This weighing is recorded by the waiter serving your table and he would then send a summary of the bill to the cashier.

Mutton Varuval @ RM 9.00

We then ordered a plate of the following dishes which you would be able to see from the photographs.The first dish was Mutton Varuval. Honestly, this is not Mutton Varuval. Somehow, this is a hybrid between Varuval and Parattal. However, the meat was tender, lean and of good quality. Taste was not that great. I would rate this dish only 5/10 .

Chicken Parattal @ RM 7.00

This dish was much better than that of the mutton. Meat was mostly tender and the gravy was good. The portion was small for the price though. Rating shall be 7/10 for this dish.

Tenggiri Fish Fried @ RM 5.50

The fish was good though. It was well marinated and fried to perfection. It was still juicy and without any smell or taste of oil. I would rate this 9/10 .

Onion Sotong @ RM 8.00

This dish was also good. There was a funny thing that happened when I ordered this dish. I told that Tamil waiter who took my order to get me a plate of fried squid in Tamil and he said they don't have that. His reply was in Tamil too. I then told him that I just saw it at the frying station and then I replaced the Tamil word for squid into the Malay word Sotong, then he understood. Kind of funny right. Your a Tamilian from Tamil Nadu India and you cant speak proper Tamil. Well coming back to this dish, it should not be called Fried Squid in Onions. It would be more appropriate to call this Fried Onions in Squid. There was a great deal of onions and limited Squid here. This was disappointing. Taste was good though. My rating for this dish is 6/10 . The lower rating is not for the taste but because I feel it is too expensive for the quantity and the feeling of being cheated by putting so much onions in the plate and just a few pieces of Squid.

Meal Time at Raju's

On the whole, I think there is great room for improvement here but I doubt that they would as they seem to be quite arrogant. This is mainly fueled by the huge amount of customers. If you see carefully, most of their customers are not Indians but the Chinese, Malays and Foreigners. The Indians would be seen heading to other Banana Leaf Restaurants as the taste is better in many of the restaurants out there. The price is also very expensive and it is simply tourist price. Service levels also have got to drastically improve.

Indian Cakes @ RM 1.00 Each

At the frying station, they also have a number of Indian Cakes. They look fresh although I did not taste them.

Cashier Counter

The Cashier Counter seems well protected though. On the whole, for this meal it cost us RM 44.50 for two which is quite expensive. You can surely come here for a meal, it is not bad food but at the same time, it is not the best or at least one of the best. Dining here can be an experience though.

Address: 27, Jalan Chantek 5/13,
              Off Jalan Gasing,
              Petaling Jaya, Selangor, Malaysia.

Opening Hours: 0630 - 2200 Daily