Ooh Cha @ Jalan Yap Ah Shak. In search of Thai Food.

Thai Food. Whenever my friends talk to me about Thai Food, the only response from them is that it is sour and hot. But that's just skimming the surface. Just consider the ubiquitous Tom Yam, for instance. The ingredients includes galagal, lemon grass, kaffir lime leaves, onions, (shallots and garlic and tamarind in the Nam Prik Pao that gives it the red colour), lime juice and chinese corriander and some chefs add a dash of coconut milk to it too. Good Thai chefs are almost mini botanists, given the amount of herbs and spices required to make a dish.

The mixture of sweet, sour, salty, bitter and spiciness that gives me this affinity towards Thai cuisine, with it's distinctive Southern, Central, Nothern and North Eastern flavours. OK, enough about that before I appear to be a boorish, opinionated snob.

Stumbled upon Ooh Cha by chance on the way to Yut Kee, and decided to give it a go for dinner the same night. For those who hit the night scenes regularly, it is just opposite Maison and opens till 3am on Fridays and Saturdays.


Started off with their Miang Kum. It was already served with the condiments on the leaves. That saves you the trouble of picking up bits of grated toasted coconuts, lime, ginger, peanuts, lime, etc to put onto the leaves. The sauce was sweet, with the taste of shrimp paste.


The obligatory Seafood Tom Yum. Piquant but slightly too sour. One of the better Tom Yams I have tasted in KL, but not great.


Papaya Salad (Som Tam Malagor). Sour, did not have cherry tomatoes inside. Not enough dried shrimps and they did not use palm sugar. Give it a miss. So far, the only place that has preserved crabs and fermented fish in the Papaya salad is at Jalan Alor's Thai Somtam Seafood Restaurant.



Fried Prawns with Garlic. Nice and fragrant. The prawns were very fresh.


Probably the best dish of the night. Chicken with Basil. They used local "selasih" leaves which are different from Thai Basil, but it was still good.

Left out the bland Kangkung Belacan. Prices reasonable, 15 to 20s per dish. Service OK. Still have not found the "Thai Food" joint yet. A pilgrimage to BKK seems imminent.