Four Seasons Korean Restaurant @ Solaris Mont Kiara

Four Seasons Korean Restaurant at Solaris Mont Kiara is unlike many other Korean restaurants in the same area.  Instead of a typical Korean BBQ menu that one would expect to see, the restaurant offers unique meals using live fish kept in cold tanks.  The fish  is served raw or cooked, along with choices of premium items like live octopus, abalone and lobster.    

We took the sashimi set (RM 250) with sashimi from live  flounder and live rock fish being the star of the set, presented on stone-like ceramic bowls arranged as flower petals.  RM 250 may sound steep but wait till you see everything that’s included in the set and it’s totally worth it.

Since the sashimi are sliced from live fish, the texture is distinctly different from the ones you would get in a Japanese restaurant.  The texture of these translucent slices is slightly tough, chewy and almost alive it felt like my tongue was wrestling with fish muscles before finally declaring a win on them.  The texture changes if you don’t eat up within the first 10 minutes.  They become softer, liveless (I mean they are already dead in the first place but you don’t feel the muscles anymore) and more like the sashimi in Japanese restaurants that we are familiar with.

They are served in room temperature, which may not be something that everyone may like because we are used to the chilled sashimi in Japanese restaurant, so it’s something new to get used to.

Rock fish sashimi.

Flounder sashimi.

The center piece is also flounder sashimi but taken from a specific part of the flounder just under the fins.  It’s pale beige and has an unbelievable crisp crunch to it.

It’s a rare thing that the plate still looks gorgeous after we finished eating everything.

Sashimi salad is made of generous cuts of sashimi with spicy Korean chili paste and a sprinkle of white sesame seeds.

Two interesting items on the menu include the “sea worm” (on the left) and “sea squirt” on the right – again, taken live from the cold tank.  They are not the prettiest looking if you see them in their original form so I will only reveal what they really look like at the end of the post, but rest assured, the taste is heavenly.

I was intimidated at first by this bleeding, denailed-chicken-toe-look-alike sea worm.  Once I got past the first one, the rest is history.  The sea worm tastes like raw amai-ebi (sweet prawn), intensely sweet and pleasing with a crunchy texture.

The sea squirt has a tough chicken-like skin that envelopes an orange, spongy nuclues that “squirts” a salty flavor of the sea.  The skin is quite juicy itself so you could chew it to extract the juice but it’s too hard to swallow – like eating sugar cane – you spit out the end product.

Assorted sushi.

The tempura is fried ultra-lightly such that the prawns are at the exact borderline between raw and cooked.

The owner of the restaurant helped us debone the grilled sanma fish skillfully, all done in less than 30 seconds.

The small portion of carrot porridge is just nice for savoring.

The side dishes include kimchi, tofu,

Korean pancake,

clam soup,

and steamed egg.   
  
Nothing goes to waste here as the remaining fish bones are used to cook soup – perfect to round up this sumptuous banquet.

The restaurant’s interior.

And finally, I hope you don’t get intimidated, this cylindrical creature is the sea worm;

this abstract creature is the sea squirt;

the one-sided flounder;

and the rock fish that gives a clue of where it got its name.

More Info
Address : 15-1, SOHO KL, Jalan Solaris 2, Mont Kiara, 50480 KL
Tel : 03 6206 4797

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