Franco Mid Valley Megamall

Sometimes I wonder about fusion restaurants – would something like Russian Chinese or Croatian Mongolian work? Not that I have come across such restaurants but I do think there’s more than one French-Japanese restaurant in town. Franco serves Japanese food served with French cooking techniques.

Last week, I had the opportunity to dine at Franco Mid Valley Megamall which has a cosy upstairs area for small parties. When you glance at the menu, you can see the fusion element, e.g. they offer Matcha Souffle and Berries Cheesecake Parfait. There’s French and Japanese salads too. They use imported Japanese sauces in their pastas and all the pastas are Japanese style spaghetti.

There’re only 2 soups on the menu, both @ RM11.80 – Clam Chowder & Minestrone. The soups come with a slice of toasted bread. The clam chowder is creamy but a bit too sweet for my palate. I’d have preferred it to be more savoury than sweet. There were a few clams in there but not enough to make me want to order this again.

Iced Tea with Softee @ RM11.80 basically tasted like tea infused water with soft serve ice cream. I don’t know what tea this is but it didn’t taste like any tea I have ever drunk before. The whole thing was very watery which made me think that I should have ordered Iced Coffee with Softee @ RM10.80.

One of my dining companions ordered Iced Matcha Latte with Matcha Softee @ RM14.80 which is perhaps what I should have ordered as someone who loves all types of tea. This one looks much nicer than the drink I ordered.

Lobster Bisque Pasta @ RM31.80 sure sounded promising and I couldn’t wait to taste it because someone else at my table had had it before at another Franco outlet and loved it. Of course at that kind of price, there’d better be a generous portion of spaghetti and in that respect, there was more than enough. Small portion of lobster though and the sauce was way too rich and creamy for me, maybe because of the cheese sauce. There’s grilled tiger prawn too.

Someone else ordered the Squid Ink Rice with Assorted Seafood & Omu Egg @ RM30.80. I had a taste of the squid and rice, very nice and beautifully presented in a saucepan. I had to google to find out what Omu Egg is – it’s an omelette made with fried rice. Omu and raisu are contractions of the words omelette and rice. So this dish clearly has Japanese cooking influences.

Another of my dining companions ordered the Adzuki Red Bean & Jelly Pancake @ RM23.80 which looks awesome but he commented that the matcha ice cream was a bit too bitter.

Originally I’d ordered a Black Forest Pancake but the waiter informed that it wasn’t available so I settled for Crème Brulee @ RM13.80  which was the best offering of the night as the dessert came with vanilla soft serve ice cream in a cup and the top of the Crème Brulee was so superbly crisp. It was also not too sweet, this is perfection. Smooth and creamy egg coupled with the slightly burnt top – I would just return to Franco for this.