Gastronomy Galore At Five Sen5es Westin KL

This is my 2nd visit to Westin KL’s Five Sen5es, their ultra-chic Chinese restaurant without the usual traditional Chinese restaurant decor. They have an open concept kitchen where you can see the chefs preparing your meal from wherever you are seated.

As you enter the restaurant, there’s water element in the form of a shallow pond. I wonder if this is for aesthetic purposes or “feng shui”. Lighting in this restaurant is a little dimmer than at most Chinese restaurants I have been to but then Five Sen5es is no run-of-the-mill Chinese restaurant.

The abalone soup came in quite a big bowl for 1 person. Within the bowl os an entire pear complete with the pear “hat” to seal in the ingredients. So much goodness in the pear including fish maw, whole abalone and chunks of chicken. Superb soup! The soupl is actually enough for two persons.

Who doesn’t love Peking duck skin wrapped with spring onions and sauce in spring rolls? These were excellent but they didn’t wrap all the duck skin in spring rolls and I feel they should have. The extra duck skin was left on a plate for us to dip into the sauce and it was only when almost all had been devoured that we were asked whether we wanted more spring roll skin. Too late!

The duck meat was minced and stir fried with chillies for us to wrap with cabbage leaves. The meat was a bit salty but balanced by the cabbage leaves.

The coral perch steamed with soy sauce was the best dish as the flesh was so tender and melted in my mouth.

I don’t know exactly what this prawn dish is called but it was excellent, second only to the steamed fish. The batter wasn’t too thick and the prawns were sizable, succulent and went so amazingly well with the thick sauce around them.

It’s been years since I last had venison so at first bite, I mistook the venison with asparagus in black pepper sauce for beef. Parts of it was tender while other parts were a little tougher but overall, the black pepper didn’t overpower the meat.

When the bowl of cream mango pearl sago with crushed Thai pomelo was brought over, I thought it was such a big bowl but as you can see, the dessert doesn’t fill up the entire round bowl, just the inner triangular bowl so there’s actually not that much of it. I don’t know if it was the Thai pomelo bits but some of what was in the bowl tasted bitter. The creamy mango had the perfect consistency. The ideal dessert to round up a delightful dinner at Five Sen5es.