Yummy Malaysiana: FOOD: Chicago Rib House 1 Utama, the NEW Old Wing

FOOD: Chicago Rib House 1 Utama, the NEW Old Wing

I thought for a while before writing this review, even wondering if I should.

In the first place, I went to Chicago Rib House after reading many many raving reviews online. Secondly, after much thought, Im pretty sure ours was an isolated case.

Hence, Ill be fair here and while Ill still be honest & share with you guys what happened, Ill focus more on the taste of the PORK BURGER (yes, this is another of my pork burger series) than dwell on the unfortunate food poisoning incident.

To start off my porky lunch, I attempt to allay the guilt by ordering a salad. This Oriental Salad(RM15.90) caught my attention as the menu described that the salad cames with mandarins oranges and a peanut based sauce.

When it was served, I was immediately disappointed with the ingredients.
Going a bit off topic herethis is my peeve about F & B outlets that offers salads on their menu.Its challenging to find good salads these days. Most restaurants, if not all, charge a bomb (or to me it is expensive) for a few miserable leaves, quarters of tomatoes and proceed to drown everything in some generic sauce and they call that a SALAD!Is it so difficult to offer good, decent salads??

My salad above was just plain lettuce with tomatoes and a few cloves of mandarin oranges. All that for RM15.90++! Thats almost RM20!

If theres any consolation, the peanut sauce was decent. Pour it over the lettuce, eat it with a clove of orange and enjoy the match of tangy juicy orange with savoury nutty sauce. While the salad is not bad, it still doesnt justify the price.

BOC Pork Burger, topped with bacon, onion rings & cheese.

This was what I was there for. The presentation was certainly promising, though the sliced cheese put me off. What the heck, for RM27.90, Im sure CRH could do better!

Anyhow, the snob in me doesnt eat sliced cheese so I shove it aside and immediately halved the burger to inspect the patty.

The texture of the patty tells you a lot about how well it was made. A pork patty should ideally not be too finely minced or dense, which essentially means that too much fillers were mixed in. The meat should be loosely packed and able to hold its shape when handled with the hands. Generally, pork is pretty fatty meat but the ratio of fat to lean meatinvolved will have marked differences in the end result.

Having said all that, CRHs pork patty was decent and well seasoned. The overall ensemble was rather plain, with the us! ual lett uce, tomatoes and sauteed onions thrown in. Seriously, a good cut of quality cheese would have elevated the taste of the burger. Imnot big on the rubbery Kraft singles.

And then comes the our half rack Pork Ribs with Honey Mustard, RM32.90.

The marinade, whatever it was, wasnt memorable at all.

The meat?
I thought it had a very funny smell and the marinate was more of a coating than actual marinate as it surely didnt permeat the meat as it should. Thus, me being the rather sensitive type, was able to detect very strong gamey taste as I chewed on the meat.

We left most of the ribs untouched. Even the remains as you see below were actually after several forced attempts to finish it as it would be a waste if we dont. But eventually we gave up as it did tasted pretty foul.

Now this is where I have to relate the after! -meal st ory. My dining partner, Justin vomitted shortly after we left the restaurant and was unwell the whole day. Myself had a short bout of diarrhea the day after.

We took a photo with the girl at the front because Justin insisted. Since we spoke, I took the opportunity to inform her about our weird tasting/smelling ribs. I relate the same to the waiter serving us as well as another guy that was ushering the customers to their seats that day. All of them simply nodded and didnt even volunteer to check if there was anything amiss with our ribs.

I gave up after seeing their non-responsiveness and waved it off as bad ribs place and swore not to return. I had thought the ribs just tasted bad, but it was only after Justin told me he vomitted that I suspected that it may not be that the ribs tasted bad, but it could be that the ribs we had were contaminated.

After all, CRH did many raving reviews and nobody compained that the ribs tasted bad/weird.