Tuesday, March 6, 2018

CCFJ Delight Restaurant -- authentic Malaysian comfort food


It took me quite a while to find CCFJ Delight -- it's at the corner of Dela Rosa and Washington 
streets,  at the new-ish Victoria de Makati building.   However, the restaurant is not readily visible as it is on the floor above street level.  I'm glad I did not give up searching for it as I would have missed out on discovering this tiny gem of Malaysian home cooked food. 



CCFJ is small with room for less than 30 diners.  The place is neat and unprepossessing.
The menu is written on blackboards above the window that looks into the kitchen. While the sign claims Asian fusion food,  it really offers more classic, everyday Malaysian dishes. 
We arrived for a late Saturday lunch and I noticed that apart from us, the rest of the crowd were  foreigners -- Malaysians, Singaporeans and Chinese.  



We started off with a bowl of Pork Noodles with soup.  This was recommended by the owner who happened to be sitting right next to our table.  
It came in a deep bowl filled with very generous amounts of both minced and sliced pork,
meatballs, chopped green onions and bokchoy.
If you're ordering other dishes, one bowl is good enough for two.
The pork broth was clear, light and clean tasting. To heat things up a bit, put a few drops of the chili soy sauce but use it sparingly as it really is hot!


There are a number of rice dishes but Jay opted for the char siew or barbecued pork rice.
Unlike the reddish,  sticky-sweet Hong Kong- style "asado", CCFJ's version hews closer to the
char siew you find in Singapore and Malaysia.
The pork is salty-sweet and dark brown in hue, perhaps due to the use of sweet soy sauce.
The owner said this is their in-house  char siew recipe, made in their own kitchen.


Finally, the dish I had been waiting for ... nasi lemak!
Literally, it means "oily rice" and this very popular dish can be found all over Singapore and Malaysia.  It was my go-to breakfast during those countless trips to Singapore for work.  
So, how did CCFJ's version fare?
It certainly brought back delicious memories of all those packets of nasi lemak that I had enjoyed. 
The rice was properly cooked in coconut milk, fragrant with the aroma of coconut and pandan leaf.  
Their homemade sambal sauce was spicy but not so that it burned the mouth and numbed all your taste buds.  It was the perfect foil to the lightly creamy rice.  
Fried dried anchovies and salted peanuts are meant to be eaten with each spoonful.  
This is the best nasi lemak I have had in Manila although I missed the otah -- the thin, grilled fish cake that traditionally comes with nasi lemak.  
The owner said they could not find a local source for the fish and spices used in making otah
and decided that if they couldn't replicate the original taste, they would rather not serve it at all.  


A toast to the owners of CCFJ for their zeal in bringing only the true and authentic tastes of Malaysian comfort food to Manila.  Martina enjoyed it as much as we did and we will certainly be back for more! 

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