Pasta Zanmai @Hartamas Shopping Center

When we first came out with the intent to start up a food review blog, Syed and I drafted up this 'hit-list' of restaurants or eateries to visit. They weren't all expensive ones okay, as the list also included warongs and road-side eateries. But first on the hit-list was Pasta Zanmai.


They've got quite a few outlets now; we recall seeing it for the first time at One Utama. But, seeing as that we're, ahem, bohemian, we went to the one at Hartamas Shopping Centre, a decision we'd eventually be thankful of.

Pasta Zanmai is essentially a Japanese/Italian fusion concept restaurant. As you could probably see looking at the picture below, there weren't many people considering we went on a Saturday evening. That's the cool thing about HSC I guess. If you check out the outlets in Sunway or OU, you'll tend to find a LOT more folk there.. -_______-"

Anyways, we were greeted by the waitress (who unfortunately did not look Italian nor Japanese) and took our seats. First things first: it's a very nice looking restaurant. Think Zen decor; minimalist with clean lines and soft lighting. Which was nice. What spoiled the effect a bit though was the choice of music (Simple Plan WTH?). But the place was very clean and cozy.

The menus were already set on the table, along with chopsticks, cutlery and serviettes. Every table also got, as you would expect, salt+peppers shakers plus Tabasco sauce and chili powder.

We made ourselves comfortable and took a look at the menu, which is huge in both physical size and selection. It was a great looking menu though. All menu's should have pictures like this.

See what I mean? And that's only two pages of it. We're not big fans of big menus, but at least this one looked like a pretty comprehensive selection. They have starters and sides (oddly placed at the end of the menu, just before desserts), and ta daa, plenty of pasta dishes. We can't recall them all, but we saw tomato based, sesame based, soup based, etc. It was cool to see they had pizza as well, and rice and an awesome looking steak dish.

"Nak makan apa?" I asked Syed.

"Anything, let's try," he said.

"Okay, let's go for one pasta and one pizza, and share, okay or not?"

"And one soft-shell crab!"

We decided to go with something very obviously 'fusion' to gauge out first visit here at Pasta Zanmai. We decided on these:

Sorry for the blurry photo -__-" But anyways that's a prawn and rice cake (!!!) pizza with cheese. And also this:

We admit: for this dish, it was the incredibly appealing idea of Unagi and soft-cooked egg that sold it for us. We fricking love Unagi, and what could be better than Unagi with a soft-cooked egg over pasta, kan? We made our order, along with a battered and fried soft-shell crab to start with.

Naturally, being green tea fans, we also asked for some iced green tea for two that came in a pitcher... and it was only RM3, which is awesome.. :D :D :D

A few minutes later our soft-shell crab starter arrived. It looked great. We squeezed the lemon wedge over, dipped the crispy crustacean in the sauce and... sighed. We looked at each other. Unfortunately, the crabs were overcooked and quite dry. Which sucked. Syed also noted that the batter was greasy and wasn't flavorful enough. The crabs were, eh how to say eh, not 'crabby' enough. It was pretty ho-humm to be honest. We finished it anyway, and hoped our main courses were MUCH better. Just on time:

The pizza came first. Again, it looked great. And smelled wonderful. The aroma of cheese was intoxicating. Ugh, lapar. But it was about to be upstaged.

By this. LOOK AT IT. UNAGI OH SOFT COOKED EGG OH PASTA OH. It looked gorgeous. We couldn't wait. We dug in. Pizza goes first.

The pizza was topped with tomato sauce, cheese, chunky prawns, mushrooms, and each slice had a.. uhm, slice of rice cake on it. We gotta be honest; it looked fantastic. WANT.

We had it without Tabasco or chili, to gauge the actual pizza. It was excellent. The pizza base was crispy but pliable, and it wasn't 'doughy' tasting at all. The cheese was nicely melted and stringy, and the prawns and mushrooms perfectly cooked as they weren't mushy nor were they too tough. The tomato sauce was tangy and sweetish without being tart. But the real star was how the motchi (rice cake) sort of glued together with the pizza base. As Syed said, a 'nice example of fusion'. It was a brilliant mix, a dance of textures that we would see again later.

Hello Unagi and Egg Pasta, can we marry you and have your babies? It was a simple dish; spaghetti with glazed roasted Unagi (eel) and a soft-cooked egg on top. It couldn't possibly be bad, kan?

AND IT WASN'T. The Unagi and Egg Pasta was incredible. At first, we couldn't quite point out what it was. Was it the spaghetti, cooked al-dente? Or maybe it was the chewy, sweetish, savory eel? Possibly it was the way the egg broke into luscious liquid which coated the strands of pasta? In the end we decided it was a combination of all that: like we said above, a dance of textures. The firm pasta, enveloped in silky liquid egg, with the chewy, flaky unagi. Brilliant.

These two main courses more than made up for the initially disappointing soft-shell crab (our benchmark for that crabby critter is Sakae Sushi's). The pasta, in particular. Excellent stuff.

We finished the dishes with happy faces :D This whole food review thing was turning out to be fun, we thought as we sipped our cool green tea. Can we have the bill please:

Not bad huh for two people. Of course, if all you're used to is cheap and watery spaghetti bolognaise from Pizza Hut (huh, tak best), you'd say this is a rip-off. But considering what we had, and the quality of what we had, we'd say this was worth it.

So, to wrap up?

Food rating = 4/5, WANT
Although the soft shell crab was a bit meh, the mains made up for it, a LOT. We're definitely gonna give the food here another try, if what we had was an example of what they could do. Pretty food, pretty tasting food.

Everything else = 4/5, Coolness
The service was good. friendly and prompt, the place was clean (as all places should be, really) and the ambiance was cool. Music kinda spoiled it a bit though. In terms of pricing, it's really not too bad for something different, takkan nak spend this kind of money on burgers or steaks je kan?

Overall = 4/5, WANT and Coolness
It's definitely worth going to, and the food is excellent. Having a huge menu ensures that WE'RE definitely going there again. It rocks.

Pasta Zanmai @ Hartamas Shopping Centre

Lot P-2C, Plaza Ground Floor,
Hartamas Shopping Centre,
60, Jalan Sri Hartamas 1,
Sri Hartamas,
50480 KL.

TEL: 03 - 6201 1610
FAX: 03 - 6201 1690
MOBILE: 012 - 635 1610

Pasta Zanmai review. DONE.