One Happiness Seafood Restaurant, Kepong: Happy Comfort Food!

One Friday night, Ten Happy Foodies gathered to savor One Happiness Seafood Restaurant in Kepong!

I m still discovering hidden gems in Kepong and this never fails to amazed me each time. One Happiness Seafood Restaurant is located facing the main road of Jalan Rimbunan Raya 1 with a huge neon sign highly visible on the main road. As always in a food session, I look forward to see what this Chinese seafood restaurant has to offer… J

Accompanying two shop lots, the ambience is minimal with its distinctive red chair, pink tablecloths and several Chinese arts adorning the walls. There are also the usual live fish tanks on display to reassure its customers that all seafood is as fresh as one can get!

Here’s a Chinese snack of Nuts & Crackers to get us started while we wait for others to arrive!

Fish is significant seafood in very Chinese cuisine and this is also a testament to the chef’s skill. Our first dish to arrive was Pomfret Slices with Crispy Bones. Pomfret, a highly prized fish among the Chinese household, is prepared two ways here for enjoyment.

Thick slices of pomfret were lightly stir-fried with bell pepper, celery, snow peas and ginger to evoke a sense of comfort food. Sweet and fresh, the fish was cooked well to tenderness while the vegetables still retained its crunch for a contrast texture.

In Chinese cuisine, nothing is left to waste; therefore, the pomfret bones are chopped up to pieces and deep-fried to superb crispiness. Well seasoned, the bones are just like crackers! We all loved munching on this very much as it was truly delicious… J

Our next dish was quite sinful but being foodies, sinful dishes are usually a favorite among us. Stewed Dong Poh Pork displayed a luxurious piece of pork belly braised in the infamous ‘Dong Poh’ sauce. The version here has a lighted color of amber gold and I personally felt it tasted a bit sweeter than other versions that I have tasted.

Check out the layers of sin! A very nice piece of pork belly if I may say so because the layers of fat are very evenly intertwined with the lean meat.

Golden Fried Mantou was not spared as we used this to mop up the braised pork sauce!

I highly recommend the Special White Curry Prawns that came bubbling in a claypot! The flavor of this dish is very unusual as there is a hint of sour undertone and yet, it’s not overly creamy. I could taste a lot of herbs like mint and lemongrass in the curry. Dried shrimps are also present among the big prawns. The creaminess of the curry is due to evaporated milk to lighten the calories of the curry.

Prawns are huge and fresh with a good bite! I actually drank a lot of the curry soup as it is very addictive and flavorsome. The curry broth is actually very light and has a thin consistency to mimic a soup rather than a thick curry. Love this and definitely the showstopper at One Happiness!

Our next dish of Pork Ribs with Blackcurrant Sauce was quite a fruity sensation on my palate. Pieces of hog were fried to golden brown and coated with a sweet and fruity blackcurrant sauce. The dish is perfect for kids as the flavors are quite wholesome and fruity.

I spied pieces of grapes in the dish to boost up the flavors of the ribs. My only gripe in this dish is that some pieces of the ribs are still with the tendon intact so it was a bit chewy if you happen to pick up that tendon part.

I am a bean curd fan! Give me bean curd in any form and I will enjoy it tremendously with white rice. Our dish of Bean Curd with Crab Meat and Vegetable came in a mini steel wok with a small burner to keep this bubbling hot.

Big pieces of smooth bean curd were bathed in a thick sauce of fresh crab meat, fish maw and snake gourd or ‘Seng Gua’. A sprinkling of wolfberries completed the appearance of the dish. Flavors were light and showcase the sweet crab meat thoroughly. A dish that soothes the soul when comfort food is in need!

Thai Style Roasted Chicken also showcased the chook being prepared two ways. Variety is the spice of life!!

Our portion of the Thai Roasted Chicken has a delicious crispy skin that I enjoyed very much. I guess the Thai influence in this dish is the marinade and also in the Thai Sweet sauce that was beneath the chook. I prefer the chicken on its own as I thought the Thai sauce was a bit too sweet for my liking.

The Thai Chicken Salad was better as it was enhanced with a refreshing salad of apple, cucumber, shallot and bird-eye chilies. This time, the dish had a good balance of sweetness contrasting against the spiciness while a hint of ginger torch added a lovely aroma to the salad.

Home Fried French Beans may look ordinary but the flavors were full of wok heat and lifted the aroma of the beans nicely. I was told that the chef makes his own ‘Tau Kon’ or hard bean curd to accompany this dish specifically. The vegetable dish had good crunch factor from water chestnut and natural sweetness from the French beans and shrimps. This dish was wiped out clean in no time!

We forgo our usual white rice and opted for noodles and fried rice for this round. So we asked the chef to whip up some of his specialties for the rice and noodle section.

First up was the House Special ‘Kon Chau’ Fried Beehoon. Decent as the rice noodles were soft and filled with egg flavors, sliced meat and bean sprouts. The only thing is the flavor was a bit too sweet again for my preference.

Yong Chow Fried Rice was stir-fried with loads of chopped ‘Char Siew’, shrimps, long beans and egg. The rice was the grainy kind for those who enjoy such texture.

Among the three dishes, I prefer the house signature Braised Hong Kong Yee Mee with Crab Meat! The egg noodles had a lighter yellow than usual Yee Mee and tasted really good in flavors and texture.

Braised wonderfully in a sauce of crab meat, mushroom and scallion, the flavors were surprisingly light and savory. I detected a hint of Chinese wine in the sauce and this was confirmed by the chef himself later that he also uses wine and pork oil to enhance the flavors. No wonder the noodle is so delicious!! (wink!)

We rounded up our meal with house dessert of Sweet Corn with Sago! Mimicking the usual honeydew sago, I actually love the sweet corn dessert a lot! Readers from my past post, I have confessed a liking towards corn so maybe it’s due to this that I find myself enjoying this dessert fabulously.  Fragrance of sweet corn bits perfumed the milky dessert with pearls of sago was a great way for me to end my meal!

The dishes at One Happiness Seafood Restaurant tend to run towards an almost home-cooked style while occasionally surprising its customers with unique dishes like the Special White Curry Prawns and Pork Ribs with Blackcurrant Sauce! Yes, flavors are more on the sweet end so this really depends on your preference of palate in terms of delicious. However, one can enjoy a warm series of dishes that lends a soothing sense to those in need of comfort food. With this in mind, it is always the simplest and comforting things in life that brings happiness and I think One Happiness just about sums it up! J

One Happiness Restaurant Sdn. Bhd.

117,119, Jalan Rimbunan Raya 1,

Laman Rimbunan Kepong,

52100 Kuala Lumpur.
Tel : 03-6257 7277

Fax : 03-6257 3277