Manmaru fuses fun and flavour in its dishes
MALAYSIA ( Petaling Jaya) - It sounds like a bad idea at first. But the marriage of two culinary worlds
Located in a low-key corner of Atria Shopping Gallery in Petaling Jaya, Manmaru Robatayaki & Bar plys non-purist flavour combos with its distinctly Japanese menu peppered with slight Italian accents.
Opened several months ago by restaurateur Audrey Teh, a Nippon-phile who thought it was high time for “a different kind of Japanese restaurant” in Malaysia, Manmaru gets its inspiration from the fusion eateries that are so common throughout Japan but remain a relatively unexplored genre here.
Thanks to Danny Leow, the stoic but affable head chef of Manmaru, she’s able to tackle her vision head on. If Leow was ever told as a child not to play with his food, he didn’t listen.
Trained in a Japanese-Italian restaurant in Fukuoka, Japan, for a year under “the master of fusion cuisine” Kimijima-san, who’s now a celebrated head chef at Ozeki Kuala Lumpur, Leow has a knack for knocking diners over with a steady stream of artfully composed dishes that could rival more highfalutin Japanese dens here.
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