Samad Al Iraqi Restaurant in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

I love how KL has so much Middle Eastern food to choose from. I was quite excited to find that a rather grand chain of Iraqi restaurants from Dubai has an outlet at Menara Prestige (1 Jalan Pinang, 011-1110 0092). One dish that I wanted was a grilled fish called masgouf that I heard about in Dubai many years ago. But it was going to take one hour to grill and it was a big 2 kg portion, which would've been overkill for me as a solo diner.

So instead, I tried to find other quintessentially Iraqi items like this tashreeb lamb, which was cooked in a tomato stew that was poured over flatbread underneath to soak up. The lamb was tender, but not necessarily that interesting aside from the fact that the stew used dried limes to gave it a mildly acidic and bitter taste.

The other thing I got was a meat-stuffed dumpling called kubbah, which was a little more exciting because of the firm bulgur wheat casing with yogurt on the side. But there were raisins in there, so it was a little sweet. I'll be honest in that the food tonight didn't really do it for me, but I really really wanna come back for that fish and I'm gonna have to bring someone along to help me eat it.