we happened to be in damansara uptown last thursday and decided to walk down the shops around the standard chartered bank row in search of a nice place for lunch. noticed quite a few modern kopitiamlike eateries, serving the typical white coffee, roti bakar, curry noodles etc which i didn’t feel like. instead we settled for this seemingly new-ish restaurant bearing the name “Sea Star Kitchen”.
i was a little surprised to see a hakka specialty - “lui cha” (客家擂茶) in its menu. i am not unfamiliar with this dish as it’s one of my grandmother’s specialty. as she does not skimp on the ingredients, i have always been a little reluctant to eat this whenever i eat out as most of the times they fall short in comparison. the soup is perhaps the most important, as it’s cooked with a consortment of pounded herbs, tea leaves, sesame seeds, peanuts etc. to make the dish more flavourful, it is served with a variety of stir-fried greens (seven types being the norm), roasted peanuts and a trio mixture of pickled radish, beancurd and dried shrimps.
when served, the dish seemed promising despite the soup being a lighter, brighter shade of green than i am used to. taking into account customers who may want to go easy on the soup, the soup was served separately. unlike the way my grandmother cooks, the beancurd & pickled radish is served separately here, together with stir-fried cabbage, leafy vegetable (bok choy), leek, long beans, coriander (chinese celery) and roasted peanuts. a very promising beginning indeed. eager to tuck in, i poured all my soup into the rice and its accompaniments and just dived in. 
so, the verdict. the soup was a tad too salty for my liking, which i guess helped the dish live up to its other name - “Salty Tea Rice”. and there wasn’t enough oomph from the pounded herbs which probably meant that i was far too used to the abundance of herbs used in my grandmother’s version. still, it was more authentic than i would expected it to be but i wouldn’t be craving for it anytime soon (unless my grandmother has returned to my hometown and i have no frozen rations. afterall, beggars can’t be choosers, can they?).
the restaurant also served a variety of other quick meals and my colleague opted for the salted fish & chicken fried rice which was actually quite delicious due to the lingering wok hei (a certain smoky taste brought on by the hot wok). i think the only complaint was that the sunny side up served together with the fried rice was too oily! another thing that i thought was too oily was the soft shell crab which we ordered as a starter. i couldn’t understand why the chef topped the crab with fried shallots as well, as it didn’t add any value to the dish. the price was also a little steep at RM7.90 each.
