Review: Is Skillet KL biting off more than it can chew with its ambitious European fare?

You can tell a lot about a restaurant from its WiFi password. Some restaurants guard their connectivity with the same vigilance as they do their crypto wallet, using a gobbledygook of gibberish. You know what I mean — letters in upper and lower case all over the place, random punctuation marks and, oh, numbers in between. A well-known pastry shop shows its sense of humour (or exasperation with freeloaders) with its not-so-tongue-in-cheek digital age Open Sesame of “orderfirst”. I asked our waitress for the password, then actually did “order first” and asked for the password again, only to be told (again) “orderfirst”.

Then you have a place like Skillet KL, which proclaims its grand ambitions with “besteuropean”. It was the first restaurant of chef-owner Raymond Tham and the Karls Group. It held its Michelin Selected restaurant status for two years before deciding to relocate to Menara Hap Seng 3 sometime this year. Skillet had certainly outgrown its old digs. From a relatively wallet-friendly à la carte restaurant when it first opened, it (d)evolved into a tasting menu-only concept, charging nothing less than RM615 nett per pax. Appallingly, it was even more expensive than its Michelin-starred sister restaurant Beta, until the latter’s very recent 11% price increase.

To be honest, Skillet as it stands is not “besteuropean”. Its signature longan bread, which hints at Taiwanese inspiration and which the staff would proudly tell you was their bestselling delivery/takeaway item during the Covid-19 lockdowns, shows how far we have moved on since those dark days. I mean, it is decent — it is warm and fluffy and pleasantly fills your tummy — but it really does not scream “pandemic lifesaver” to me. This is unlike, say, the tapioca bread at Beta, which is unbelievably good. Another grouse: The accompanying truffle mushroom butter barely tastes of the earthy luxury (and I do not mean truffle oil, which I detest) and does not hold a candle to similar spreads at other restaurants.

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Fish tartare with Amur caviar on rice crisp

Moving on to the lunch menu, the escargots with black garlic and broccoli velouté come across as murky as an oil spill and are about as sad. My companion’s fish tartare hit the spot though, a lively and refreshing cold starter with a beautiful crunch from a large keropok-like rice crisp, a perfect start to lunch in the tropics.

For mains, a well-cooked piece of barramundi floats above a lovely mix of fregola (the Sardinian ball-shaped pasta) and sago. The textural contrast between the petite sago pearls and the more rustic, chewy fregola is very clever, and the lot is tied together with a sweet, full-flavoured tomato sauce. An Oolong tea mousse is decent without being exciting, which is disappointing considering Tham’s acclaimed and justified prowess with pastry. Perhaps, in hindsight, one should have opted for paying RM50++ to upgrade to the signature Cameron Highlands sweet corn dessert. But paying a third of the menu price to supplement the pudding course (not even for an extra sweet, mind you) seems rather profligate in these challenging times.

On the whole, Skillet entices, irritates and confuses in equal measures. For a restaurant group that has clearly been successful for almost a decade and does so many things right, it is missing several marks this time. On the plus side, the service, as at any Tham-helmed restaurant, is always excellent: warm, friendly and competent. The fregola-sago mix is original and delicious, and shows there is some real thought and ingenuity in the kitchen. But many still-unanswered questions remain. Like why, for example, is one end of the proudly displayed wine cellar exposed to the midday sun? And, apologies, but that dessert supplement continues to rankle. None of these things, petty as they may seem, square with its manifest ambition or the sticker price. The WiFi, though, is excellent.

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Escargots with black garlic pesto and broccoli velouté

Score: 13.5/22
Food: 6.75/10
Service: 4/5
Ambience: 2.25/5
Magic: 0.5/2

Budget: RM210 nett per person (lunch); from RM630 nett per person (dinner). Drinks not included.'

Skillet KL. Lot 1-01, Level 1, Menara Hap Seng 3, Jalan P Ramlee, KL. Thurs-Sun, noon to 3pm; Tues-Sun, 6-10pm. (019) 212 1240.

This article first appeared on Oct 7, 2023 in The Edge Malaysia.