jalanjalan: River View Seafood Restaurant, Selangor

The Selangor river, which gave the state its name, meets the sea at the town of Kuala Selangor. Not surprisingly, for such a strategic location, Kuala Selangor was once the royal capital of Selangor before it was conquered by the Dutch in 1784, who established Fort Atlingsburg on Bukit Melawati (Melawati Hill) overlooking the river mouth and the Straits of Malacca.

Today, Kuala Selangor is part of the international tourist trail, with tourists coming to see the fireflies in nearby Kampung Kuantan, as well as the wild monkeys on Melawati Hill in the late afternoon.

As part of the experience of visiting Kuala Selangor, tourists will also make a visit to chinese fishing village called Pasir Penambang across the Selangor river. Pasir Penambang is famous for its dried seafood produce as well as a profusion of chinese seafood restaurants perched over the Selangor river on stilted timber structures.

River View Seafood Restaurant is probably the most famous of the seafood restaurants.

The restaurant is an open-air structure built over the river with scenic views downstream towards the river mouth.

Across the Selangor river is Melawati Hill with its tele-communication tower. The highest point in the surrounding countryside, it is no wonder that it was fought over by the Sultanate of Selangor, the Dutch and later the British.

The restaurant is a pretty simple structure, but it is clean and efficient. Even at 5:30pm, there are already people eating an early dinner.

The rather curious menu is pretty professionally done, with photographs of what you can order to eat. Curious in that there are no prices listed in the menu, so be careful in not getting carried away in what you order - or you may get a surprise when the bill comes later!

To start off, we ordered our drinks. As usual we go with the lime juice with preserved sour plum (asam boi). Any drink that is green in colour must surely be good right?

Essential condiments with seafood is garlic and bird's eye chillies (cili padi).

To start it off, we went with the salted egg crab. It was good, but nothing spectacular.

The oyster omelette was moist and fluffy and we liked it. Recommended.

We tried the Mantis Prawns next, again okay but nothing out of the world.

The butter prawns were hot and crispy. Fantastic when eaten hot and was probably the highlight of the dinner.

The seafood curry was good for eating with plain white rice.

The bill for two came to RM123.80. Price was not bad, the only thing to watch out would be the crabs and probably the fish, which would be charged according to the size/weight.