I do love salmon, and I do love fancy restaurants, but I just could not bring myself to spend over $70 for a piece of salmon at the Park Hyatt Kuala Lumpur. Instead, I found an alternative nearby that ended up working very nicely.
Great Salmon In Kuala Lumpur…And At A Great Price
The Park Hyatt Kuala Lumpur has a high-end restaurant called Merdeka Grill. The restaurant offers a “modern grill experience on Level 75, where premium meats, sustainable seafood, and locally sourced produce take center stage, complemented by a curated beverage program” (yawn). The menu is here. One of the specialties is salmon roasted on cedar wood, served with cucumber, grape, caviar, and smoked butter sauce at a cost of 295 Malaysian Ringgit, or about 71.50 USD. I didn’t pay that much for fish even on at The Brando in French Polynesia! But as I looked through the menu, I suddenly had a taste for fish.
Funny enough, One Mile At A Time was there around the same time and actually went to the restaurant and ordered it… and yes, it looks wonderful.
Over the years, I’ve found that reviewing high-end restaurants in hotels does not meaningfully add to the overall review, and if I spend $150, for example, on dinner, I’m not going to make an extra $150 in terms of the review.
Had Ben come a day earlier, we could have had salmon together. But instead, I noticed while having coffee at Kaffee 66 (a cool coffee shop and café in Chinatown, about five minutes by foot from the hotel), that there was salmon on the menu. It was late afternoon, I had not eaten since breakfast. With salmon already on my mind, I ordered it.
And look at it: 
It was delicious. Very delicious. Now granted, I love cedar plank salmon and this did not have that smoky taste, but everything in life is a cost/benefit analysis.
The cost for my salmon?
35 Malaysian Ringgit, about 8.50 USD.
Somehow, there was just additional satisfaction that I enjoyed a delicious salmon dinner without having to pay more than I pay for fish in Los Angeles or New York City.
I’m sharing about my whirlwind trip through Asia.
If only the Park Hyatt had offered Mexican salmon…
That’s hilarious that Ben was there recently, too. (Ben’s looked better (on the wooden plank).
When it comes to fish, I prefer fresh, and I often think of how far away it had to travel to get there. (I know, a lot of it is frozen anyways.) The closest salmon to Malaysia… like Japan, maybe, Russia, Alaska, Norway, Faroe Islands. Oof.