Bidou pays delicious tribute to legendary icons of French cuisine

The Star

a day ago

Perched on the second floor of a quiet, sleepy row of shop lots in Kuala Lumpur's affluent enclave of Damansara Heights is Bidou.
The eatery is easily one of the prettiest restaurants around, with a feminine colour palette that blooms through the peach walls and blush accents scattered through the space.
The interior is elegant yet yields an easy, unfussy charm. One end of the space is bookmarked by giant picture windows which highlight the canopy of trees that line the street beyond – a glorious view, especially when sunset casts a burnished glow along the horizon.
The eatery is owned and operated by Paramount Foodprint and is the brainchild of Malaysia's top ranked chef – the illustrious Darren Teoh of KL's only two Michelin-starred restaurant, Dewakan.
Teoh is the Michelin-starred chef behind Bidou, which pays homage to French culinary icons. — Bidou
Teoh has long been regarded as the godfather of modern Malaysian cuisine – a style of cuisine that he helped elevate and put on the map.
While Dewakan is all sophisticated shine and bright city lights, with a cutting-edge menu that trawls through the cornucopia of ingredients and cooking styles in the land, Bidou is a nod to Teoh's culinary past and the French gastronomic ghosts and gods that have influenced his path. These include – to name just a few – Paul Bocuse, Roger Verve, Daniel Calvert and Michel Guerard.
In the earlier part of his career, Teoh had the opportunity to work at a number of pivotal restaurants in Singapore, namely the three Michelin-starred French gourmet temple Les Amis, and Sebastien's Bistro, a small French restaurant that helped sharpen his French culinary pedagogy.
This French connection continued with Singapore's Au Jardin, which became the final component in his French trinity.
The eatery, located in Bukit Damansara, is elegant and yet has a soulful, easy charm. — Bidou
At Bidou, Teoh's French tutelage has come full circle. Bidou itself means 'tummy' and is also the surname of one of Teoh's former lecturers who meant an awful lot to him.
Running two restaurants – one of which is recognised as the best in the country – is no mean feat but the industrious Teoh continues to shuttle back and forth between Dewakan and Bidou. On an everyday basis, he has entrusted the kitchen at Bidou to Dewakan stalwarts – chefs Leng Yik Siang and Noel Smith.
The menu is a choice between two prix fixe (fixed price) multi-course options – a three-course menu priced at RM290nett or a four-course menu priced at RM377nett. Each course features a litany of choices as well as specials which are changed every week to ensure there is always something new to whet the appetite.
If you're opting for the four-course menu, a great meal opener would be the Langue De Beouf Provencale or thinly sliced beef tongue, provencale sauce (a tomato sauce enhanced with herbs de Provence), pomme Darphin (potato cake) and rouille marsellaise (garlicky mayonnaise spread said to have originated from Marseille in France).
The beef tongue tastes as spectacular as it looks. — Photos: ABIRAMI DURAI/The Star
While beef tongue may not conjure pleasant aesthetic imagery, the dish that appears before you is nothing short of a stunning head-turner.
The tongue has been slow-cooked and thinly sliced and then twisted and contorted into artistic configurations, with olives and cherry tomatoes slipped into crevices and folds.
On the palate, the dish is exuberant – the beef is incredibly tender and bears no resemblance to sinewy beef tongue you might have encountered before and this bovine richness is accentuated by the acidity of the tomatoes and the briny countenance of the olives.
The potato pancake that layers the base is excellent – a crisp carapace yields easily to a soft, spud-filled interior.
The foie gras pate offers a superlative experience that proves thoroughly unforgettable.
Another option worth investigating from the selection of first courses is the Salade Gourmande De Michel Guerard.
The legendary chef that the dish takes inspiration from died last year at 91 and is consistently regarded as one of the founders of French nouvelle cuisine.
While the garden salad (green apples, lettuce and a hazelnut dressing) is what is attributed to the three Michelin-starred Guerard, it is the foie gras pate buttressed by prune compote and almond tuille that truly steals the show.
I've had numerous renditions of this in some of the best restaurants in Strasbourg, France – considered the birthplace of foie gras – and yet this particular version is truly outstanding.
The pate has creamy connotations, a rich oleaginous pulsing heart and strong, pronounced duck liver flavours coursing through its veins.
The almond tuille breaks through the overt qualities of this opulent dish while the prune compote adds a fruity, astringent layer of contrast. It's a clear example of a dish where thought and execution are congruent with each other.
Creamy and soothing, the vichyssoise is a treat for the senses. — ABIRAMI DURAI/The Star
For the second course – if you're lucky – you might just get to indulge in the special of Vichyssoise Avec Eouf Pocche.
Vichyssoise is a French soup made of cooked and pureed leeks, potatoes, onions and cream.
Here, the potato and leek soup is served with a poached egg, hazelnuts, truffle oil and homemade veal bacon.
The soup is creamy but not overbearingly so and the poached egg lends a tender, gooey, yolky quality to the meal that takes it from comforting to deeply endearing in one fell swoop.
Special mention should also be given to the veal bacon which has meaty overtures that sluice through the broth and give it a different prism with which to experience the meal.
The hearty, rustic seafood stew is a celebration of the bounty of the sea.
From the main course options, try the Morlie En Bourride or traditional Provencal-style seafood stew.
The stew is strewn with a panoply of aquatic treasures, from red grouper to black mussels, oysters, cod throat and a divine salted cod.
The sauce that forms a protective pool that keeps the seafood afloat has a lemon-enhanced soul that gives it a zesty energy that will make you want to keep sipping on it.
At its heart, this is a dish that harnesses from the sea – and pays respect to what it has taken.
Each sea creature here is flavourful; its individual uniqueness and core strengths highlighted to full effect, and this careful treatment is telling of all the hard work that has gone into producing this epic underwater odyssey.
The steak is a carnivorous treat that is paired with an anchovy butter that takes it to whole new dimensions. — ABIRAMI DURAI/The Star
If you're after more carnivorous options, go for the Steak Grille Au Beurre D'Anchois or grilled steak cut of the day with anchovy butter sauce and potato and celeriac pave (layered potato cake).
The wagyu tenderloin is served medium rare and has an initial hefty chew and bite that then yields to succulent, juicy meat.
The anchovy butter provides a great umami-laden counterpoint to the meat and the two prove how diametrical opposites can yield masterful unions. The only outlier here is the potato pave which is a little lacking in seasoning.
For desserts, if you have the option of the specials in the form of the Aztec Chocolate Souffle with Blood Orange and Balsamic Reduction, please don't skip it.
The chocolate souffle is a bewitching temptress juxtaposed against an astringent blood orange reduction.
The souffle is infused with a strong dark chocolate essence and is light and fluffy with a decadent streak.
This boldness is cut through by the blood orange reduction, which is a tart, acerbic seductress that winds her way into your heart and never leaves.
Despite the many imposing French names scattered throughout the menu, Bidou is probably one of the most accessible, easy-to-love French restaurants in KL.
Ultimately, the restaurant's core appeal lies in the soulful quality that it seems to effortlessly possess.
It flows seamlessly from the ambience to the service and finds its highest points in the food, which has been curated with so much heart that its essence seeps from the plate and finds a sweet, euphoric landing in the grin that forms on your face throughout a meal here.
Bidou
Address: 9, Jalan Setiakasih 5, Bukit Damansara 50490 Kuala Lumpur
Tel: [phone]
Open Wednesday to Monday: 6pm to 11pm