Kotaraya - Oakleigh South

Kotaraya in Oakleigh South is a restaurant we visited recently. It has a classier decor than most suburban Asian restaurant. Down lights, a bar, nicely painted maroon walls is classy when put into context with the predominantly $17-18 dishes served.

Kotaraya serves a mix of Malaysian and Thai food. There is also a full page dedicated to Malaysian hawker fare.

We noticed a few dishes in the menu that had won an Asian food festival award 14 and 15 years ago. Perhaps they were trailblazer dishes during that time in Aust... but 15 years is a very long time. Perhaps it is time to ditch mention of the year from the menu?

We ordered the Thai fish (award winner from a decade ago) which was fried fillets of fish topped with sauce reminiscent of tom yum flavour $18. The waitress who took our order tried to explain the dish in Mandarin. She did not look Chinese so when she started speaking in Mandarin I could only gape because it threw me off completely so much so that she asked the question I was going to ask her, 'Are you Chinese?'

The other dish we ordered was the coconut butter chicken $17. We did not expect this dish to turn out also fried. I liked them both but the meal turned out quite dry though.

The restaurant was adequately staffed unlike the typical Asian restaurants where wait staff are scarce and it is considered very fortunate if one did not have to wait ten minutes for any attention.

We give this restaurant a thumbs up for the value for money dishes and friendly service.