Littlepeople and Big Dreams @ Avantas Residences

Takeaway:

Littlepeople serves handmade pasta and rice bowls in the serene setting of the corner lot at Avantas Residences along Old Klang Road. It’s worth a trip to.

By the time you read this, Littlepeople will have changed substantially – even as we write these words, they’ve revamped their interiors and their menu. Which I suppose says something about the laggardly pace of our blog postings, contrasted with the never-ending waves of new eateries in Malaysia and their eagerness to constantly refresh their offerings.

To be fair, Foodgazer doesn’t exist to chronicle the latest spots before they soft launch. Our raison d’blog is slightly different. And we would like to think that this piece stands alone, even divorced as it is from the current updated guise of Littlepeople. After all, restaurants and cafes change. And sometimes, eventually, they close down (tip of the hat to the recently demised stalwart of the third wave, Standing Theory). But as we write this in the first half of 2017 and think back to our visit to Littlepeople, we hope that final chapter stays a long, long way off for this joint, and we additionally hope that this piece captures how we felt about our special little visit to Littlepeople.

We started with a Kenya AA filter.

The incredible smell punches you in the nose first. There’s nothing meek about it. It hits with a roundhouse and it’s a telegraphed roundhouse – the first few notes trickle in before you bring your nose closer for a proper sniff – but it’s an enjoyable one, if that makes sense. You feel it connect and slam against you, jerk your head back to roll with the punch, then bring your nose back down for another go. It’s like living out an episode of Being Cheryl Thunt. Then you sip it and it quickly, effortlessly blooms in the mouth with a swirling, earthy depth. It caresses the mouth and coats it. And then, ever so slowly, it mellows into an almost candied body.

Once it cools down in the air conditioned climate of the cafe, the initial head gives way to an even brighter, more acidic snap. A very enjoyable (and promising) filter to start the night. And we know from previous individual staff visits that Littlepeople serves some very good brews.

Our meal started with the mushroom soup. The mushroom soup was decent. Most people have a particular preference for soup – some like chunky dinner soups, and some prefer the light caress of the chilled, watery afternoon soup. As far as soups go, this was a soup.

Then the proper food started arriving and our Foodgazer team descended on it with a flurry of limbs and chomping teeth. We get paid criminal wages at Foodgazer and we subsist largely on the Foodgazer sponsored meals and the kindness of strangers. In fact, hint hint our Sponsor-A-Foodgazer program is about to launch in a few weeks’ time and will hopefully bring us some much-needed eatery funds. Which is all a roundabout way of saying that we went in with an appetite appropriate for our starved and deprived stomachs.

Thankfully, Littlepeople delivered a great deal better than Pos Malaysia.

First, we fell rabidly on the polenta. The cornmeal was airy and fluffy inside, but with a slight crispiness around the edges. I could personally have done with a richer, more substantial corn taste, but it’s hard to knock a good polenta. Anyway, we are very much corn-based addicts now after (1) Sean Brock on Mind of a Chef, and (2) the corn-based empanadas at Sebastian‘s. In any case, the polenta paired magnificently with the feta cheese and tangy sauce.

There is an old Italian saying that good corn, like a good lady, must always be followed closely by a good bolognese. And so it was that we were served with the conchiglie bolognese, a curiously satisfying plate of pasta. Little-known Foodgazer fact: Bolognese was first invented by Robert Johnson, that sprightly lad who sold his soul to the devil in exchange for some groovy delta blues riffs and an even groovier meat sauce. This particular bolognese we had was spoon-coating, chunky and substantial, which some people say is the only way bolognese should be served. We are some people.

This was a proper bolognese, which is a step above a good bolognese and a brisk running jump above the average Malaysian bolognese. It is (was? how do we use tenses in a food review?) a rich, umami-laden, unapologetically meaty sauce with the slightest lacing of tartness around the edges. What a deeply pleasing dish. As good as ordering an Uber and having it arrive immediately. Although the shells themselves were a wee bit soft since we didn’t ask it to be done al dente. One wonders why the Malaysian palate is socially engineered for soft mushy carbs. Al dente or go home, we say!

Somewhere along the way, we also partook of an arabiata tagliatelle. It came with some squiggly wiggly squid that bounced (literally) between mediocre and rubbery. The prawns were similarly non-descript which always makes us wonder why people opt for mediocre prawns in dishes. Is it because they’re cheap? I remember surviving the 2nd and final year of uni in Canada on flash frozen prawns and instant noodles, so there’s that I guess. Anyway, the seafood accompaniments aside, this was actually a very delectable dish. The sauce has an initially mild taste to it that partially masks a sparky, spicy and ridiculously addictive note. The tagliatelle itself (handmade, we’re told) has a very peculiarly interesting texture to it too. Is it chewy? Not particularly. Is it a rough hand-pulled pan mee kind of shindig? Not really either. But I’ll be damned if it isn’t great in its own right. I have a particular weakness for handmade noodles and their rough-hewn, unpolished textures.

And that just about wraps up our food outing to Littlepeople. We had too few dishes. It ended too quickly. And we left wishing we had spent more time enjoying the time we had spent. So in a way, the entire experience resembled the path of the very own lives of us little people. And regardless of all the fine changes that they’ve been implementing lately, there’s something special about this trip that we hope we captured in the proverbial bottle of this Foodgazer look-back review. Here’s to many more special moments from Littlepeople.

Littlepeople’s IG page. They can be found over at Avantas Residences along Old Klang Road. At the time of writing, they are open Mon-Sun (closed on Tuesdays) 10 am-11pm.