Light House Seafood Restaurant in Matang, Perak
The taste of fresh seafood is often unrivaled, and when paired with porridge as a blank canvas, it makes for an incredibly savoury meal that’ll convert even the most adamant porridge naysayers.
You can satiate such seafood cravings at Light House Seafood Restaurant in Matang, Perak.
Only a 15-minute drive from Taiping, this no-frills eatery comes highly recommended by locals for its porridge that’s packed with heaps of fresh seafood, including various fish and seasonal crustaceans.
An antiques shop turned into an eatery
An antiques shop is the last place where you would find food being served. Fragile antiques and decades-old paintings exposed to the hustle and bustle of a restaurant aren’t exactly a match made in heaven. But this is what makes Light House Seafood Restaurant charming.
Occupying a warehouse-like space that once housed Matang Antik, the restaurant retains the charm of its former glory with all sorts of antiques displayed along a wall. Vintage Chinese paintings are hung in almost every corner of the eatery’s walls, making you feel like you’re dining inside an antiques shop.
While Matang Antik has long closed its business doors, many of the items are still found here and on sale.
Spot ornate porcelain tea cups, wooden carvings, and jade sculptures displayed inside wooden cabinets, with some fetching a price tag of RM4,500.
The food at Light House Seafood Restaurant
As Light House Seafood Restaurant is in proximity to Kuala Sepetang, a well-known fishing town that supplies seafood around the area, you can expect the freshest catch to be served at the restaurant, which specialises in Teochew-style dishes.
Patrons can choose how they want the seafood to be cooked – boiled, steamed, or stewed in a claypot – and order them in a myriad of flavours like curry, asam, salted egg, and cream butter. As for their speciality, the seafood porridge, you can order up to four different types of seafood to go with steaming-hot rice: crab, fish, prawn, and squid.
The dishes are reasonably priced, too.
Here’s what we ordered:
Seafood porridge
The star dish of Light House Seafood Restaurant arrived in a big steaming claypot filled with all sorts of seafood treasures. Satisfyingly gluey porridge was crowded with huge fishballs, thick pieces of silver pomfret, and prawns, and also enoki mushrooms and spring onions.
The fishballs were the highlight. Over 10 huge ones can be scooped up from each serving of porridge. Upon first bite, the fish balls had a firm and bouncy texture, then came the subtle sweet taste of their fleshy fish contents. It is definitely not your usual manufactured fish ball – we could tell that it was made with real fish and fewer fillers.
With porridge being a bland dish, the thick slices of fresh pomfret fish and huge prawn pieces also flavoured the rice gruel with a light seafood flavour, resulting in a porridge that was rich yet light.
Steamed soup clams
The Steamed Soup Clams are also a must-try. This dish brimmed with aromatic clams, their glossy sheen of garlic oil enough to make one want to smack their lips.
The clams were steamed together with red and green chillies, spring onions, ginger, and a touch of Chinese wine. The result is a rich yet light soup that pools at the bottom of the dish.
We could tell that the steamed clams were carefully picked and prepared, as all of the clams were open and their contents sand-free – a telltale sign that the clams were freshly caught and cleaned thoroughly.
Fried gray mullet & blanched romaine lettuce
For side dishes, we ordered the fried gray mullet and blanched romaine lettuce.
The fried gray mullet was lightly seasoned, which allowed its natural flavours to shine. As for its texture, the fish was fried to crisp perfection, resulting in crispy goodness in every bite of the fish, whether it’s the fins or the head.
Despite being fish-bone-averse, we found the gray mullet to be surprisingly easy to eat, as the soft bones were so crispy that they broke apart easily with each bite.
As for the blanched romaine lettuce, the leafy greens were lightly glazed in garlic oil and oyster sauce – a fresh palate cleanser to the fishy fried gray mullet.
The verdict
You can never go wrong with a local’s recommendation. With the eatery being only a 15-minute drive from Taiping, and its speciality the seafood porridge, fried gray mullet, and steamed soup clams, it’s a food spot in Matang that’s worth putting on your itinerary list.
Cover image adapted from: TheSmartLocal Malaysia
Photography by Brooklyn.