Tamarind Springs

I'm a little behind on my post for Tamarind Springs as Bill and I went Friday night. Now that I think about it has almost been a week! The week has flown by. We love Tamarind Springs. The atmoshpere is so different than what we have ever experienced and the food is good, too. It is located in Ampang about 20 minutes from our house in Desa Sri Hartamas...give or take depending on traffic and rain. We have our driver take us there so we can fully enjoy the wine...I mean experience :). It happened to be raining Friday night which made for an even cozier night. Our driver, Nathan used the word cozy. It was funny. Tamarind Springs or should I say the entrance is up on a hill. There is a neat little gate and water fountain surrounded by lots of jungle. This is the place Bill and I saw monkeys when we were here in May. Lots of diplomats and such live up on this hill in Ampang. It is a little secluded and very beautiful. Anyway, after walking through the gate, there is a long walkway/staircase down to the restaurant. The walkway is just slightly descending so not many steps but it is a very old brick/paver walkway surrounded by jungle, a lit candle here and there, and many sounds of nature. The water dripping from the rain on the treesand plants, the water fountains surrounding the restaurant and the little night creatures all make for a very relaxing atmosphere. I wish my camera would take good pictures here, but alas it is too dark. You walk in the restaurant and to the left is a large balcony that portrudes out into the jungle. This is where we have sat both times. We've had table #8 both times - I assume you can request any table and it is in the very far corner of the balcony or deck. The place is all wood, wood floors, wood beams and railings and they have gold indonesian statues and pots carefully placed on beams and tables surrounded by candle light. There are candles on the deck railing and candles on the table surrounding a gold statue. It is all very pretty. I must say the only downside for me personally at this restaurant is the smell. Somewhere they have incense of some sort burning and I personally prefer to smell the food I'm eating rather than anything else. Still I will go back over and over. Prior to dinner they serve the chinese chips which remind me a lot of some chip you can get in the US, but I can't remember what they are called. Bill would know. It's like a puff - almost like styrofoam, but here they are good. They serve them with a spicy, sweet, tangy dipping sauce like you can get with egg rolls. I think they call them shrimp chips here. Something like that, but they are good and I think Chinese. For dinner this night we share the crispy crab and shrimp spring rolls which are served with a lime/cilantro/pepper sauce and they are delicious. I could eat 12 of them. For dinner I order the stir fried beef with lemongrass and pepper. Bill orders the Laotian beef soup, Tamarind river lobster (replaced with river prawns due to availabilty issues and we order garlic fried rice and sauteed asparagus and garlic. Lots of garlic? Yes. Delicious? Definitely. Our waiter tonight got our order a little mixed up, but they ended up bringing everything we ordered. We were a little disappointed with that, but everything else outweighed the mess up. My beef was very good. For anyone not adventurous eating Asian food this would be one of the things I would recommend. It is very good and from what I know does not contain anything weird. Bill's Loatian beef soup was wonderful. He decided that was his favorite thing of the night, but he loves soup. Yes even in the heat and it was a little spicy. SO my sweet man was sweating it up. It's a little warm eating out, he's eating hot soup, and it is a little spicy. But I did agree with him it was very tasty. Bill had the Tamarind river prawns and they were good as well. There were about 4-6 large prawns (grilled I think) and then served on top was the Tamarind sauce...a little sweet, tangy, smoky. I really can't remember too well, but it was very good. You do have to get used to seeing heads here. Almost all shrimp and fish are served with the heads on. I'm used to the shrimp. The fish not so much. I love Nemo! Our garlic side dishes were very tasty. The rice was wonderful and even though I'm a grilled asparagus kind of girl, the asparagus and garlic sauteed side dish was very good. Yes Bill and I could have killed people with our breath I'm sure, but we didn't care. We so enjoyed our dinner. I had coffee and dessert. The coffee was good and brought out on a cute little ceramic serving tray, with matching mug and bowl of sugar. The dessert was ok. They have two other restaurants down the hill - Italian and...I can't remember. For dessert you can order from the other restaurants as well. I chose tiramisu and it was just ok. I'm not a big coconut milk, fruity kind of dessert person which is very Asian. One note on Taramind Springs...duuring Ramadan they have a buffet. It contains food from all 3 restuarants. I checked it out and it looked pretty good, but we passed on it. All in all we really enjoyed the night. We walked back up the long pathway surrounded by the night and stopped at the top to admire the water fountain and tree frog staring at us. There was another frog making lots of noise, but we couldn't find him. I'm posting a few pictures I took back in May. They didn't turn out so well, but maybe you can get a sense of the ambience.