Rick's Cafe @ One Bangsar

This is a very old post which i have not had time to do, and i was lazy to load up my big PC to search for photos ( it is the heat ) so i thought i will write a review for Rick's Cafe @ One bangsar. I stumbled upon this place via The malaysian insider ads ( ahem ) and i was looking for a place that offer buffet for a big group of 23. My ex vendors were leaving our company ( was quite sadden after 3 years being together, we have become friend some as really close friends and others, friendships that i would like to maintain ) so my colleagues and i thought we could treat them lunch for all the support they have given to us. After some huuing and haaing... ( budget was an issue for such a fantastically big crowd ) Rick's cafe seem like a perfect place. After all, they offered a RM38 all you can eat lunch. Now, i am not sure why silly me thought that it was a buffet. By the way, if the name sound's familiar, yup it's from the movie Casabalanca and it is styled similarly so.

I made an appointment for thursday the week after. However, i started getting hints( spidey senses a tingling ) that this place is not as cut out as it is to be. For one...... the waiter called on wednesday ( the day before )to ask why we were not attending... Dude .... i told you on the phone wednesday - even quoted the date to him when i made the reservation. On the day itself, i was suprised that we were the ONLY table in the restaurant. Undeterred... i thought it was a good idea since this group was extremely boisterious. And hungry as i was soon to find out.

Rick's RM38 lunch all you can eat offer is you call anything on the menu. It can be salads, desserts, mains but it does not include drinks ( becareful here - the drinks killed us that day($$) ). Also any left over, they charge you RM10 per 100gm to discourage wastage. So, being split to table of 4 per person we decided to each other something. Let it be known that my staff of 4 men -really ate up a storm that day. And they calculated that if they ordered ala-carte, the 4 of them ate up RM282. That explains the lack of motivation post lunch work.

Ok, pictures ... please... My table was a bit sad that day, with only 1 guy, he could not eat up a storm. One other was felled by illness, well.. i am not really the bottomless pit anyway, so here is what we had.


This is a Chicken skewers - when we ordered it, we thought it was a heck of a lot bigger but when it came... the first japanese word that came into my mind was... "eh ... chikkoi"... [very very small]. Taste wise, quite good.


Next was a fish dish. I can't really remember what it was called - cajun was some of the spices stated in the menu but it didnt taste Cajun at all. Tasted more like curry marinated fish and we did not like this dish. Firstly, twas fishy and secondly, it is too wet for my liking. I thought Cajun food was mostly grilled and less watery.

Something we all liked... pizza. You cannot possibily go wrong with the hawaiian style pizza. Crunchy base which we liked this one alot. Needless to say this one was a thumbs up in our books.


We didn't order this, but the table next door decided to go for healthy and ordered a salad. And i, decided to take picture of course! You can see bits of beef bacon here to add some oomph to the salad - i dont believe i heard any complaints from my colleague for this.
We stole some of the neigbhour's pepperoni pizza. Some how our table likes pizza - the others were ordering big mains on their end. No pics as they were quite far down the other end of the table. I prefer the first pizza though, i just thought spicy sausages were really not my thing.

One of my staff ( the mean eating machines ) ordered burger with fries? We had the chicken version which we think tasted like plastic. The beef version was pronounced ok from my staff's feedback but they have eaten better ones. Hey. They each had a burger while my table each SHARED a burger. See the trend in this restaurant? Some good dishes and then there are some not so good dishes. Eating in places like this sometimes can you a high and low at the same time.


I think the next dish was a high in my books, Funghi Risotto. Now, i discovered this seems to be an acquired taste. I ordered it and passed it around the table for the rest to try. Now, dispite rice being a local favorite, this didn't go well for some. One staff told me... "milk and rice tastes weird" ( screws up face for maximum gross out effect ) while one, thought it was awesome. Me? I thought it was my best dish of the day. Love the smell of the mushrooms which is highly infused in the rice. It is pretty true that risotto is an acquired dish, even in my family. While my brother and myself love this dish, my parents are from the school that this is WEIRD. Sigh.

Ah, another not so fabulous dish - the pesto. I found it drenched in oil :(. I had better pesto before than this and found this difficult to eat. By this time, i was actually full to the brim already. ... However i want to make sure i get my RM38 dollar worth, i ordered ginger ice cream. ...


I have to say, i give Rick's Cafe a 2 thumbs up in terms of dessert. All the desserts we ordered and believe me it was a lot was excellent. I am thinking the dessert cook and the main cooks must be different teams. Because my colleagues were raving about the desserts even after the session. On of the hot hot favorites is this one, the chocolate cake with melted chocolate inside. Believe it or not, the boys were fighting over this dessert. Everyone of them had one - i tasted my neighbour's one and yes, it was really good. Not too sweet, bitter enough for me and with hot ooozing chocolate in the center. I think we eat all the remaining chocolate cake for the day.


And my rather suprisingly tasty ginger ice cream - YUMZ!! By the way, they have the strangest range of ice cream. Needless to say, the boys in the team tried every possible flavor.

I have to point out there were some dishes that did not make the picture here because i really did not think the taste lived up to my expectation - one was the duck in garlic confit. This dish put me off the most because it was so gamey and really we could not finish this dish. As much as i like duck but gameyness of it was just a really put off. Secondly the chicken burger plastic meat taste was something i cannot explain. Remember i told you that if you did not finish the food they charge you per extra, since the duck was so gamey we left it. When it comes to paying the waiter came with a mini weighing machine. I told the head waiter we could not finish it because the duck was just plain awful and in the end they did not charge us. I have mix feelings about this place, dessert- awesome mains - so so.

Now, the big group of us eat up to RM 1,210. The biggest cut in price was in the drinks which was not part of the RM38 so... if you ever head out here - ORDER WATER! And oh, to my ex vendors - ... it was nice working with you guys :) And thanks for all the help you have given to us.

For the curious:
Rick's Cafe Casablanca
One Bangsar
63C, Jalan Ara
Bangsar Baru
Kuala Lumpur


View Bangsar Eats in a larger map

P/S: i notice their website is down now....