Li Yen

Li Yen Restaurant, located in a hotel, offers a truly refined dining experience. The food is undeniably delicious, made with incredibly fresh ingredients that give every bite a rich, satisfying texture. While I may not be able to fully appreciate the high-end nature of the cuisine, there’s no denying the quality of the dishes. However, I feel that even at a regular dim sum shop, I’d also be quite happy. The taste at Li Yen is exceptional, but the price tag makes it hard to justify frequent visits. Each dish is quite expensive—expect to spend around RM200+ per person. That said, for those looking to experience something luxurious at least once in their lifetime, this restaurant is definitely worth a try. The ambiance and service are, of course, top-notch, as you’d expect from a five-star hotel. However, it’s not the easiest place to find—it took us quite a bit of wandering to finally locate it. If you don’t have someone to guide you, it can be a bit of a challenge to navigate. One dish that stood out to me was their snow skin mooncake. It was absolutely delightful, though it comes at a price—about RM25 for just one piece. Similarly, the dumplings were delicious, but at RM25 for four pieces, it’s certainly not something I could afford regularly. The same goes for the siu mai, which is also RM25 for four. As much as I enjoyed the food, the price does make it difficult to recommend it as a regular dining spot. Overall, Li Yen is a great option if you’re looking for a special occasion meal in an elegant setting. Just keep in mind that it’s on the pricier side, so it might not be for everyone. But if you’re seeking a taste of luxury, it’s certainly a place to consider!

Service is very slow like turtle. My 96 grandma who is blind in 1 eye can move and cook faster than this 5 star hotel. Food is expensive as expected so I am not complaining but service need to buck up.

Short review: Everything was very good, and I can recommend this restaurant for everyone. Especially the Peking duck was great! Long review: I found this restaurant when my wife and I were in Kuala Lumpur and we wanted to eat some Peking duck. We are originally from Finland and have never been to China. The FoodAdvisor website told us that this is the best place for Peking duck, so we made a reservation well in advance. Only after making the reservation, did I notice that it was very hard to find any reviews from within the last year. On TripAdvisor, the last review was from March 2023. Many of the most recent reviews mentioned overpriced and low-quality food and bad service. If this was true, I can guarantee that the restaurant has improved significantly! We arrived on a Friday evening at 7 pm. We were quickly brought to a spatious marble table and offered some welcome drinks. Soon afterwards, an artist started to play live on a yangqin (It is played by striking the strings with small bamboo mallets, creating a bright and resonant sound). I can safely say that the dinner service was excellent during the whole meal. We ate several courses (see below) and drank some Chinese rice wine; the wine was warmed up and served in a very delicate porcelain ”teapot”. To a westerner like me it tasted like an aged sake stored in sherry casks and served at 50 degrees celsius, so basically delicious! We ordered some mushroom cones and golden prawns for starters. These were all pretty good, I would say 4 out of 5. The prawns were tasty and pretty fresh, but you could taste them having been frozen shortly, adding a slight fishyness; the mushroom tasted really good and had a good texture. Next came the Peking duck, which was perfect. The skin was fried, wrapped in pancakes and dipped in sweet sauce. Next, the rest of the duck was served with some perfectly al dente noodles. We had nothing to complain about any of this. The service was very, very attentive. As an example, we previously visited Dewakan, a 2-M-star restaurant in KL, and it had a similar, very high, service level. Our napkins were folded onto our laps etc. Wine was refilled every 1-2 minutes. The service was close to perfect. Finally, we ordered 3 desserts: ”herbal jelly with honey” was good; ”glutinous rice dumpling with peach gum and osmantus in sweetened ginger teas” was excellent; ”double boiled sweetened red dates with snow fungus and water chestnuts” was OK but a bit boring. All in all, we were extremely happy and considered this to have been one of the best Chinese restaurant experiences (outside of China) ever. While we have a lot of good Sichuan food in our home country, finding good Cantonese food like this is not even possible. I can recommend this restaurant with all my heart. Even after having eaten at many excellent hawkers in this region, and while acknowleging their high quality and good value, I would still give Li Yen a good value rating.

Perfect service, perfect food and friendly staff. Coming from the UK we found the menu easy to follow and had different interesting fusions. My dessert (coconut with lemon and langan fruit ) was so unusual and delicious with a refreshing aftertaste of lemon