Dining at the Club at Saujana Resort
As you are probably aware Luxurious Magazine visits many high-end luxury resorts each year in our quest to find the best travel properties for our readers. All the resorts we visit have met the very 
high standards we are looking for and provided wonderful facilities, ambiance, hospitality and service. However, on almost every occasion they just miss the mark when it comes to serving food with the ‘wow’ factor. So for us it is always a mixture of excitement and trepidation when it comes to trying the fine dining on offer, even if it is an award winning restaurant.
For our first dinner while staying at the Club at Saujana Resort we opted to try the Senja Italian Restaurant overhanging the huge lake and within the ground of the Saujana Hotel. From the outside the restaurant looks impressive and this theme continued upon entering, the foyer displayed an array of Food Awards all recently won by Chef de Patroni Giovanni Ricci and his team. The Senja restaurant is a large ‘L’ shaped property with a set up for a live band, grand piano, long bar, outside terrace and private dining areas. The general ambiance was similar to the Club Lounge in the Club at Saujana Resort, high quality, that intangible touch of quality and colonialism with the live band providing a nice blend of smooth and easy classics.
After being presented with the menu, we chose the following:
Myself:
Vegetable Terrine with Buffalo Mozzarella
Prawn with Tomato Chilli Sauce and Olive Oil Bruschetta
Lamb Rack with Herbal crust, aged balsamic, Couscous and Broccoli
Chef Giovanni’s Tiramasu
My wife:
Trio Seafood Salad
Adriatic Seafood Soup
Grilled Tiger Prawn Lemon Butter Sauce Steamed Vegetables and mashed potatoes
Pannacotta
Our verdict on the food at The Club at Saujana Resort
Quite simply the food was superb, the reason for this wasn’t just the quality of the plating but the flavours, the crispness of the vegetables, the fish and meats being cooked to perfection and flavour of the desserts which were of such high quality that we had to go back on our last evening to sample them one more time. It was revelation to eat a meal with both style and substance and raised the bar to a level that many other restaurants will find difficult to surpass. The resort management should be congratulated for bringing Chef Giovanni from San Benedetto del Tronto to Kuala Lumpur so that people like me can taste what true fine dining and great flavours should truly be like.
The following evening we were booked to eat at the restaurant within the Club at Saujana Resort. This restaurant is not as large as the Senja Restaurant and doesn’t have the live band and bar, but we were not there for any other reason but to sample the award winning food. Like Chef Giovanni, Executive Chef at this restaurant Alexander Waschl had just won a ‘hat full’ of awards levelling the imaginary playing field I had created between the two restaurants and making this a pure comparison of taste, style and substance.
Being quite a competitive person at heart, I enjoy drawing comparisons between the restaurants at a luxury resort and will generally come up with, in my mind a winner. So it is much to my wife’s delight and after a heated debate that I must agree with her that both the Senja Restaurant and the fine dining restaurant within the Club at Saujana Resort produced equally delicious and impressive food. “The food served at the Restaurant at The Club at Saujana was in all aspects the equal of the Senja Restaurant, the Japanese Beef main course, Foie Gras and dessert were flavourful, texturally perfect and expertly plated”.
We met both of the Chef’s after each meal, and can understand why the food was so good after listening to the passion they put into the creation of each dish. During our stay we also had the opportunity to try out the waterside Japanese Kogetsu Restaurant for a lunch. The Kogetsu recreates traditional Japanese countryside dining with a large show kitchen, separate sushi and Teppanyaki counters for alternative seating options and three Tatami rooms for added privacy. As this meal followed our huge meal at the Senja and we had the forthcoming delights of Chef Alexander later that day, you may think that we would be less than enthusiastic for more food. This wasn’t the case as the fresh fish dishes including the incredible melt in the mouth tuna, noodles, crisp vegetables, beef dish and Teppanyaki Prawns were all delicious even though (and much to my digress) we didn’t get around to finishing all of the foods in front of us, but that’s due to the rare condition I have called ‘Eyes bigger than my belly!’
Within the whole resort grounds there are eight places for you to eat – Suria all-day dining restaurant, Senja Italian restaurant, Restaurant at the Club at Saujana Resort, Kogetsu Japanese cuisine, Ti Chen serving home-cooked style Chinese cuisine, Golfer’s Terrace, Bayu Lounge and Rumah Peranakan (RP) Entertainment Center with live band.
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