Midi 57, Jalan Bangkung, Bangsar

Midi 57 has been a long-standing favourite of ours. Partly due to its location (it is very near to where we live) but mainly due to the authentic Italian food on offer.

Coming from Bangsar Shopping centre, it's a lovely short walk through a very wealthy neighbourhood.

These leafy suburban streets contain some seriously nice houses.

However, after around 10 minutes of enviously strolling around the quiet streets, you come to Jalan Bangkung, one of Bangsar's hidden gems. At the top of the Bangkung strip is Midi 57.

One of the nice things about Midi 57 is its lack of windows or walls - the whole thing is open, which makes it a very pleasant spot for a very reasonably priced happy hour pint.

After a few of these, we moved to another table and decided to order some food. Before I talk about the food, I'll give you a bit of background to Midi 57.

When we first went the menu was very different to the one you get today, the choice of pastas and pizzas was a lot more varied, and the Sicilian chef then working the wood-fired pizza oven is now worryingly absent. The changes have not been for the better, as the following reviews will indicate.

We started by ordering some pork croquettes, RM15:

These were irritatingly smothered in a mayonnaise sauce.

The shredded pork inside was lean and well cooked, however the batter was very heavy.

Overall - Ok but should have been a bit lighter 2.5 / 5

One of our tried and tested Midi 57 favourites is the porchetta and rocket pizza, RM26.

This is still a good looking pizza but is now tragically a shadow of its previous incarnation. The tomato sauce was far too sweet and the ratio of cheese to sauce was all wrong. The pork and rocket combo still worked but was let down by everything else.

Overall - Was once one of the best pizzas in KL, it isn't anymore unfortunately 2.5 / 5

Erin ordered the spaghetti with garlic, chilli, and roasted pork belly RM 26. A choice dictated by the now sad lack of great homemade pasta dishes. When the dish was first served it looked like this:

As you can see, it was very dry. The waiter was soon summoned to intervene and came back with this version:

This was much better, with the linguini style pasta especially good. The pork belly was a bit dry and almost tasted old. On the plus side, the newly added garlic sauce worked reasonably well.

Overall - decent but a far cry from the old pasta dishes that used to be on offer - 3 / 5

So where does this leave Midi 57? We didn't just catch it on a bad day unfortunately; I thought we had done that about a month ago and didn't write up a review out of respect to what Midi 57 used to be. It is still a decent non-halal italian restaurant but it is a shame to see it deteriorate so much - I feel a twinge of sadness writing this!

I would say that we haven't given up hope just yet for a revival, I don't know the circumstances behind its decline. It is however, still a lovely place for an early evening drink and offers good beers at good prices.