My daughters were attracted by the souvenir store selling Forrest Gump collectibles adjoining the newly-opened Bubba Gump Shrimp at The Curve in Mutiara Damansara. I’m a fan of Tom Hanks but not of the movie, Forrest Gump. But the girls seemed excited to check it out, so we did.

Stepping inside the restaurant is like stepping into one of ‘em ole time cabins in Greenbow, Alabama. We wound our way through narrow hallways and climbed the rickety wooden stairs to our table on the verandah.

I almost jumped for joy when I saw that they have clam chowder on their menu. It’s hard to find restaurants serving clam chowder since it’s obviously not a popular item with locals. But it’s my favorite!!

Their Old Fashioned New England Clam Chowder is exactly what I’ve been hankering after, complete with authentic New England oyster crackers. It’s very robust, very rich but a bit too salty.

The items on the menu of predominantly shrimp didn’t exactly jump out at us, and I’m glad we did the wise thing by ordering main meals to share instead of one each.

The Captain’s Fish and Chips came on a page ripped out of the smalltown Alabama daily newspaper featured in the movie. Interesting .

But I can’t say the same for the fish. The fish tasted fishy no matter how much lemon we squeezed on it, which can only mean it wasn’t fresh to start with.

The Mama Blue’s Southern Charmed Fried Shrimp was nice and crunchy but tastewise, there was nothing special about the shrimps.

Since we were all starved, I ordered a pasta, Of Course We Have Scampi!, a linguine cooked with capers and garlic, which somehow failed to live up to its name.

As with any pasta, the sauce is what makes the dish. This sauce was watery and much too sour. But what it lacked in taste, it made up for it by a really generous helping of shrimps.

I confess we ordered Shrimper’s Heaven because we liked its name. But if we were expecting it to send us to Seventh Heaven at first bite, we were bitterly disappointed. Even the sauces failed to get us there.

While we were waiting for our food to be served, the waiter came up and attempted a bit of trivia pursuit with us. He told us he’d give us a prize if we got the answers right. My kids took him to his word. But when we asked him about the prize later, he said those questions were “for entertainment only”. He didn’t have to mention a prize, we would’ve played anyways. But to offer the false hope of a prize and then try to squirm away from it later is not funny, even if it’s meant as a joke.

Bubba Gump’s ambience is definitely “sweet home Alabama”. Gotta love the tables with wooden crate shipping marks, a ping-pong bat that’s actually their drinks and dessert menu, and a tin bucket containing the kitchen roll (home-style serviettes) and bottled condiments.

Not to mention, the fun with number plates. The blue sign saying “Run Forrest Run” means everything is hunky-dory, leave us to pig out. This red sign is to signal the waiters for service. If they don’t notice the sign, just start waving like crazy!

All in all, if there’s one thing I’m going back there for, it’ll be their Old Fashioned New England Clam Chowder… after my credit card recovers from shock, that is!!

If you liked this post, subscribe to our RSS feed for more recipes, restaurant reviews and mouth-watering updates. If you've tried this recipe or restaurant, drop us your comment or feedback.