I had a good experience driving the BYD Seal Performance back to Kuala Lumpur from Penang the day after the launch of BYD Mansion Macalister (read about it below), and I decided to see how the car would fit into my typical weekend here in Petaling Jaya.
We drove it down to Brasserie Alma, which is tucked away on the fourth floor of Yap Ah Shak House in Chow Kit. The establishment has quietly become one of Kuala Lumpur’s more atmospheric addresses for an evening out. We headed there to celebrate my partner’s birthday, and the combination of classic French cooking, candlelight and live music made for one of the most memorable date nights we have had in the city.
Brasserie Alma describes itself as a place to “eat well, drink better, and stay awhile,” and that promise holds up from the moment the lift doors open onto the fourth floor. The dining room is warm and unhurried, with velvet drapes separating the main restaurant from The Velvet Room, where a live jazz trio performs on Friday and Saturday nights. For a birthday dinner, it set exactly the right tone: elegant enough to feel like an occasion, relaxed enough that we never felt rushed.
The kitchen is led by executive chef Andy Choy, who took over the kitchen at Brasserie Alma and has been steadily refreshing the menu since. Choy is a familiar name on the Klang Valley dining scene: he is also the chef behind N.I.C.E Bistronome in Kuala Lumpur and THB Bistronome in Petaling Jaya, and has over a decade of cooking experience across China and Malaysia. His classical grounding includes a month-long residency at Restaurant Guy Savoy in Paris, a three-Michelin-starred institution, under a French government-backed chef exchange programme — training that shows in the precision of Brasserie Alma’s menu.
That classical French foundation was evident throughout our meal, which we ordered family-style, sharing every course between us. We began with the escargot — half a dozen Burgundy snails in garlic, parsley and butter — a rich, faintly nostalgic opener, alongside the velouté de champignon, a wild mushroom soup finished with duxelles and a thread of truffle oil that arrived silky and deeply savoury, the kind of soup that tastes like it has been made the same way for decades, in the best sense.
For mains, we shared three dishes between us, which turned out to be the right call given how generous the portions were. The entrecôte à la béarnaise, a 300-gram Hereford ribeye served with sauce béarnaise and thin-cut fries, was cooked precisely to order and had the kind of char and mineral depth that makes a steak worth ordering in a restaurant rather than at home. The poulet à la crème — seared chicken thigh in a cream sauce with leek, potato and mushroom — was comfort food elevated, the sauce rich without tipping into heaviness. And the sole meunière, capers and lemon butter sauce doing the classic, understated work that dish has always been built on, rounded things out alongside baby potatoes and French beans. Between the three, we were thoroughly full before dessert even arrived.
For those who prefer some drinks with their meal, the bar at Brasserie Alma is well stocked with cocktails and wines. We started the meal with a signature house cocktail, before progressing with wine by the glass through the meal; the house pour is a decent one, and allows couples to pair their dishes with wines (white wine with white meat, red wine with red meat) instead of being stuck with a single bottle of wine the whole evening. There are also bottle options for groups looking to celebrate with some drinks. (We at timchew.net encourage responsible drinking – never drive under the influence of any substances.)
Dessert was where the evening turned from a very good dinner into a proper celebration. We ordered the soufflé Grand Marnier — an orange soufflé served with chocolate and vanilla ice cream — and asked, quietly, if the staff could mark the occasion. They obliged without making a fuss of it: a single candle set into the soufflé, brought to the table just as the jazz trio in The Velvet Room eased into a slower, more romantic number. It was a small gesture, but the timing made it feel considered rather than routine, and my girlfriend was genuinely delighted.
The live music deserves its own mention. The trio’s set leaned into romantic standards rather than background filler, which made a real difference to the mood of the room — this did not feel like music playing near us, it felt like music the room had been designed around. For a birthday dinner or any date night, that distinction matters.
Service throughout was attentive without hovering, and the pacing between courses was well judged — unhurried, but never so slow that the evening dragged. By the time we left, close to closing, the room had filled in around us with a mix of couples and small groups, all settled in for the long haul that Brasserie Alma’s tagline promises.
Brasserie Alma sits within Yap Ah Shak House, a building that has quietly become something of a small dining and lifestyle destination in Chow Kit, alongside an Italian restaurant on the ground floor and a rooftop champagne bar. Its arrival — and Choy’s growing footprint across the city, from N.I.C.E Bistronome to THB Bistronome and now Brasserie Alma — reflects a broader shift in Kuala Lumpur’s dining scene toward restaurants that do more than serve good food: they are designed as evening-long experiences, where the meal, the music and the room are all part of the same idea.
For diners, that translates into real value beyond the plate. A restaurant that pairs a classical French menu with live jazz gives couples and groups a reason to linger — pre-dinner drinks, a full meal, and a set from the trio in The Velvet Room, all without needing to move venues through the night. That kind of one-stop evening is increasingly what sets a restaurant apart in a city with no shortage of dining options, particularly for occasions like anniversaries and birthdays where atmosphere matters as much as the food itself.
It is also a useful data point for how the city’s more established chefs are choosing to expand. Rather than opening entirely new concepts from scratch each time, Choy has built a small, connected portfolio of restaurants across Kuala Lumpur and Petaling Jaya, each with its own identity but sharing a consistent standard of classical technique. For regular diners, that consistency is reassuring — a sense that whichever of his restaurants they choose, the cooking will be considered rather than improvised.
For anyone planning a date night or a celebration in Kuala Lumpur, Brasserie Alma is worth the trip up to the fourth floor. The food is confident and unpretentious, the room has genuine atmosphere without trying too hard, and the small touches — a candle in a soufflé, timed to a slow song from the trio next door — are the kind of details that turn a good dinner into a night worth remembering.
BRASSERIE ALMA is located on the fourth floor of Yap Ah Shak House, 17, Jalan Yap Ah Shak, 50300 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Open from Wednesday to Saturday from 6PM to 12AM.
Telephone +603 2603 1650
WhatsApp +6011 4051 0038
For more info, head over to https://www.brasseriealma.co/
The BYD SEAL Performance is the flagship variant of BYD’s electric sports sedan. Sime Darby Beyond Auto Sdn Bhd, the official distributor of BYD in Malaysia, positions the SEAL as a rival to premium electric sedans in its segment. The model line-up consists of two variants: the rear-wheel-drive Premium, badged as the Extended Range, and the all-wheel-drive Performance tested here.
The Performance variant is fitted with a dual-motor, all-wheel-drive setup: a front motor rated at 160 kW and 310 N·m paired with a rear motor rated at 230 kW and 360 N·m, for a combined output of 390 kW and 670 N·m. BYD quotes a zero-to-100 km/h time of 3.8 seconds for the Performance, against 5.9 seconds for the single-motor Premium, which produces 230 kW and 360 N·m from its rear motor alone.
This is an insane amount of power, and I don’t think 99.9% of users will ever need it in their car’s lifetime. However, having that power on tap was definitely useful, especially when overtaking on highways (we really appreciated it during our media drive to Penang).
Both variants share an 82.56 kWh Blade Battery pack, which BYD says is integrated directly into the car’s body structure using what it calls “cell-to-body” (CB) technology. BYD says this contributes to a torsional rigidity of 40,500 N·m per degree, a figure the company compares favourably to what is typically found in luxury cars. NEDC-rated range stands at 580 km for the Performance variant and 650 km for the Premium; WLTP figures are 520 km and 570 km, respectively.
For charging, the SEAL supports AC charging through a Type 2 port rated at 7 kW, and DC fast charging via a CCS2 port rated at up to 150 kW, on both variants. The car is also equipped with vehicle-to-load (V2L) capability, which BYD says allows the battery to power external appliances through a discharge adapter.
The SEAL Performance is the only variant equipped with BYD’s DiSus-C, an intelligent damping system that adjusts suspension stiffness in real time in response to road conditions and driving inputs. The Premium variant instead uses a Frequency Selective Damping (FSD) shock absorber setup. Both variants share a double-wishbone front suspension and a multi-link rear suspension. The Performance variant additionally gets Intelligence Torque Adaption Control (ITAC), a torque-vectoring system BYD says is designed to distribute power between the front and rear axles for improved traction and stability — a feature not offered on the rear-wheel-drive Premium.
On Petaling Jaya suburb and Kuala Lumpur’s city roads, the SEAL Performance was most comfortable to drive. It hugged corners and felt nimble enough around corners and along narrow roads – quite surprising given the size of the car is almost that of a D-segment sedan. I enjoyed myself tremendously driving the car.
Exterior design carries over the SEAL’s X-shaped front fascia and twin U-shaped headlight clusters, styling BYD describes in marine-inspired terms as emphasising dynamic sportiness. The car has previously won an iF Design Award. The test unit rode on new 19-inch alloy wheels finished with red brake callipers, a styling update introduced on this latest version and unique to the Performance variant — the Premium retains its callipers in a standard finish. Both variants measure 4,800mm in length, 1,875mm in width and 1,460mm in height, on a 2,920mm wheelbase. The SEAL is available in four exterior colours: Shark Grey, a new addition for this update, alongside Cosmos Black, Aurora White and Atlantis Grey.
Part 2 of this series will cover the SEAL Performance’s interior, safety technology and the rest of my weekend with the car.
Photos by the author using the vivo X300 Pro.
timchew.net 