Popiah

I like to eat the traditional style popiah (spring roll). Popiah (薄饼 - BáoBǐng in Mandarin) means thin (Báo) biscuit/pastry (Bǐng) which refers to the thin wrapper skin used to wrap the fillings. I don't like to eat those with lots of deep fried crispy fillings inside them.

One popiah roll costs MYR 2 and I often request for no sauce and no chilli so the popiah will look pale as shown in the photo above.

Cross section showing the fillings: jicama, lettuce, egg, onions, tofu.

MYR1 Chicken Promotion

I walked past Dragon-i restaurant recently and saw the banner below:

A whole chicken meal for MYR1 only from 1 April 2014 to 30 April 2014 from 6pm to 9pm at both Dragon-i and Canton-i restaurants. For the past two years, I have ordered this MYR1 chicken dish during the promotion period so hopefully this year, I can find the time to do so too.

Advanced reservation is required and there must be at least 3 persons in your group. So will you be taking advantage of this promotion?

Kura Japanese Restaurant

For celebrations, we always eat at Kura Japanese restaurant in One World Hotel, Bandar Utama. This restaurant belongs to Super Dining Sdn Bhd which also owns the following Japanese restaurants: Rakuzen, Zen, and Hokkaido Ichiba.

We have not eaten at Rakuzen nor Zen before but we have eaten at Hokkaido Ichiba, the Gardens and found that the service and ambiance at Kura is so much better than Hokkaido Ichiba, the Gardens so we prefer eating at Kura.

Hot  green tea - free of charge

Lunch set: Udon, tempura, chirashi don, chawan mushi, japanese pickled daikon/eggplant, mashed potatoes, fruits (MYR33)

Salmon sashimi lunch set (MYR23): rice, chawan mushi, miso soup, japanese pickles, mashed potatoes, salmon sashimi, fruits (watermelon and papaya).

Grilled saba lunch set (MYR23): rice, chawan mushi, miso soup, japanese pickles, mashed potatoes, saba shioyaki (grilled with salt), fruits.

Nabemono lunch set: Hot pot with oysters, mushrooms, cabbage with spicy miso soup, chawan mushi, rice, mashed potatoes and fruits (MYR33).

Entrance to restaurant

The food is very fresh and tasty. The total bill is only MYR129.90 inclusive of 10% service charge and 6% gov. tax.

Post Great Grains

Apart from oats, I also eat cereals with soya milk and nuts for my breakfast. Post Great Grains cereal is one of my favourite cereals and I stock up on boxes of them at home. Sometimes I even eat them for dinner. The flavour I like most is crunchy pecans.

Other flavours that I like are "Cranberry Almond Crunch" and "Raisins, Dates & Pecans". The price is about MYR14 per box (453g) but the price varies as some supermarkets sell them cheaper or more expensive by a few cents and during sales, the price may go down further.

Sometimes I check out the other cereals to see if they taste better than my current cereal. Just last month, I bought a box of Nestle Fitness Fruits cereal (MYR12.99 per box) and although it is quite nice, I still prefer Post Great Grains. Do you have a favourite cereal?

Yummy Duck

Soup of the day (MYR10) - Winter Melon, Carrots, Dates, Pork ribs Soup

Roast Pork and Roast Duck noodle - MYR13.90 - we like the roast pork because the skin is very crunchy and we also like the roast duck for the strong duck taste.

Plain noodle - MYR3.5 - I find the sauce to be a little too much

Interior

Exterior

Service Charge: 5%
Gov. Tax: Nil
Total Bill: MYR28.75 (Cash payment only)

Yummy Duck Roast House

9, Jalan Kuchai Maju 18

58200 Kuala Lumpur

Tel: 03-79816299

M dessert

MYR 2.10 only 

I like the thick doughy crust but do not like the strong oil taste due to it being deep fried. I also like the sticky sauce with cinnamon taste. I am very tempted to eat this again but will refrain from doing so because the pros are not enough to overcome the cons.

Home Made Fish Head Noodle

One day we could not decide on where to go for lunch until someone suggested "Home Made Fish Head Noodle" restaurant. I am not joking, the name of the eatery is really "Home Made Fish Head Noodle". We had to wait for a while because there were no tables available. All tables were occupied because it was lunch time.

Cham (Mixed) Drink (Coffee mixed with Tea) - MYR4.4

Garoupa fish fillet "wat tan hor" (literal translation - stir fry rice noodle in smooth slippery egg sauce) MYR 16.90 and as can be seen from the colour of the sauce, dark soy sauce was used to stir fry the rice noodle. Taste wise, I prefer the similar dish served by Ying Ker Lou which does not use dark soy sauce. The taste of the dark soy sauce was too strong for this dish.

Deep Fried Calamari MYR8.8 which I find quite tasty

We order two bowls of Fried Fish Head Mee Hoon - MYR11.5 each

Fried Garoupa Fish Head Mee Hoon which is more expensive - MYR18.50

Store front

Home Made Fish Head Noodle
G(E) 015 - Mid Valley MegaMall
Tel: 603-2201-2676

Service Charge: 10%
Gov. Tax: Nil
Total MYR78.75

Beef mee up

The bowls above are of the same size (regular portion) except for the bowl of beef meatballs which is smaller in size.

We went to Tangkak Beef Noodle restaurant in Kuchai Lama  again to have our lunch. This time we ordered:

1. Beef in chunky pieces, beef tripe and beef tendon with Hor Fun mixed with Mee Hoon - MYR9.9 - for a regular portion. One piece of chunky beef was quite tough and I took a long time to chew it. There were many slices of beef tripe and beef tendon.

2. Slices of beef with Hor Fun mixed with Mee Hoon MYR15.90 - I guess slices of beef are more expensive than beef tripe hence the higher price.

3. A bowl of beef meatballs - MYR6.5 for 8 meatballs. Instead of ordering a bowl, one can order individual beef meatball for MYR1 each.

Service Charge: Nil
Gov. Tax: Nil
Total Bill: MYR32.30

Esquire Kitchen

This restaurant has been around since I was a very little girl, about 40 years ago and I still frequent it because it has maintained the quality of the food it serves. It has an outlet in almost every major mall in the Klang valley.

We ordered our meal from the set menu as shown above.

This is my "char choy" (Cantonese - 榨菜 - pickled mustard stem) pork strip noodle with hot chinese tea (MYR8.9). The ala carte price of this noodle is MYR10.90 so this is a good deal.

Close up view of the noodle (white in colour)

My husband ordered this - curry chicken rice (ala carte price MYR9.9) and herbal tea (ala carte price MYR3.8) so for MYR11.90 this is also a good deal. The curry is way too salty for me.

This is the outlet

Service Charge: 10%

Gov. Tax: 6%

Total Bill: MYR24.15

Credit card payment is accepted for bill amount above MYR50 only.

Swensen's

It was a hot day. The men were visiting a motorcycle shop nearby and it was too hot for us to join them so we decided to go to Swensen's which is nearby to enjoy some ice-cream since we already had our lunch.

I seldom eat at Swensen's. This is my 2nd visit in 42 years. Reason being there are not many outlets around and I think their ice cream is too sweet for me but since this is the only eatery nearby, in order to escape from the hot sun, we had some ice cream there.

My sister-in-law ordered "Salted Gula Melaka (Coconut Palm Sugar) Sundae" - MYR21.90 - it has diced almonds and chocolate balls (something like Malteser chocolate balls).

I ordered "Topless 5" - a sampling of 5 ice cream flavours of my choice served without any toppings - MYR25.90 mainly because I want to try the different flavours. I know I should have just ordered one scoop of ice cream but then I thought I won't be coming here ever again so let's go for 5 scoops.

View from one side: Mango, Sticky Chewy Chocolate, Durian Supreme, Strawberry

View from the other side: Durian Supreme, Sticky Chewy Chocolate, Mango and Mocha Almond Fudge

True enough, the ice cream is too sweet for me but luckily my sister-in-law helped me to eat the ice cream. I like the Durian Supreme flavour because it tastes like sticky Durian paste that I used to eat as a child and the Mocha Almond Fudge flavour because it has pieces of almond in it. Not too keen on the Mango flavour because it tastes like Mango cordial drink. Strawberry and Chocolate flavour can't go too wrong so they are acceptable too.

Unfortunately both of us cannot eat that fast and most of the ice cream melted and we couldn't bring ourselves to drink the melted ice cream so we left it that way.

Service Charge: 10%
Gov. Tax: 6%
Total Bill: MYR 49.90 after a 10% discount due to paying by using Citibank credit card (There was an on-going Citibank credit card promotion but we did not know about it so it was just by chance we got this 10% discount).

Sushi Zanmai

The four of us went for an early light lunch before starting to shop for grocery and then having some snacks for tea prior to leaving the mall. We chose Sushi Zanmai as the food there is tasty and we have a discount coupon for MYR10 off when the total bill is above MYR50 (bills can't be combined).

4 glasses of hot green tea at MYR1 each and refillable. This is the cheapest green tea around. 

1 Chawan Mushi MYR4.8 

Sushi: Avogado Tobiko (flying fish roe) is my favourite sushi here - MYR2.8 for two. We have to order the sushi in sets of two.  Unagi Tamago - MYR6.8 for two; Smoked Salmon - MYR6.8 for two - I don't quite like the smoked salmon as it is too salty so I won't order this next time.

Sushi: Toro Salmon (Salmon Belly Sushi) - MYR4.8 for two. I prefer salmon belly to normal salmon sushi because it is more flavourful due to having more fat. Since there is only one salmon belly sushi for each of us, we won't be eating too much salmon fat per person.

Aburi (partially lightly grilled) Salmon sushi - MYR4.8 for two - very tasty due to them being partially grilled. Suitable for those who do not eat raw salmon.

We also had two plates of maki from the sushi conveyor belt. MYR3.8 for each pink plate.

We find Sushi Zanmai to be one of the more affordable sushi conveyor belt chain restaurants that serve tasty Japanese food. As such we no longer frequent Sushi King, Sushi Tei and Sakae Sushi.

Service Charge: 10%

Gov. Tax: 6%

Total Bill: MYR71.45 before applying a discount coupon of MYR10 (for spending above MYR50) so in the  end we paid MYR61.45 for four so on average it is about MYR15.36 each.

猪皮

I don't eat pork rind, not even those crispy deep fried ones as snack but surprisingly I do eat them in curry sauce as below:

Pork rind with curry noodle (MYR5)

Pork rind with chee cheong fun in curry sauce (MYR2.4)

Ying Ker Lou

Ying Ker Lou (迎客楼) serves Hakka cuisine. The name - ying means welcome (迎), ker means guest (客), lou means building (楼). Hakka is a Chinese dialect and Hakka people in Chinese is called "Ker Jia Ren" (客家人) meaning "guest people" so this restaurant uses the word "Ker" in both senses - to mean it serves Hakka cuisine and also to mean it welcomes guests.

The food that the four of us ordered:

Hakka lei cha (擂茶) MYR17.90 - 擂 means ground or pounded, 茶means tea but it is not the normal Chinese tea. The bowl of green soup in the photo above is the ground tea soup made from grinding a mixture of tea leaves, herbs (coriander and basil leaves), roasted nuts, sesame seeds, grains and adding the required amount of hot water.

The other bowl in the photo contains rice (we chose brown rice but you can opt for white rice too) and other finely chopped ingredients such as peanuts, tofu, pickled radish, french beans and other vegetables. A small plate of fried anchovies is provided too. I pour the green tea soup into the bowl of rice and mix them together before eating. Very tasty but some of my friends really dislike this dish so I guess this is an acquired taste.

Fish fillet "wat tan hor" (literal translation - stir fry rice noodle in smooth slippery egg sauce) MYR 19.90 and I think this is a Cantonese dish. It may not look nice but it is tasty. Some people prefer dark soy sauce to be used but it tastes just as good without using dark soy sauce to stir fry the rice noodle.

Bamboo shoots dumplings - MYR9.9 - this is very scrumptious because yam is used to make the dumpling skin and I can taste the delicious yam.

Wine Chicken with rice -MYR20.90 - I did not take photo of the bowl of rice included in this dish. Strong taste of wine so it is nice for people who like the taste of chinese wine.

Total bill came up to MYR 79.6 inclusive of 10% service charge and 6% government tax. There are many outlets in Klang valley but I have only been to the ones in the Gardens and the Curve.

My Toast

Many eateries were not opened yet as it was barely 10am so we chose to share a bowl of noodle while waiting for lunch time.

Early queue

My Toast Ipoh Hor fun (MYR8.9) - total price MYR9.8 inclusive of 10% service charge

Oats

My breakfast - oats in soya milk with prunes, sunflower seeds, and almonds.

Ming Kee

Chicken meat, and roast pork wanton noodle (MYR7)

char siew (BBQ pork) wanton mee (MYR6)

Dumplings (sui kow) MYR5.5

My friend suggests that we eat at this Ming Kee noodle shop because she says that the wanton noodle is very tasty and springy. However, I think the noodle would taste better if they were cooked longer because I find the noodles to be quite hard (almost like uncooked noodle). 

Kedai Makanan Ming Kee
Jalan Lazat 1
Taman Bukit Indah (near Happy Gardens)
Kuala Lumpur