Free dessert

Tou Tou Little Kitchen (肥 陶丸粉专卖店), Sri Petaling is still having their free dessert promotion if you order a dish from their special promotion menu since 2 years ago.

Two of us ordered a bowl of sharkfin melon and pork ribs noodle soup (鱼翅瓜汤) to share - MYR13.80+ 6% GST (MYR14.65 nett). For our free dessert, there is a choice of red bean sweet soup or barley ginkgo 

sweet soup and we select red bean sweet soup which is a bit too sweet for us but good as dessert to wrap up the meal.

As for the noodle, we could either have thin or thick hakka noodle and we chose the thin ones. A good enough savoury meal for two as we plan to eat cakes at another shop after this meal.

Nice display

Nice costume display in the Gardens Mall. Anyone here watched Alice through the Looking Glass? 

Alternate Slushy

My favourite matcha slushy from Nana's Green Tea is the Matcha Shiratama Slushy (MYR16.10 nett) because I like to eat the green tea ice cream that is on top of the matcha slushy even though I am indifferent to the shiratama (glutinous rice balls).

The other three choices are:
1. Matcha Kanten Slushy - Kanten means jelly.
2. Matcha Kuromitsu Slushy - Kuromitsu is brown sugar syrup. This slushy is topped with whipped cream and drizzled with brown sugar syrup. I dislike eating whipped cream because I do not like the foamy texture of it so I will never order this.
3. Matcha Soft Cream Slushy - this slushy is topped with soft serve vanilla ice cream. Since my aim of eating at this place is to eat as much green tea item as I could, why would I want to eat vanilla ice cream so this option is forever out too.

That leaves me with Matcha Kanten Slushy which is Matcha Slushy topped with black soybean and kanten jelly at MYR11.50 nett which is priced lower than my favourite Matcha Shiratama Slushy so I ordered that once in a while because I can save MYR4.60 by doing so and still get to eat Matcha Slushy.

Matcha Kanten Slushy (MYR11.50 nett) with a pot of hot green tea that came with the set meal where the main dish is not in the photo.

Close up of the slushy. The yellowish brown colour is the brown sugar syrup. Lots of black soybean which is said to be good for health and green jelly. The slushy is quite watery so I think I will stick with my favourite matcha slushy which is not so watery unless I just ate it recently.

Chinese yam

Double boiled chicken soup with chinese yam and scallops. Chinese yam (Dioscorea polystachya) is called 淮山 or 怀山 (Huáishān) in Mandarin. My mother always boil soup using Chinese yam because it is said to be beneficial to health according to Chinese medicine.

The soup comes with a bowl of plain white rice and two small side dishes - braised peanuts and kimchi for MYR13.40 nett. Good enough for lunch or dinner. So if you go to Tea Garden eatery and don't feel like having nasi lemak you can opt for this soup set.

Ok or not

This bowl of pork rice vermicelli (mee hoon) contains pork meatballs, minced pork balls, pork slices, slices of pork liver, pork intestines, mee hoon and lettuce. It is tasty in a clear broth and only costs MYR5.50 nett.

Since the coffee shop is near my house, I would stop by to have a bowl every now and then until the last time I was there, I noticed that the water to cook the broth came from a pail on the floor and not from a tap. I know that the water is cooked to a boiling point but I am still in two minds about it - to continue patronising this stall or not due to the source of the water used?

Tasty Tokyo Secret

Previously I took a look at Tokyo Secret in One Utama. Last Sunday, I went with my friend who likes to bake cakes and cookies to taste the Tokyo Secret cheese tart in IPC. Due to its price, we bought one at MYR7.90 nett to share. View from the side.

View from the top. The crust is nicely browned and the filling is golden yellow. The size is almost the same size as the usual egg tart.

I took a bite and exclaimed, "the crust tastes like butter cookies!" and my friend who bakes educated me by saying this is a shortcrust pastry and in general, there are three types of shortcrust pastry for tarts/pies:

1. Pâte brisée - a savory, flaky tart crust made from flour, cold butter, cold water, and a pinch of salt.
2. Pâte sucrée - a sweet tart crust made from almost the same ingredients as the above with the addition of sugar and egg yolks to give it a fine and cookie-like crust.
3. Pâte sablée - sablée means sandy in French - this is the sweetest crust and has a crumbly, sandy texture, most like a cookie.

Since I am no expert, I just took a wild guess that this crust is no. 2 since it is fine and tastes like cookies but there is no one to confirm this.

When we reached the middle of the tart, the filling flows out. It tastes of cheese, not that strong but good enough and the texture is not too watery and also not too gooey, just nice. It was not overly sweet and tastes very good. My friend who bakes likes this a lot because she says that the taste of the crust goes very well with the fillings and there is no overly strong taste that stands out and lingers in the mouth.

The next cheese tart that I am going to try is the one from Uncle Tetsu because someone reviewed that for its price (MYR4.50 nett each), she would rather eat that than this expensive one. I would have to bring my friend who bakes with me to share that tart as well to make the same comparison by eating half each.

Tokyo secret has a small shop in IPC on the ground floor. There are two entrances, one from Mac City and one from the street outside which I don't think is ready yet because it looks like it is still under construction.

No queues but you will need to place your order, pay for it and then come back to collect it because there are people waiting for their orders before you. There are 3 small tables in this shop for waiting customers.

Bankara Revisit

It has been almost one year since we last ate at Ramen Bankara so when the birthday boy wanted to eat there we agree to it. There are a few types of broth to choose from, namely the bankara original which is shoyu based (soy sauce), tonkotsu - milky pork bone soup, miso, shio (salt) or you can even have it dry - tsukemen. Previously we tried the Tonkotsu Kakuni Ramen so this time we decided to go for the Bankara Original (Shoyu based) with Kakuni (braised pork belly). The price stated in the menu is inclusive of the 6% GST but there is another 10% service charge imposed on the final bill.

Kakuni Bankara - Bankara Original Ramen which includes 1 piece of Chashu, 3 bamboo shoots, dried seaweeds, Japanese onions, with the addition of Kakuni (2 pieces of braised pork belly) - MYR33.50+ and we added one egg at MYR2.80+ so the total price for this bowl of noodle is MYR36.30+ (MYR39.90 nett). A cup of refillable hot green tea costs MYR3.50+ (MYR3.85 nett).

The ramen noodle here is medium sized noodle as mentioned in the menu.

We also ordered a bowl of basic Tonkotsu Ramen at MYR23.80+ (MYR26.20 nett) to compare the broth of Tonkotsu and Original (Shoyu). This noodle dish includes a piece of Chashu, a piece of seaweed, spring onions and jelly ear fungus (Auricularia auricula-judae).

The description in the menu says thin noodle.

Medium size noodle vs thin noodle.

As can be seen from the photo, the milky pork bone (tonkotsu) soup is white in colour and the original broth (shoyu/soy sauce based) is darker and is more salty.

I mentioned in Ippudo Ramen there are lard pieces floating around in the broth. In Bankara, for the original broth, there are also tiny pieces of lard floating around as can be seen in the above photo.

As before we are free to consume as much sesame, raw garlic and pickled ginger as we like. This is a specialty ramen eatery so the magic lies in the broth and texture of the noodle so the price is expensive. Only eat here if you are a fan of its superb broth. While we were eating here, we saw 3 different groups of Japanese working people coming in here for their lunch. This shows that they like the taste of ramen and its broth here.