Dubai - Chinese Food

The Dragon Mart is so named because the entire mall houses only "made in China" goods. You can find everything under its roof, ranging from industrial machinery/equipment to clothings, accessories, household items, toys, shoes, garden furniture etc etc etc!

We had lunch in one of the chinese restaurants there - the Sun Tour Restaurant. It seemed to be a very popular place as it was full so service took some time.

The 1st dish we had was Fried Mutton. Small pieces of mutton fillet were skewered together with toothpicks before being fried with pieces of capsicum. The meat was fried crispy, well-marinated and went very well with rice. It was a bit dry though as there's no gravy in this dish.

The next dish we had came with lots of gravy - Chicken in Oyster Sauce & Spring Onion. A simple dish that we can all cook at home; nevertheless this version was very yummy. They used boneless chicken thigh meat and the flavourful gravy went extremely well with our rice.

The Tofu dish was also full of gravy. It had capsicum, green peas, carrots and mushrooms tossed in the gravy which was slightly spicy.

Our vege dish was Lettuce in Oyster Sauce. The oyster sauce overwhelmed the vege and we just fished out the lettuce from the pool of sauce. They were certainly generous with the oyster sauce!

Portions served were really big. Even their rice bowls were huge! The rose tea we had was very fragrant. Although the staff were busy with all the occupied tables, they were still very responsive to our requests.

The cost of this lunch, for 3 people, came up to about RM130.

Dubai - Local Snack

In one of the malls - Dragon Mart, in Dubai, we came across this delicious local snack. There was a long queue at the stall, so we decided to join the crowd.

It's basically a huge pancake, made on this special curved wok and you get to choose the types of filling. There were savoury and sweet fillings. We chose the Turkey Ham & Cheese.... this was arranged on the pancake and grilled and then folded.

It was served on a plate, cut into pieces, together with some pickles. The pancake was crispy while the ham and cheese inside was hot and soft & creamy! Each piece cost an equivalent of RM12.

Dubai - the Fast Foods

Dubai is Fast Food heaven. Fast Food and western restaurants seem to dominate the malls and food courts. Prices there are almost tripled, compared to Malaysian prices. Their Dirhams is about 10% lower than the Ringgit (1 Dirham = RM0.90).

Look at the prices of Burgers there:

And KFC there also cost a bomb:

Krispy Kreme Doughnuts - I find these too sweet! Middle-Easterners love their snacks & desserts real sweet!

I prefer Big Apple doughnuts any time! Less sweet & more variety!

1 dozen of these cost RM45 equivalent!

New York Fries - fries doused in melted cheese, sprinkled with fried bacon chips & topped with sour cream. This is a favourite in the food courts.

A small cup of this cost about RM13 equivalent.

This set cost about RM28 equivalent

Fuddruckers - this was LL's favourite restaurant discovered in Dubai. Their tagline is "World's Greatest Hamburgers for 25 Years".


I'm not really a hamburger fan but LL swore they really lived up to their tagline! Their burger meat patties come in different serving sizes: quarter-pound, half-pound, three-quarter-pound & one-pound.

The Half-Pounder

The gigantic 1-Pounder

Fried Chicken Loins - aka Chicken Breastmeat!

The yummy Garlic Toast

We ordered extra portion of their Saute'ed Mushrooms

But I love their salads - you get unlimited salads for every hamburger order!

The Salad Bar

Crispy Onion Rings

Grilled Sub Sandwich

Fish & Chips from the foodcourt:

Fish & Chips (cost: RM30 eqivalent)

The posh foodcourt with chandeliers

Dubai - the Local Food

Although Dubai is in the UAE, smack in a total-Islamic country, it is a throbbing metropolis with many international flavours. This is most apparent in its adoption of international cuisine, its bustling city with super-construction everywhere, in its fabulous malls and the floods of foreigners in the city, whether they are workers or visitors.

For more on the city, click http://raynebows.blogspot.com/

Their local food consists mainly of grilled meats, salads and cheese.

Assortment of Grilled Meats

The superfresh Salads

The Pickled Veg

The colourful fresh juices

And oh, not to forget their breads - which are flat and made from wholegrain flours (like the pita bread we get here). Their national snack seems to be the "Shawamar" - pieces of grilled meat and vegetables rolled up in the flat bread into a "popiah" shape.

The friendly shawamar man

The Shawamar

Roast Chicken on the Grill

The shawamar is available in almost every street corner and people there would just stop their cars by the road, wind down their windows and holler out their orders to the shawamar seller!

Tai Thong Klang - Celebration Dinner

Last Sunday, the family gathered for a 3-prong celebration dinner at Tai Thong, Klang. This was to celebrate the birthdays of JJ, Leanne and the wedding anniversary of Big Sis. A room with karaoke was booked for this occasion. Needless to say, it was was a very noisy dinner - not only from the karaoke in our room, but also from the karaoke from the next room and from the main dining hall where a wedding dinner was in progress!

We were all ravenous by the time the Four Seasons dish was served. It consisted of 2 types of fishballs - steamed and the other rolled in almond flakes & fried; green peas & asparagus with snails on a meehoon basket and some jellyfish salad. It's quite uninspiring but everything was polished off.

Next, they served the Birthday Noodles because the kids were hungry. This huge mountain of wantan noodles were braised with pork and mushroom slices with beansprouts. Simple as it was, it was tasty and very soon the mountain was gone!

The waitress served us individual Chicken Soup which had chinese herbs and sea cucumber in it. It was yummy! No photos here as those shots didn't turn out well.

The Braised Sea Cucumber with Mushrooms came in a generous portion. Besides these 2 main ingredients, there were also canned abalone mushrooms, beancurd sheets and brocolli. This is a pretty standard dish in chinese banquets. Although it was a huge portion, it was sadly lacking in taste - probably the cook forgot to add salt in it!

The Steamed Patin Fish was swimming in a sea of blended ginger. The fish was excellent as it was very fresh and succulent.However, the next dish - Butter Prawns was the greatest disappointment of the night. It was completely tasteless - the prawns as well as the "butter" crumbs.

The vegetable dish was KaiLan in 2 Styles. The stalks were crispily stirfried while the leaves were sliced finely and deepfried with pieces of dried cuttlefish. I think this was the best dish of the evening - but then, that could be my biased view because I'm a vegetables lover!

Dessert was some Pink Rolls & Baked Pastries. The pink rolls were just like the ping-pei mooncake while the baked pastries had lotus paste filling. Oh the pasttries came with Sea Coconut & Longan.

On the whole, I would say the food there lacked taste. Possible reasons: it's a busy pre-CNY time and there was a wedding dinner there as well.

Later on we went to Sis' place for the Celebration Cakes: