Bali Hai @ Penang

Recently we took a short break for a makan trip to Penang. It's been several years since we last drove there. So, when we were finally crossing the Penang Bridge, I couldn't help clicking the above pic from the screen of my car's GPS.

It was drizzling as we left the mainland heading towards the island. As we were crossing the bridge, the sun was finally peeping through the dark clouds ... but it was still kinda hazy, as you can see...

By the time we reached Gurney Drive, it was dinner time. We didn't realise Friday evening traffic in Penang can be that bad, kinda underestimated it! So, on DL's friend's invitation, we headed to Bali Hai at Gurney Drive. The other Bali Hai which I know well happens to be a Dive Centre in Tioman, haha! Anyway, this Bali Hai in Gurney Drive is a very popular seafood place, judging by the crowd there!


There was a huge array of fresh seafood and vegetables on display - just take your pick! Even the dead ones were very fresh...

We actually had a hard time picking our choices...
This was the Starter - Cockles, lightly boiled and eaten dipped in their garlic chilli sauce...

Next came the Baby Octopus.... absolutely divine! Again, we chose the same style of cooking - lightly boiled... the best way to taste the freshness of sea produce ...
They were tender yet succulent... and when married with the green & red chilli dips - fabulous!
Since the light boiling method worked so well with fresh seafood, we had most of the dishes done that way. You can't go wrong with this, believe me!

The Tiger Prawns... they were swimming in the tanks before they were served (ok, I'm being gross) ... Mmmm... they taste good dipped in wasabe+soya sauce too!

What is a duck but not a duck?

Yeah, sounds kinda lame, I know... but then the Geoduck is anything but a duck! (i wonder who gave that very inappropriate name lah!)

It doesn't look like a duck....

... and it certainly didn't taste like one!
Known also as the "Elephant Trunk Clam" (direct translation from Cantonese), this saltwater king clam is really one ugly fella. We had this thinly-sliced, served on a bed of shaved ice - eat it either sashimi-style, dipped in wasabe...

... or dip them in a pot of boiling herbal soup! I tried it both ways and I must say nothing beats eating it sashimi-style - that's when you can really taste its sweet succulence. It's slightly chewy, just slightly only, giving that delish bite to it... and then its smooth sweetness just burst upon your palate before slipping down your throat.

Ahh... let's take a break from all those seafoody stuff and have some bites of greens... Pea Sprouts was our choice... lightly saute'ed with garlic... refreshingly yummy.

The greens were to cleanse our palate... before the next onslaught.

Yeah... enter the Lobster Baked with Cheese...

It was a fair sized crustacean... ahh, but then I'm not really a fan of cheese-baked seafood, much to the delight of the boys. "Less man more share" for them! I would have prefered to have this lightly tossed in ginger & spring onions... or even sashimi-style... but hey, the guys love their cheese! Judging from their moans of ecstacy, I guess this scored pretty high marks with them :-)

There were 2 disappointing items that night. The Garoupa... steamed with soya sauce... while the fish was fresh, unfortunately the cook left it in the steamer too long, so the poor fish was served overcooked! Quite a serious crime, I would say... coz that rendered the fish kinda chewy and somehow the taste went a bit off.

The other big disappointment was the Seafood Fried Rice. LL, who is now an established Foodie, took 1 bite and promptly declared it "no wok-hei!!!" with a grimace. I took a spoonful and totally agreed with that statement. Worse, it was just mildly lukewarm when the dish was put on our table... the rice grains were kinda limp and the shrimps, scallops and anchovies could do nothing to revive the dead rice ....sigh.
Sad.
Anyway, by this time, we were all stuffed with the earlier dishes, so even without the carbs, we were pretty happy and satiated, hehe!

The restaurant was very much in the Merdeka spirit... and the tables were really filling up fast as our dinner progressed. What can be more pleasant than digging into seafood, with the sea breeze blowing in, ... and if the crowds were to quieten down a bit, I bet you can even hear the waves lapping, LOL!

I kinda like their tagline "If it swims, we have it!" even though they didn't totally live up to it!

Hmmm... I didn't see any sharks...


My rating: 6.5/10

Chicken Rice in USJ14

A few months ago I blogged about the Curry Laksa in USJ14 in this kopitiam called Mei Sek. This is a corner coffeeshop in the row of shops near the fruit stalls in USJ14. I was told that in the evening, that same kopitiam has a Chicken Rice stall which is very good.

So that was how one evening some weeks ago we decided to give the Chicken a try, haha! They start at about 6pm and their serving crew is unmistakable - they have yellow & red uniform - very professional-looking with caps and all!

I must say their poached chicken - and they only have poached ones - was pretty good: smooth & tender. Dunk them into some pounded ginger and chilli sauce, this will surely satiate your chicken pangs.

You can have a choice of kampung chicken or town/pasar chicken, the former being more flavourful and of course, more expensive.

You can opt to have their oily rice or kwayteow to go with the poached chicken. Being the true blue Ipohite that I am, I of course opted for the Soup Kwayteow or Hor-fun as we like to call it. It came with a few strands of kuchai and limp taugeh. I would say the kwayteow in Kar Heong was better.... nevertheless it provided the necessary carbs for this meal.

For variety, you can order their Fookchow Fishballs - smooth fishpaste encasing some minced pork, served in seaweed soup... good source of iodine, no?


And if you need some fibre, you have a few choices of greenies - I had my fave baby lettuce, slathered in oyster sauce and with generous toppings of fried shallots.

And that is what I call a simple but satisfying true Malaysian meal of the chicken kind :-))


My rating: 6/10

Shivz

Shivz Restaurant
64 Jalan Maarof
Bangsar Baru
59100 Kuala Lumpur
Tel: 03 2282 4500

I was invited to a private function at this place not too long ago by my friend, Z. I must say I have passed by Jalan Maarof many times but never noticed there's this restaurant there. It's located just a few doors away from Maybank.

The interior's rather cosy, romantically lit... walls adorned with abstract paintings. There are some tables at the front - open-air concept for the smokers.

Now, for the food... they serve a fusion of Indian and western dishes with some local favourites as well. One of their recommended items is the Mumtaz Grill ... a whole chicken thigh grilled tandoori-style but with minced meat encased inside the thigh. It's served with green salad, a mild dhall-like dip and a minty chutney dip.

Z ordered a similar dish (can't remember the exact name though) ... Tandoori-styled grilled chicken but with a skewer of shrimps, a few pieces of naan and the same dips.
As I mentioned before, they do have a few local items and their Kampung Fried Rice is very popular. Fluffy rice fried with bits of chicken meat, anchovies, prawns, long beans and the requisite kangkong, topped with a runny-yolk fried egg and a few pieces of fried chicken, it was good. This was a shared dish among a few of us and as common as the dish was, the rice disappeared very quickly, I must say!
Now for the western items... there was Grilled Salmon in a cheesy sauce...I took a bite and the salmon was grilled just right. I hate overcooked salmon which renders the fish dry and unpalatable but here in Shivz the salmon retained its juiciness and bursting with the signature yummy rich fatty flavours.

The Panfried Cod was delicious too... again done just right, retaining the fish's succulence and springy texture...
The platter of Mixed Bruschetta was another shared dish... the slices of french bread were indeed huge... with generous amounts of toppings, as you can see here... By this time, we were all already so stuffed...!

A must-order item here is their Fresh Mushroom Soup! According to the owner, Mr R. Shiva, they blend 3 different types of fresh mushrooms for this soup. The end result is a very yummy fragrant mushroomy soup which you'll slurp non-stop!

Now here's the highlight of the evening. Besides the very decent food, we were also entertained by a group of belly dancers! The place was filled with middle eastern music and rythms as the dancers showcased their incredible skills with their bellies!
Unlike my belly lah... its only skill is to appreciate good food, haha!

Lammeeya

Lammeeya
Lot LG 333A, 1 Utama New Wing
Tel: 03-7727 4877

As the name indicates, this is a Noodles joint with Lam Mee being their speciality. Lam Mee - noodles in a thick starchy gravy and here in Lammeeya, you can opt to have all kinds of noodles in your bowl.

As I generally find the thick yellow noodles too much to handle, I had kway-teow for my Lam Mee choice. At Rm12.80 a set, it's quite a bargain, I would say... because the bowl of Lam Mee served was gargantuan! It was so huge that I really could not finish it... and I am one person who abhors wasting food!

The Lam Mee was topped with 2 medium-sized prawns, pieces of fish paste, strips of chicken and some chinese cabbage.

The set came with this >>> 2 meatballs and 1 fried beancurd roll. These I liked very much - the meatballs were firm and springy with pieces of fragrant cuttlefish. The beancurd roll's something like the Ipoh-style "sah-kott fupei" with chunks of turnip embedded in the fish paste - nice!
If you choose not to have lam mee, they also have curry noodles, soup noodles and even Ipoh-style Chee Cheong Fun (rice rolls). My colleague ordered the CCF with Mushroom & Mincemeat Sauce... with lots of pickled green chillies at the side... so typically Ipoh-style! This set cost only RM9.80 - came with the meatballs & fupei too.


The set meal comes with a drink as well - Soyamilk!

Service was very quick. The place was very busy during lunchtime, yet our orders were served in under 10 minutes. I have a feeling that this will be a regular lunch place for me and my workmates!

My rating: 7/10

Bandung - good for gluttons & shopaholics!

One week I didn't touch my blog ... and somebody commented it's already growing fungus! Hmmm... that bad meh?

I was away on a shopping & eating trip in Bandung last weekend. That's basically all one does in Bandung. With the cheap AirAsia tickets, I had no hesitation joining a group of friends on this trip.

A mere 2 hours' flight time away, we landed on time at their tiny airport. You really have to be verrrry patient here waiting for your baggage because their Customs's checking of hand luggage and baggage conveyor belt take up the same space - yes, go figure that out!

We were all pushed into this tiny little corner waiting for our bags to topple over their one-way conveyor! Then, once you've got your bag, you gotta push your way out of that tiny little space with a whole village of people jamming up a space barely measuring 6ft by 6ft!

After that ordeal, in the van going to town, when the driver suggested going straight for lunch, everyone quickly nodded. So we ended up at a restaurant selling Nasi Padang.... and this was the array of dishes we had! Food was cold and rather unappetising but because everyone was famished, I didn't hear any complaints. We paid about RM11 per person for this meal.

As we walked along the streets, there were many many hawkers selling all kinds of food, ranging from noodles, rice, fried stuff, siomay (which is actually "siew mai"), durian ice-cream, corn etc etc!!
When we were tired from all the endless shopping, it was nice to take a rest at the little gardens and courtyards housed inside the factory outlets...

On the first night there, we had dinner at Karamba - a pretty high-end restaurant serving Sundanese food (West Java cuisine), a la carte style. This was by far the most expensive meal we had - RM28 per person.
Be warned - their sambal belacan is fierily hot but it's very addictive! The hotter it was the more you wanna eat, aikkks!

Their chickens are all of the "kampung" breed - small, lean (no fat at all!) and very tasty.


Bumbu Desa is a popular chain of restaurants and this was recommended. Their interior's very pleasant and service is excellent. Everyone smiles and calls you "ibu" or "pak".Again, this is Sundanese food. The food is all laid out on woks - you just point out your choices and tell them for how many people. The food will be reheated and served at your table. Sambal and ulam are FOC - unlimited portions too!

Generally, Sundanese dishes are on the dry side - we hardly found any dish with curry or lots of gravy. Most of it are fried or just cooked with very little gravy. Ohh... and we also noted that the cooks in Bandung tend to be heavy-handed on the salt - their food are on the saltish side! So be prepared to drink lots of water!

Sambara was another restaurant recommended to us and we found this to be better than Bumbu Desa. Again, same type of food and same excellent service!

These baby green brinjals were part of the ulam-ulam...

If you're looking for Indonesian kuehs and cakes, Kartika Sari is one of the more popular chain of shops. We saw lots of passengers in the plane (on the return flight later) carrying Kartika Sari bags, holding them preciously!

Do try their steamed Brownies - they are yummy, especially the tiramisu ones!
Their local kuehs are also good - very fragrant and surprisingly, not that very sweet! I love their kueh bika - all the many variations of it!

I got my Indonesian Layer Cakes from Holland Bakery - you can spot them with their unmistakable windmills on top of their shops. I find their layer cakes very rich, very moist, not very sweet and very heavy! The fullsize cake weighs more than 2kg... so do consider that in your baggage allowance, hehe! Not cheap also - be prepared to pay about RM110 per cake.

If there's one place I'd like to re-visit in Bandung, it's Kampung Daun! It's located up in the hills and it's about a 30-minute drive up there. We were there for dinner so I can only show you the night scenes here. The next time, if I ever come here again, it must be in the daytime so that I can enjoy the beautiful vast greenery of the place.

Their dining tables are housed in individual charming little huts complete with comfy cushions for you to sit bersila to enjoy your meal. Do note that it's extremely chilly up here - they even have open bonfires everywhere for people to warm up!
Hot tea was served in these cute ceramic pots...
Their menu consists of both local Javanese and western items. Of course we had to have the local food! The huts are all sprawled over a huge area and I was thinking it would take a long time for dinner to be served. How utterly wrong I was!

All our orders were served under 10 minutes, by a smiling cute little waiter!! Impressive leh!

I love their Nasi Liwet - a very yummy fragrant flavourful rice - you can just eat the rice on its own! I first ate this nasi at Kambara and couldn't have enough of it!! Here my nasi liwet was served with acar, fried tofu, fried chicken, a stick of chicken gizzard+liver, raw salad and the requisite kerepek.

Fried rice (not Thai-style) served in a pineapple - very delicious...
Ahh... their satay is a bit different from ours - less spicy with none of our lemongrass & kunyit flavours. Theirs tasted more like with BBQ-sauce! Food is not expensive here - most sets were in the region of RM12-15 each.... and you get to enjoy the beautiful ambience and fresh cool air!

On the way back from Kampung Daun, we stopped by a kerepek & snacks shop to stock up...

I only bought a 500g packet of kerepek emping... none of these for me - no baggage weight to spare lah!
So that was how the 5D 4N trip went - purely shopping & eating! The weather in Bandung is very cooling and low humidity, so it's very pleasant to walk around without sweating. At night it gets pretty chilly, so you do need some warm clothings then.

The people in the service sector are humble and courteous, from hotels to restaurants to drivers. The rich live in huge mansions in an upmarket part of the town while some of the poor & homeless can be seen living on the streets and under bridges. It was also sad to see little child beggars roaming the chaotic streets - I saw a tiny toddler (she couldn't be older than 4 years old) stumbling along the busy streets, weaving her way among the vehicles. I don't think you can even spot her from inside the car - so so dangerous!