wAntAn productions

One night I found myself in Seri Petaling looking for something to eat. We had wanted to look for this "yau char kwai" place (specifically we wanted to try the one where they serve with ice cream) but it seems like the place has closed down and was taken over by one of those shady looking cyber cafes. Note to self: novelty restaurants are bad business. Anyway I ended up driving around aimlessly and happened to come across this place.

We spotted this restaurant with a grill right outside of it. They pasted a bunch of placards on their entrance advertising their dishes. The prices were quite decent so I decided to give it a try. After all everyone needs a decent western meal once in a while :)

Note: don't trust me on the price for this review. I forgot to take the receipt with me when I left.


I can't resist having soup in a western restaurant. Uncle R's menu is a little limited. If I remember correctly the one and only soup they serve is mushroom soup. No complaints from me though... I love mushroom soup. However, the soup isn't all that great. I'm thinking it's probably Campbell's?


They had a special for orange juice that day (RM5.50 if I remember correctly). Serving is standard 'tai tai bui' size. Not too shabby.





Didn't try this but it looked like Kit Yi loved it :)


And here's my dinner for the night. Uncle R's mixed grill (RM19.90) consisting of a piece of succulent lamb, a piece of tender Australian beef and a piece of flattened chicken chop. I must say that whatever Uncle R is using to marinate his meat, it's really really good. You can taste the sweetness in the juicy meat when you bite into it. The chicken I think was especially good. Also, since it's all charcoal grilled the food is especially tasty. I'm not a fan of the sauce he used though... too salty for my tastes.

As we were having our meal the very friendly Uncle R sat down on our table and we chatted a little bit. Uncle R is actually Ronnie Wong. Previously an agency manager in MAA insurance (wow!). The restaurant has been in operation for over 2 years. Uncle Ronnie used to cook for his church and it's there where he perfected his recipes. After encouragement from his church mates, he decided to go into the food business.

He did share a little bit about his secret sauce recipe which I don't think is right for me to reveal here. Try this place out. If you like it then have a chat with Uncle Ronnie about it. He's very very friendly and approachable.

He also stressed that his prices were very low and that his food is value for money. I can't disagree for the most part. Being a former insurance man he couldn't resist the urge to hard sell his "sang har" prawns which I'm definitely going to try the next time I'm here (which may be quite soon). It seems also that his seafood mixed grill is superb value for money.

Highly recommended for a very affordable western meal in a comfortable air conditioned environment. Uncle R's prices aren't much (if any) higher than those western food stalls in the Chinese kopitiam/food courts. Just don't expect the food to be on par with the high class restaurants.

Foodies:

jennifer's wonderworld: Uncle R -- a home feel steak house

Yumi's Place : Uncle R @ Sri Petaling


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"All you can eat pasta for RM12.90"... I've been hearing these words for many weeks. Why? Because it's become a routine for ST and her colleagues to eat here every other week. So where's this wonderful magical place that offers such a great deal and what's the catch?

The answers in short are; "Secret of Louisiana" and not much.


I've been wanting to come here for some time simply because I find it difficult to believe that there's such an offer. Furthermore ST told me that the pasta is quite decent and when she says it is then chances are it is.


See caption at the bottom "Order the SECOND and THIRD, WE DARE YOU...". Hehehe... seriously how to they make a profit with this?

Now how does this offer work? Simple, there are 6 different choices of pasta that you can pick (though I hear #6 is merely the vegetarian version of #5). You can order from those 6 choices as many times as you can eat them in succession. That is to say, finish one pasta, order another. Simple! Now they also serve you a cup of tea and a scoop of ice cream when you are done with your meal (none of which are refillable of course). Sounds like a good deal? It is.












We didn't try every variety. Since ST had been there several times she recommended some of the better ones. Personally I stopped after pasta #3.

So was the pasta any good? Well I'd say they were decent. Don't expect too much for RM12.90. They are all very basic dishes but for the price you pay there's no reason to complain. My personal favourite (as it usually is) is the pasta carbonara. Well worth trying out.

I think I might come back some time later to try their actual menu (Cajun food!). Oh and I noticed their set lunches are very decently priced as well so that's probably worth checking out.

Getting here is a little tricky. Basically you need to be on the LDP in the Kelana Jaya area heading towards Damansara. You will see the Customs building on your right. Immediately after that you need to make a left turn before the now defunct Kelana Seafood Center. It's a very small turning, blink and you'll definitely miss it.



More foodies:

Eat Drink KL: Secret of Louisiana
D Daily Dose: Secret of Louisiana

Official website (seems kinda outdated?):
Secret of Louisiana

This post is a little old :)

It was Mother's Day 2 weeks back. Joe picked a juicer for mom and dad picked Waterlily Cafe for dinner. It was not my first visit to Waterlily. I was there some years back with ST and we didn't really like the food at that time. But we decided to give it a try anyway since the other family members have never been there.







This time around the food was pretty decent. The first time we were here we weren't impressed at all. I'd say they redeemed themselves somewhat. The drinks in particular are quite outstanding. All that lemon grass, minty and limey stuff make for some really refreshing drinks.









Food wise they were all quite nicely done, except for the chicken which was quite bland. The beef steaks are quite nice so that's a recommendation from me.

Easter eggs in websites? Of all the things... well here's how you do it:

Press the following keys one by one:

Up + Up + Down + Down + Left + Right + Left + Right + B + A + Enter + . (The period/full stop key)

Now try clicking anywhere or typing on the page. =)

Refresh the page to turn it off

Kinda like the Konami code

Yesterday was ST's birthday. Happy birthday my darling wife. I spent many days thinking of where to bring her for dinner but neither one of us could come to a conclusion so we decided to just wing it. We went to One Utama for some shopping (a little more about that later) and to have dinner there after that.

We went over to the information counter, picked up a brochure and browsed over to the restaurants section. Nothing really piqued our interests so we decided to leave the decision till it was time to eat.

When dinner time came, we somehow ended up at Sushi Zanmai. I hesitated a little. Sushi Zanmai looked like a glorified Sushi King. Not the kind of place I wanted to bring my wife for her birthday dinner. Alas, we didn't have anyplace better to go so in we went.





Yes, wet tissues are 20 cents each. It's even listed on the receipt. Not sure if this is considered cheap or not.



Not bad. Comes with the usual stuff; some enoki mushrooms, a single prawn and one of those red and white naruto thingamagigs.



Pretty decent bowl of teriyaki laced eel with rice. ST had a craving for this and I think she was satisfied.



Special for the day. I wouldn't order this again. It's basically sushi with fruit instead of raw fish. Comes with thin slices of strawberry, peach and one other green coloured fruit (don't remember what it was). They had some crunchy stuff in the middle. Felt a little like eating popiah. The fruits weren't particularly sweet so the whole sushi felt really flat.



The sukiyaki was damned good. I liked the fact that it came with slices of raw beef so that you can play shabu-shabu with it (three dips is all it takes). The soup was full stuff I liked; mostly enoki mushrooms and an assortment of vegetables. It came with a raw egg which you could cook however you liked. Also the soy sauce soup base was pretty sweet. Best of all were the beef slices which had a real beefy kick to it.



So if anyone wondered what I bought my wife for her birthday, it was some cosmetic products. At the cosmetics counter I heard my wife said it was "bak gei man" (hundred plus in Cantonese) and I thought that was a decent price for a gift so I immediately offered to pay for it. She added some other cosmetics stuff which was "sam bak gei man" (three hundred plus), which I thought was still within reason.

At the cashier, I made a startling discovery. I misheard ST, she didn't say "bak gei man" instead it was "bat bak gei man"!!! Ouch! Don't know Cantonese? It means eight hundred plus! Shock!!! Horror!!!. Oh well, as long as she's happy. The second pregnancy has been hard on her complexion. I hope those Estee Lauder stuff really work.

Wow... PPS has really gone down the drain hasn't it? The ads were expected but really, personal attacks (see screen shot portion in red box)? I cannot for a moment understand why Aiz sold PPS off to that guy. If I had known it was for sale I would have bought it (or at least tried to). In fact I'm pretty sure if the PPS sale was announced to the public that lots of better people would offer to run it.

That said, I'm probably going to tolerate PPS for the moment as there's simply no better alternative. Really, dude... PPS should remain neutral. You can do all the shit slinging in your own blog and ping it to PPS.

Tonight's occasion was our 9th anniversary. It doesn't feel like it but we've been together for 9 years now. Wow! Time sure flies. February 26th is the date we first got together back in the year 2000 and is a date I'd much rather celebrate than that dumb event that occurs on the 14th of February every year.

I've always wanted to try French cuisine in particular that magical thing called foire gras and one of the only French places I knew was Cafe Cafe. Of course we don't eat this kind of thing on a regular basis. Such extravagance is best saved for special occasions and today definitely qualifies.

As the rainy season is upon us again I made sure I left the office on time in order to avoid getting trapped in that daily ritual called the traffic jam. I sped all the way back to KL from Cyberjaya to pick ST up. I usually drive pretty fast but I think I might have set a new record for myself today :) In fact it's one of those rare occasions that I actually reached home earlier than her.

And that's how I reached Cafe Cafe at 7pm although I actually reserved a table for us at 8pm. The reservation wasn't that important though as throughout the dinner we were the only customers there. Several minutes before we left only 2 other tables were occupied. Lesson to learn here is that a reservation is probably not required on weekdays. I wouldn't risk not having a reservation on weekends though.

As per our S.O.P. we ordered from the set menu. There were 3 sets. The cheapest one costing RM89 and the most expensive one RM149. I can't remember what the set in the middle cost. I have this habit of over-ordering so I asked the waiter whether the serving for one set was enough for two. He said no. We decided to trust him so I ordered two sets; the cheap one and the expensive one.


Bread and Vinegar (something so common it probably needs no introduction). The bread was suitably warm and the vinegar tasted great.


Brie. This was quite decent. Though I think the cheese could have been warmer.


Our first foie gras. The foie gras was superb. Whenever something melts in my mouth, well I tend to love it. I made the mistake of telling ST what foie gras was before she ate it so although she concedes it was delicious, she was uncomfortable eating it.


Escargots. Ok I seriously did not expect my escargots to be drenched in olive oil. I don't know about you but I really do not enjoy oily food. Would have been perfect if this was baked with cheese :)


Soup of the day. Pumpkin soup I think. No complaints. Found it a little strange to see almond flakes in it though.


Wagyu Beef Cheeks! I read beef cheeks on the menu but I didn't think beef cheeks were from the cow's face. Turns out it really is :) This thing is braised. Not too sure I liked this one. Eating this evoked visions of eating beef noodles.


Seafood pasta. Ermm... this one was just decent. Nothing to shout about. Oh and here are those almond flakes again!


After some disappointing main courses it was great to have some superb desserts. The tiramisu was to die for. I also liked that they put rum in the cake. Not something that you will get in our usual halal cake shops.


Mango cheese cake. No slouch either. The mango toppings were a little sourish but eat it together with the cheese and the pastry and it's just perfect.


Happy 9th anniversary my love.

I can't say I was particularly impressed by this place. Maybe my expectations were too high. And seriously, I absolutely do not understand why people rave about it's decor. What's so great about it huh?

I think I'd rather call James or Eddie. Taken when I was stuck in a jam near Pudu on Tuesday evening.

This post is of no interest to any of my readers :) It's just a list of things that I intend to succeed at this year (in no particular order).

1. Improve my skill in photography.  Anyone wants to model for me?
2. Make photography a revenue stream instead of one that dries up my wallet.
3. Do better at work...  get promoted (if possible)?
4. Expand my revenue stream.
5. Go to Europe!!  (This depends on 4).