wAntAn productions

Department stores like Jusco and Isetan originate from Japan. Every so often they will have a Japanese food fair of sorts and Jusco is having one right now in Mid Valley Megamall. It's located right outside the supermarket section but it's mostly snacks (more biscuits than anything) though.

There happened to be a Japanese family going around buying stuff from the fair. I observed the daughters trying out the soft serve ice cream going "oishii... oishii..." (translation: "delicious... delicious...") and I said to myself "I gotta get me some of that!".

So I did.


At RM4.50 per cone it's not cheap considering Jusco sells similar soft serve ice cream with common flavours (chocolate, vanilla) for a mere RM1.00 per cone just a little futher from where I bough the green tea ice cream. But then I think it's worth the money because the ice cream is really smooth and the green tea flavour is suffficiently strong. Get it while it's still there. I'm not sure when the fair ends.

Durians are hard and thorny and if handled the wrong way will cause the addition of many holes in your hands. However what's inside the durian is a heavenly concoction of fragrant and melt-in-your mouth meat. It's not much of a hassle to open up a durian... you just have to use the right tools. Today wAntAn productions teaches you how to open your very own durian without any loss of blood.

KFC seems to be trying very hard these days. While I applaud their effort to provide variety and their willingness to test the market with some daring concepts (fish in KFC, anyone?) the OR Chicken Chop is a product that should have never been released.

First of all one of the greatest joys of eating chicken at KFC is their crunchy texture. When you pour mushroom sauce over a piece of KFC chicken the crunchyness is lost and you end up with a soggy piece of chicken laced with button mushrooms.

The whole dish screams of re-use. Basically operating a fast food joint is a little bit like manufacturing. You re-use as many parts as possible for any variety of products to keep the costs down. In this dish we have the OR chicken and the coleslaw (with some added raisins!). It doesn't look like they made much effort to make this offering unique at all.

To be fair the mushroom sauce and the fries are unique to this dish but they aren't much good at all. I think I would have preferred it if they put in some potato wedges instead. At least that looks more grand... which brings me to another point; the advertising campaign.

KFC is taking the approach that basically goes "you don't need any special occasions to eat chicken chop because you can have affordable chicken chop at KFC everyday now". I don't think anyone thinks a chicken chop is much of a celebratory dish. Steaks yes... but chicken chop? That kind of belongs in the same category as Fish and Chips. Well this OR Chicken Chop is anything but grand and the whole dish more or less sucks.

Eat at your own peril :)

Tai Thong is having a set lunch and dinner promotion at all it's Chinese restaurants this April (which means there isn't much time left!). There are sets for 10 pax (RM98.00++), 6 pax (RM69.80++) and 4 pax (RM49.80++) which means you can get a decent meal in a Tai Thong restaurant for slightly more than RM10 per person.

2 weeks back my family and I tried out the new Tai Thong restaurant in Bandar Puchong Jaya. As there were 10 of us the 10 pax meal was a very suitable option. As far as I'm aware, each Tai Thong restaurant serves a different set menu.

The 10 pax menu consists of a soup, six dishes and a desert which makes it a grand total of 8 dishes. I had always thought of Tai Thong restaurants as being quite overrated so I was pleasently surprised by how good the food served to us that day was.








Note: Tai Thong is also having an irresistable dim sum promotion where everything goes for RM1.98++ each. It's only available on Saturday mornings though. I tried it 2 weeks ago in the Kepong branch and it was not bad. I'll be in MidValley this Saturday for the dim sum promotion.

First of all major apologies to my (very few) loyal readers because somehow or other I've not had the time to update my blog. I've got quite a backlog to clear so let me start with those items that are time critical in nature.

A few days back I had 2 buffet meals over a span of 3 days. I know I mentioned sometime back about how I don't want to be in a buffet anytime in the near future but one was free and the one I'm going to talk about today looked very tempting when it was advertised in the papers.

Tang Palace Chinese Restaurant in Dynasty Hotel is having an all you can eat promotion this month (April... ending soon) whereby for RM32++ per person you get to have a buffet dinner with a choice of 33 dishes. Everything is cooked to order so there's no shuffling and queue cutting at the buffet spread.

Among the choices are salmon, various types of prawns, shark's fin soup, abalone, scallops, suckling pigs and much more. However there is a catch. For certain items you may only order them once. For example once you've ordered their shark's fin soup and finished it, you don't get any second helpings.

We went there for ST's birthday and brought Mr. Hong Hong along. Our (kiasu) aim was to try all 33 dishes. Seemed easy at first but was actually far more difficult than I could have imagined. We ended up trying only 25 varieties :)


The first round was 8 dishes and the portions were really really small. Judging from the size we thought that 33 dishes was a piece of cake. After all we were already a quater way there and the food barely made any impact on our tummies.




And then there was Round 2 which started off with a plate of suckling pig that came in such a small serving that I couldn't help but laugh out loud. The waitress who served us had to laugh embarrassingly with me :)



Round 2 was a lot more filling that we thought so we hesitated to get to Round 3. We had to persevere... after all we were already halfway through the goal!



Actually for Round 3 we also ordered a Braised Sweet Cordn with Beancurd and Crab Meat soup. It never came... we're glad it didn't because we would not have been able to finish it if it did. We rounded up the meal with some desserts.

There's a Fun Food Fiesta over at One Utama this month with over 20 participating outlets. One in particular that caught our interest was for the Bar B Q Plaza which is a Thai franchise which specialises in hot plate barbeques similar to the type you get in many Korean restaurants. They're offering 20% off their set menus which isn't a bad deal at all.

Bar B Q Plaza is located at the Rainforest area so you might not have seen it unless you've walked there. The place was quite packed today but the air ventilation system was great so no worries about getting your clothes stained with the smell of barbequed meat. I'm not sure if they usually do such brisk business or if it's because of the discount.



We ordered a Supreme Mixed Set for 2 persons (normal RM29.00, discounted rate is RM23.20) which consists of lots of cabbage, thinly sliced beef, thinly sliced pork, chicken, squids, prawns and bacon. Their meat was fresh enough so no complaints there. However nothing was really spectacular about the taste except for the bacon which were heavenly (we made sure to barbeque them as crispy as we could)!




Their service sucked. Perhaps they were handling a crowd that they are usually not accustomed to. One other really funny thing there is everyone there from the waiters to the boss insists on speaking to me in Cantonese despite the fact that I spoke to them in English. Not that I have a problem with speaking Cantonese. It's just that when someone asks for something in English it's natural to respond with English, that's all.

Oh gosh... this place really lives up to their name. Whether it means the king of pies or pies fit for a king is rather irrelavent to me because I just take it to mean great pies.

I was in One Utama today to catch Ice Age 2 with ST and we were looking for a pre-movie snack. She had seen a King Pie ad in the papers and I've been aware of King Pie since they opened their first branch here at KLCC although I've never tried them because they didn't look that appealing. But then masak-masak put in a really good word for them and heck, boo is seldom wrong.

The King Pie store in One Utama is located directly opposite Laksa Shack and I think they probably just opened today because the owners were hanging around the shop facade and I saw them greeting a few friends/relatives.



We had a Salami and Cheese pie and a Chicken and Mushroom pie. Both were good but I think the Salami and Cheese pie was standout yummy. Eaten hot the cheese was warm and gooey and really tasty. I guess the same can be said about all their cheese pies since they probably use the same cheese. I think the pies would taste very different if you don't eat them fresh from the owen/warmer so make sure you eat them right after you purchase them.

I am no fan of mega food courts. The stalls are more often than not manned by foreign workers and their food usually isn't up to par. However once in a while you get some surprises. The Ming Tien food court is a huge place with dozens of food stalls. However most of them only open at night. I've tried some that were open during the day time for lunch and I can't say I was impressed.

So it piqued my interest when ST suggested we go there for lunch today to try out a particular dish from a new stall which she claims was very good. I guess most people who read this blog think I am over critical of food places but that's because you've never spoken to ST before. ST is much more critical than I am and when she says something is good then you better believe it!

ST said it was Lai Fun (which people usually eat with Asam Laksa) with some really spicy sauce. I love to eat Lai Fun but other than Asam Laksa it's not usually found in other noodle dishes.

First of all credits for the photo goes to The Star who published it on their front page today. Credit also goes to Bernama because it's a bernamapic which means The Star bought the picture from them.

Caption from The Star: SWEET SUCCESS: Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi tasting some grapes at the Perdana plantation in Bukit Bintang, Kangar, yesterday. With him is Perlis Mentri Besar Datuk Seri Shahidan Kassim (right).

This picture is hilarious. Couldn't The Star have bought a better picture? Some questions just beg to be asked. Who's hand is it between the PM and the MB. Is the owner of the hand trying to grab some sweet grapes for himself or is he trying to molest the MB? Incidentally I think the MB looks rather unhappy about the hand being there :)

Edit: June thinks the same thing too.

Last Friday on the way to work right outside the entrance to my office I bumped into someone whom I've not met since I left school which was 8 years ago! It was a little funny... I stared at him and in turn he was staring at me. I didn't recognise him at first... he had put on a lot of weight but then again I'm sure I look much fatter than I was in school.

His name came immediately to my mind but I didn't dare say it out in case I was mistaken so I pretended not to remember his name and asked him for it. Confirmed! I was correct. Maybe I should have mentioned his name after all because it seems so terrible of me not to remember a person's name especially since I spent lots of time chatting with this guy in school. Anyway him name was Wah Sing.

I pointed to the direction of my office and told Wah Sing that I've just started working in KL. Then me mentioned something that confused me for a split second. He said "I know". So in the back of my mind I was wondering how he knew and who told him because I've pretty much lost contact with most of my school mates. Then Wah Sing continued "Kah Choon told me about your blog".

Kah Choon is another fella that I've not met since I left Form Five. I never thought Wah Sing and Kah Choon would keep in contact because I didn't think they were that close. But the revelation here is that there are certain old friends who read my blog. Me and Wah Sing didn't talk much. I was rushing to the office and I guess so was he. We exchanged numbers and parted ways.

BUT I LOST HIS HAND PHONE NUMBER!!! I brought my phone to the service center and the memory was wiped clean because they did a firmware upgrade for me (the problem remains unsolved though). I thought the phone number was stored in the SIM card but I was mistaken. So please if you're reading this post send me an email (moc.liamg(ta)eelnojeyw - turn it around) or give me an SMS or something. We should meet up some day and get Kah Choon to come along.

This goes to all other lurkers in my blog who knows me personally. I would love to meet up with you some time.

Nowadays I'm really not in the mood to blog... in fact I'm not in the mood to do much at all. I come home from work and I feel really tired. I suspect it's chronic fatigue but a part of me says I'm just lazy :) Anyway that explains the 2 week gap between posts recently. I've basically run out of things to write so today I will bring to you a little review of the best toy I have bought in years; the Sony Ericsson K750i.


There are two features that I love most about this phone. One is the reason I bought the phone for... the excellent camera. It's freakin 2 mega pixels. Not really that much actually but the picture quality is king among all current camera phones and it can even do macro shots fairly decently. The picture quality is comparable to most consumer digital point and shoot cameras except probably a little noisier.

You can tell Sony Ericsson was serious about the camera features on this phone. For one thing it uses an interface that is very similar to actual Sony digital cameras and I'm pretty sure that most people will tell you that is a good thing. The phone also came bundled with a pluggable flash that works surprisingly well (it's not usually bundled but they are having some kind of promotion now). Take a look at some of the pictures I have taken.





The other feature that I love about this phone is the music playing feature. I've tested out the MP3 features with some songs I had lying around but they only provided a 64MB memory card so I didn't really play around much with it. Suffice it to say the music playing interface is usable. It has shuffle play, sequential play and even play lists. Not only that but the response time is very good. A lot better than my old Motorola E398 which calls itself a music phone. However the god-sent feature here must be the radio receiver. You can't beat radio for sheer variety. Reception is pretty good too but you must have the headphones plugged in to the phone in order to use the radio feature as the headphone cables act as the antenna.

There is a problem with my phone though. No matter how many hours I charge it the battery does not get charged 100%. I'm going back to the shop this weekend to get the battery changed or if the fault is with the phone then the phone changed.

It may be a little surprising to some when I tell them I hate to eat cakes. People look at me and they see a glutton but when it comes to cakes... well uh... you can keep them. However that doesn't mean I don't indulge in cakes every once in a while... although it's almost exclusively chocolate cake that I take. I remember my first encounter with the Chocolate Banana cake many years ago at Secret Recipe. It caught me by surprise... the rich chocolate flavour contrasted with the unique sweetness of banana* and ever since then the Chocolate Banana cake has joined the Black Forest cake on my "edible cakes" list :)

Myself and ST have frequently walked past the Zang Toi cafe in Sungei Wang Plaza and have always been amazed by the size of their Chocolate Banana cakes. They are humongous! If I'm not mistaken they cost RM70 per cake... if you go for a single slice they will set you back RM7. Too bad I didn't take any picture of the whole cakes.



As if the chocolate cake wasn't rich enough they actually poured a lot of chocolate sauce on the cake before packing it into the box and I appreciated every bit of it. I did a search on Google for Zang Toi and noticed that most people have it with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. Maybe one day I'll sit in and try it out.

Links:
-Treasurable Memories - Zang Toi
-SHEBLABS - i crave

* I don't quite know how to explain it. Basically it's like you're eating chocolate, chocolate and more chocolate but suddenly there's an alien taste of banana and mixed together they are a combination made in heaven!

Apologies for the lousy picture quality I had some problems with my old phone and had to use a phone with an even worse camera! I've since bought a brand spanking new phone with a great camera so expect better pictures next time.

If you're like me Kameya Japanese Restaurant is one of those places that you pass by often but never ventured in because you are intimidated by their pricing. Well be intimidated no more as they offer set lunches for RM9.90. Not really a steal as you don't really get much but the food was very good and is sufficiently filling. But the lady boss (waitress?) there tried to trick us.


We went in expecting to try out their set lunches but we were not presented the set lunch menu. Most restaurants tuck it in together with their main menu or paste it around prominently in their premises... not this place. I asked the lady who served us about the set lunch and she said it was not served on Sundays and then she went on about how they have the set lunches to cater specifically for the office lunch crowd. Fair enough except it was a Saturday afternoon and nowhere was it written that the set lunch is for weekdays only. In fact they have ads pasted at several locations in Low Yat Plaza but none of they have the words "excluding Sundays".

Now it's not because I was cheap (though I usually am) or anything but the reason why we went in to the restaurant was specifically to try out the set lunches so we decided to leave and the second we got up the lady boss offered to serve us the set lunches! Well no complaints from me... objective achieved. We ordered a rice dish with pork and another similar one with chicken and both were good... especially the pork.




We also ordered some green tea which came up to RM2.50 per head. Most other places serve greeen tea for free but then we got our own pot with the tea leaves inside and the green tea was quite good. After adding in taxes and the service charge the bill came up to about RM29.

The set lunches are well worth checking out. I'm a little unhappy about the lady trying to trick me and ST and I would advise you to be a little careful about them.