wAntAn productions

A quickie post to those who may be interested. There's a Korean Food Fair going on in Isetan KLCC (right outside the supermarket). Lots of Korean products are being sold there including things like Korean instant noodles, kimchi, snacks, ginseng and even beer. There are lots of free samples going around. Make sure you try before you buy! The fair ends on 13 June 2006.

I took some time off to pay off a saman (ticket for a parking violation) I got on my trip to Perak a few weeks back and managed to have lunch with ST. She's been telling me about this place with Fish Slice Noodles and how expensive they are. It sounded quite ridiculous. RM15 for a bowl of noodles with fish but since I rarely get to have lunch on a working day with ST I though why not?

So what's a Fish Slice Noodle? It's exactly what you think it is. Basically it's made up of 2 components. The first being the noodle. They may be dry or with soup and you can choose from the usual suspects (yellow noodles, beehoon, kuey teow, etc...). Next you select a fish and they slice it up for you and serve it with soup.






The first thing I noticed about their food was how sweet tasting the soup that came with the fish were. Perhaps they boiled it with lots of fish (or fish bones). The fish were very fresh and that means tender and flavourful meat. For those who don't like meat with bones they debone the fish quite well so you don't have to deal with them. The fish cakes are rather expensive but they are good as well.

The damage was RM10 each for the fish noodles and RM5 for the fish cake. They were good so I do think the price was worth it. This place serves more than just noodles with fish. They also have porridge and some other seafood as well. They are open for breakfast and lunch. At night a different stall takes over.

B & Best Restaurant,
No. 12, Jalan SS4C/5, Petaling Jaya,
47301 Selangor.

While blogging about Tai Thong's Set Dinner some time back I also mentioned about their Dim Sum Promotion whereby (almost) every item retails for RM1.98 each. I think I also mentioned that their promotion only lasted until the end of April... turns out the promotion ends in May. As the dim sum promotion is only available on Saturdays this Saturday will be your last chance to enjoy some cheap dim sum.

So far I've had dim sum in two Tai Thong outlets; one in Midvalley and one in Kepong. The pictures here were taken during my visit to their Kepong branch. The Midvalley branch is seriously inept in handling crowds and their selection is many degrees of poor. No chee cheong fun, no egg tarts, no this, no that... The Kepong branch on the other hand has much better selection. All the usual suspects are available but it's obvious that the more expensive items are served in moderation. Service at the Kepong branch is also leap years ahead of the Midvalley branch but be warned. It is nowhere near satisfactory.





The following dessert items are NOT RM1.98 each. In fact they cost a fair bit more. RM4.50 each if I'm not mistaken. Not worth the money but they looked so tempting :)

(I've been too busy to write a proper article so I present you one that I've kept in draft for a long time.)

It's just very difficult to find a mamak like this anymore. Nowadays the variety they have in mamak restaurants are staggering. Many mamak restaurants are now in the business of serving atypical dishes like chicken chop, spaghetti and claypot lou shi fun. The modern mamak restaurant must be the best example of a melting pot that Malaysia has to offer. Everyone eats at a mamak restaurant and a mamak restaurant has anything for anyone! However one does yearn for simpler times when all mamak restaurants had were their rotis, briyani rice and small nasi lemak packets.

There's this road side stall I frequent in Jalan Ipoh behind the HSBC bank. I don't think they have a name and if they do then I don't know it but the fact is it doesn't matter. The people here are very friendly... they remember regular customers and best of all they understand what you tell them (unlike those foreign workers that modern mamaks have a habit of hiring). For as long as I've know them they have been run by 2 old guys. One of them has since gone into semi retirement and a younger old guy has taken over his place.




Rotis are for breakfast. For lunch they serve strictly rice with the typical mamak dishes (fried chicken, curry mutton, etc...). Nasi beriyani is served on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. On the other days they serve plain rice. They are closed on Sundays and public holidays.

A little side story I heard from my neighbour in Puchong (yes even my neighbour knows them): Apparently this stall was very famous for their mutton curry. In fact a famous convict (I can't remember the name) once escaped jail only to be caught again while enjoying the mutton curry in the stall.

This stall has been around as long as I remember. I used to buy air mata kucing from them back when I was still a wee kid in St. John's Institution (a primary and secondary school located in KL town). I've always had very fond memories of them... until now. They suck now! They used to be great when they still served their air mata kucing in steel bowls. The ice cool feeling of the drink was unbeatable and you could easily scoop up the longans with the metal spoon provided. Nowadays they serve you using styrofoam cups and you don't get a spoon. In fact you don't even get much longans at all. As far as I'm concerned this stall is no longer a must visit in Petaling Street.

Petaling Street is famous for a few things but my favourite part of Petaling Street has always been the food. Today wAntAn productions brings you to Petaling Street to enjoy a very famous Grilled Fish stall. I don't know what this place is called but it is located right by the Hong Leong Bank in Petaling Street nearby the famous Air Mata Kucing stall (which I will talk about later).

Before you try it out I should give you a word of warning. This place is not for those who cannot eat spicy things as their grilled fish is spicy, spicy and spicy! So much so that it's overkill. Five of us went to eat dinner at this place and when we placed the order the lady boss asked us if we could take spicy food. A previous experience here made me immediately react and tell her to make it mild but even then I sweated my way through dinner!




It was RM44.00 including rice. The portions were for 4 persons but the 5 of us had a comfortably filling meal. The drink stall here does great business as well because the grilled fish is so spicy you're bound to drink more than one cup.

All the grilled fish (actually a better word would be seafood) is cooked the same way. Choose a meat and they place it into a tin foil with some curry and some vegetables such as long beans and ladies fingers (a.k.a. okra). Their dishes are pretty decent but their spicyness is way too strong... this coming from someone who loves to eat chillis! However they still do roaring business which means most people don't seem to mind.

Note: You can't eat here in peace. Every few minutes you will be disturbed by either a ma-piao (lottery ticket) vendor or some beggar. By the way in case you're wondering those Buddhist monks are fake. Monks are only allowed to beg for food... never for money.

In Malaysia the KFC and Pizza Hut franchise are owned by the same company but somehow or other Pizza Hut always comes out with some of the better promotions in Malaysian fast food while KFC mostly just falters. Today we talk about Pizza Hut's Hawaii X-tra Wonders set for 2 persons which consists of a regular Hawaii X-tra Pan Pizza, one Aloha Tuna Wrap, one garlic bread, 2 soup the day and 2 glasses of Waikiki Mango. Along with the promotion they also introduced something called a Banana Puff which I will talk about later.

I guess if you've been reading Malaysian food blogs you would probably know of Bumbu Bali in Bandar Puteri Puchong (which incidentally is becoming a great place for food). Bumbu Bali is a little bit like those restaurants in Melaka's Jonker Walk whereby aside from food they are also in the business of selling home decoration items. As the name suggests Bumbu Bali serves Balinese food. They are also serve Western food (steaks, burgers, etc...) but the gold is really with the Balinese food.

The family was there for Mother's Day and I brought ST along to enjoy the food. Neither me nor ST ordered the Balinese dishes but I did obtain some "samples" from my brother and father's plate and what little I ate were delicious. I'm still regretting not ordering the rice dishes because they seemed to be spectacular where as their western food isn't anything great.

Servings are big and price is as expected (which means it's not cheap). Let's get on to the pics. Apologies for the picture quality as my SE K750i doesn't take great pictures under dim lighting conditions.

Taking a short break from posting Perak related articles. There's only 2 left to go but I have to get some details for the write up from my friends so I'm going to delay them a little.

Guang Liang is a Malaysian singer who's very popular in Taiwan. He was recently elected as the Malaysian tourism ambassador. Here are some videos that he stars in for Tourism Malaysia's Taiwan campaign (our tax money at work!).

Our Ipoh trip also included a quick detour to Taiping. The objective was to visit the famous Taiping Lake Gardens. The Taiping Lake Gardens has been in operation since 1880 which makes this the oldest garden of its type in Malaysia! The Taiping Lake Gardens are also located near to two significant Taiping landmarks being Bukit Larut (a.k.a. Maxwell Hill, the first hill resort in Malaysia) and The Taiping Zoo. We only had enough time to take a stroll through the park. I wished I had the chance to go up Maxwell Hill and maybe even stay the night.

First of all Restoran Bukit Tambun is not located in Bukit Tambun. It is actually located somewhere past the Perak Cave in Ipoh in an area called Jalan Kuala Kangsar. My Ipoh friend brought us here because his family loves the Fish Head Curry they serve and I have to admit that it's pretty good. I did a search for this restaurant in Google and in an Ipoh forum someone mentioned that this place was famous for being expensive. Well it cost us only about RM90 for the whole thing (and for 8 people) so by KL standards it's anything but :)

Ipoh is famous for it's White Coffee which is actually brown in colour (instead of black). The lighter colour of White Coffee comes from roasting the beans differently. White coffee is very very aromatic and the taste can be described as incredibly smooth. It's one of Ipoh's must haves. There are a few famous places brewing White Coffee. The famous one I know is the Old Town White Coffee. My Ipoh friend brought me to this coffee shop called Sun Yuen Long (i.e. New Yuen Long) which is actually a branch of the old Sun Yuen Long coffee shop and I was quite impressed with the coffee.

If you understand Cantonese you might probably ask why isn't the branch called Sun Sun Yuen Long instead :)


There's a very interesting but short article on Ipoh White Coffee at Wikipedia. Check it out.

Sam Poh Tong is a very beautiful place. It's located at the same road with the Ling Sen Tong and Nam Tin Tong Caves I mentioned about in my previous post. It's a little similar to Kek Lok Tong Cave in the sense that you can walk through the cave to a courtyard. At the entrance to the cave you can find a marvellous bonsai garden. Go in through the cave and you end up in a courtyard with a turtle pond and a new pagoda styled building.

Just a short picture post. Nothing much to say about the following temples. Personally I didn't like them one bit. These two temples are located on the same road as the famous Sam Poh Tong cave.





Next up is Nam Tin Tong Cave.

Immediately after a dim sum breakfast at Foh San we headed off to our first destination, which was Kek Lok Tong Cave. Ipoh is pretty much surrounded by limestone mountains and caves. Somehow or other a lot of the caves end up as Chinese temples and there are some famous ones. We didn't have the time to visit them all but we did go to a few starting with the Kek Long Tong cave.






It's pretty interesting to note that this place is full of joggers and of all races too. People here seem to be a lot more open minded than KL folk.

I took a day trip with ST and some friends up north to Ipoh and Taiping last Sunday so these few days wAntAn productions will be focusing a little more on the trip. First off is the absolutely delightful dim sum restaurant called Foh San. Apparently Foh San is the first dim sum restaurant in Ipoh but it should be known as the best dim sum restaurant in Ipoh simply because they are so good it's hard to imagine anyone topping them.




They had great variety (with a lot of stuff you can't find in KL). Carts kept coming with things we have not tried. Their dim sum fillings were also very impressive. Where in KL you get something like one miserable prawns in a 'ha mai' here you get something like two of three big ones in them. Their price was pretty reasonable too. It was only RM90+ for the 8 of us.

If you're ever down in Ipoh be sure to come here for breakfast.

Note: I'm not familiar with Ipoh so unfortunately I cannot offer directions.

Nowadays you can find many restaurants in Malaysia that specialise in selling what can probably be called Chinese style snacks. They're usually dishes of small servings and they're usually pretty expensive. I think the pioneer of this concept may be KTZ whose original branch is actually a road side stall in Kepong called Kei Tak Sek (translation: Remember To Eat). From their humble beginnings they've expanded to several places in KL including OUG, Imbi and SS2. KTZ is also famous for their Sai Mai Loh which is basically shaved iced with fruits.

The other day me and ST went to their SS2 branch to have some dinner time snacks.




I think the Kepong branch is still the best. You can find it in Kepong's Wai Sek Kai (translation: Craving to Eat Street - a Cantonese term for a street with lots of food stalls).

I've mentioned before about the new shops in Puchong Jaya. A few days back I managed to try out another one of those new restaurants. This time it was a restaurant dealing with Chinese style (as in from China) steamboat which is not the same as the Malaysian Pulau Ketam variety which means you don't get a tonne of fish ball and fish ball varients. This place is a little like those shabu-shabu restaurants in the sense that they serve thinly sliced meat. Their soup bases are also a little different from the Malaysian version. Another interesting thing about them is that they are run by real Chinese people from China. It's obvious from the way they look and talk.


They have sets for a different number of people and we had the set for 4 pax whici costs RM59 and consists of 4 types of vegetables, 2 types of meat (you can choose which types you want), fish, taufu, prawns, golden needle mushrooms and some rice vermicelli (bee hoon). Compared with the Pulau Ketam variety there are less choices but the portions are actually quite sufficient.

The steamboat comes in a variety of soup bases. They have 3 types available which are plain, spicy and porridge. You can choose a maximum of 2 soup bases because that's the most that their steamboat pots will support. We had the spicy (ma-la-tang) and the plain (ching-tang) soup. Each soup choice is an additional charge. The 2 soup choices we had cost us RM4 each (not included in the set price).


Up till here you may be wondering why I titled this post Crazy Spicy Beijing Style Steamboat. The Beijing Style part has already been explained so now we move on to the Crazy Spicy part. Look at the next picture and tell me you don't think it's crazy spicy. That's a picture of the actual soup base scooped from the hot pot.


Did you see the amount of chilli flakes and chilli oil in that thing? I had it for my first round and didn't dare to touch it anymore after that. This is how people in China get over their cold winters... in Malaysia where everyday is summer eating this is plain suicide!

Yam Puffs... where have you been all my life? Well I was born in KL and aside from a year in Australia and some trips to Thailand and Singapore I've never been to anywhere else. Little wonder then that I've never encountered a Yam Puff before as you can't find this in KL. I hear it's pretty popular in Kuching though.

A colleague of mine recently went back to her hometown and came back with some Yam Puffs and boy were they good. A Yam Puff is basically a little like a Curry Puff except their skin is flakier and the stuffing is made out of yam and pork. It is very fragrant and the fillings can be very erm... filling (for lack of a better word). If you ever get your hands on one make sure you reheat it before eating it. It makes a world of difference. A minute or two in the microwave should be sufficient.


My colleague's not a Kuching person (she's from Bintulu) so she doesn't quite know where to get these Yam Puffs but according to her sister who was the person who actually bought it, it's RM1.50 a piece and can be found in Huo Ming Cafe at Hui Sing in Sarawak (whatever that means).

Anyone knows how I can get some over here in KL?

A very cool Toyota video. Couldn't resist posting this.

McDonalds does a Ramly burger... that's what I thought of the Beef and Egg Burger. It seemed like such an obvious idea but it took many many years for McDonalds to get it. I know some of you are thinking "but the egg doesn't wrap the burger patty" and I retort with this; there's no standard way to cook a Burger Ramly Special. Serious... every stall does it differently (although I admit the egg wrapping thing is a de-facto standard) and my current favourite is the one right outside the 7-11 in Bandar Kinrara within a walking distance from my house.

Anyways back to the point. McDonalds have introduced 2 new burgers and priced them at RM3.00 each. The old deals for the Chicken Burger and Double Cheeseburger at RM2.50 are gone. Only the Vege Burger retains its RM2.50 price point.


How are the new burgers? The Beef and Egg Burger seemed like a good idea but the egg taste overpowered the beef patty so it tastes more like an egg burger than anything.

The Cheeseburger Deluxe was pretty disappointing as well. It's just a normal Cheeseburger with some funky salad toppings (which is also a little reminiscent of the salad toppings used in a Ramly Burger). At RM3.00 it's one burger patty less than what the Double Cheeseburger used to be at RM2.50. I think McDonalds just ripped me off!

This was over 2 weeks ago. My mom managed to get a voucher for a free hi-tea session for 2 pax at Makan-Makan in the Coronode Hotel. I don't think most people would know where the Coronade Hotel is located. It's actually situated right next to Lot 10, behind the Parkroyal Hotel.

Despite it being free no one really wanted to go so the voucher ended up with me and I bought ST along for another does or overeating. We were originally planning to go on Easter Sunday but it was fully booked so we had to go the following weekend except that our voucher would expire before that. A call to the Food and Beverage department solved that as they generously extended the validity of my voucher.

Don't have much to say about this place. Their food was just so-so. Enjoy the pics!