Food in Kuching Part 4: Going back in time

Previous related posts:

Food in Kuching Part 1
Food in Kuching Part 2
Food in Kuching Part 3: Foochow Food

For today's post, it is more indigenous and Malay.

We tried Sago Pancakes in Sarawak Cultural Village. It smells yummy and it tastes best eaten when it's fresh. If not it'll be dry. The pancake is not super sweet. Support the people working there :D And haha, I did not take down the price. Wahahahah... ahahahha..hah (OMG how could you do this to us?!)

Ok it's RM 2. It is not cooked or fried with oil.

Sago Pancake

Since it's the cultural village and this blog is about food, I'll post some pictures showing how the kitchen looks like in those days.

Check out how they store the red spoons int he picture below. It's ingenius for me!

Big pan and big stove and big fire..

Imagine all the embers flying about while you cook! Ouch ouch ouch and smoky.

I think cooking with these kills two birds with one stone.

You cook and get food, and you get a sauna at the same time.

Cherish our modern stoves and ovens :P

Opposite the Cultural Village is the Damai beachfront. They have a food court there where performers from the cultural village eat as well. I ordered Butter Chicken Rice from Stall Number 10 and I was pleasantly surprised that it tasted good.

For dinner, we took a boat across the Kuching waterfront to the restaurant called Barok (or My Village Barok). We were recommended to go there to try the Ayam Penyet. The best description of the restaurant I can give is it's behind a big food court and it's a wooden house. When I first entered, it reminded me of Aunty Juliet's in Kota Kemuning.

In Barok, they have a lot of set menus to choose from. We chose the one with Chinese tofu (they make it really like the Chinese style and good!), pakis cooked with garlic called Midin (green vegetable that we do not have in KL, good too), vegetables (cauliflower, carrots, mushrooms etc), chicken (Ayam Penyet) and rice.

It must be good because the cats there sat beside me on the stool. The waiter had to chase the cat away. Another customer next to us helped too. Everyone was friendly :D even the cats, so no fear.

From top right clockwise: Rice (everybody knows so it's a good starting point XD), Chinese tofu, the bowl of vegetables, pakis called Midin, fish and then the chicken (Ayam Penyet).

The fish was awesome. It was cooked right and smooth. Nyam nyam nyam. Mahu lagi. We ordered siakap fish cooked in sweet and sour sauce.

For drinks, we ordered the Barok Special. In Barok Special, there's Sunkist, lime, lemon, asam boi and lychee. I would describe the taste as refreshing :D

Sizzlers Restaurant at Damansara Heights

Happy 2013 !

This mainly covers my first post in 2013 and all hail to the new year! More food on the way to our tummy and prayfully nothing, or nowhere is getting any wider or bigger. Muahaha. No, I'm not kidding. *fingers crossed*

Sizzlers Restaurant came to our mind (my mind, specifically) when I browsed through the Groupon website for cheap dirt deals for food and strategically located restaurants (drive-able with GPS and some men driving LOL) and voila, Sizzlers came to an agreement for the other 5 of my friends. Although I had to say that I am a zero clue fella with directions in Damansara area, PLUS with the rest of my friends, but we took the risk and bought it.

Tyng and Andrew went through lots of trouble trying to get hold of the people in charge of the restaurant for a simple booking and according to them, it took more than 10 calls within a three-week period just to hold them down to write down their names and contact number. Which was a sad, sad customer service despite being busy at all times. Taking down a name, date for booking and contact number only requires you to spare less than 5 minutes with your (already) paid customers with a simple courteous decency reply and they can't seem to do it right even making more calls than needed to go to a toilet.

Anyway, to keep that aside and to the food, we managed to get an afternoon, brunch/lunch meet up with all 6 of us, rendezvous at Tyng's house with a two-car convoy. Setting off from Bukit Jalil area to Damansara took us 30-40 minutes, which was well, okay I guess with it saying the first time luck on us that we didn't get lost. Whee!

The groupon deals we took were two sets of 3 main dishes with salad, soup of the day and lasagna. Each groupon deal costs RM39, for three people. Main dishes were open to either pizza or pasta selections.

Notice their chairs being all fancy dandy. I guess having a luxury furniture store next to this restaurant helps with all the interior deco. Lol

I'm half guessing that guy is the big boss. *wink wink*

Tastefully decorated with lush decoration and gives the impression of fine dining, walking in to this restaurant gives a warm yet exclusive touch to it.

The 3 idiots. :D

Outside is adorned with their latest promotions.

Since they had a bar inside the restaurant, having outdoor drinking sessions during happy hour is a good thing too, not to mention the place is quiet and rather refreshing after a day's rain.

Current promotion. But according to my friend, their ala-carte dishes don't come cheap either.

Upon entrance

Promotional and menu greetings before you step into the entrance.

The entrance

We started off with fresh salads. As you can see, it combines fresh lettuce, onions, cherry tomatoes, olive with cod liver oil as flavor. It tastes rather weird, because I never liked cod liver oil, not in emulsion but oil based in the salads just gives it an awkward start.

Each person is served a bowl of mushroom soup, which you can see, watery and tasteless. Pretty much an instant powder mushroom soup with too much of water.

Milkshakes on the other hand was rather good. The taste of the pure chocolate is there and there are no signs of powdery taste to it, which gives it a welcoming start. This is chocolate milkshake and it costs RM7.90. Drinks are not included in the deal so we have to order separately for drinks.

Seen here with strawberry milkshake. Tyng said it was fine.

The garlic breads are fine too, which I was pleased about. The crunch is there and the flavoring of the garlic is not overpowering. Served hot and from the oven, make sure you savor it when you still see the smoke.

We were served first with Margherita Pizza; a combination of chicken ham, peppers, olive, mozzarella cheese and parsley leaves

The 2nd pizza we ordered was Hawaiian Pizza, a combination of pineapples, olives, peppers, mozzarella cheese and also parsley leaves.

The third pizza we had was the Seafood Marinara pizza, which was a little more luxe of ingredients as they used squids, prawns, olive, peppers, mozzarella cheese and parsley leaves. Now, do you see any difference in them? Pretty much all the similar except the main ingredients that sets them apart, right? Yep, that's what I think too. The taste were all the same too, which came to a disappointment again after the salad and the soup of the day.

As for the pasta selection, we were first served with Bolognese pasta and truth to be told, despite its lack of food presentation and the overuse of parsley leaves, this dish is the winning dish as compared to any of the dishes served to us that day. The taste is good, very balanced with the sauce and the chicken pieces in it, very flavorful indeed.

Chicken Lasagna. This looked sad to you, ain't it? The lasagna I made the other day has a better outlook and taste to this. The lasagna sheets were overcooked, too soft, the paste is too watery and you can barely taste any cream sauce in it.

The same goes to the Beef Lasagna, the same sad fate both of them have. Everyone agrees with me, except Andrew which he doesn't take beef.

Green Curry Pasta! Boy, this is pipping hot!crazy with the green chillies and cili padi. Never attempt a single bite into this if you're not a spicy tolerant person!

Carbonara, which looks rather okay but the taste is bad as expected. The thickness of the cream is there but the taste war has lost it big time.

All in all, I didn't really had a good tasting experience in this restaurant. I'm sorry for being harsh on this but even if its a deal food must not be served blandly as we are the first customers who actually paid FIRST to savor your food. And if you do notice, almost 80% of the food served were garnished with parsley leaves, as if there isn't anything else to serve about to make the food looked presentable. Instead, we felt like throwing so much of the parsley actually made all of the dishes looked boring.

But their decorations of the restaurant does give it a seemingly good, chic place to be. If you're head on around Damansara area, perhaps you can consider their Bolognese Pasta or have a drink or two with your friends.

They have wi-fi but their connection was so terrible that a simple log-in to Facebook felt dreadful.

Sizzlers Restaurant

Lot B-0-3, Semantan Suites, Block B, No. 10, Jalan Semantan, Damansara Heights
Kuala Lumpur 50490

Contact Number: 03-2011 3335 or 016-918 1948: 11am – midnight


Cheers and have a happy 2013!


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Tokyo Pasta Mario in 313@Somerset

Hi guys. Ever since I hit the maximum photo upload quota, I feel very lazy to blog because it took a longer time to complete a blog post. It has become a hassle of some sort. If you guys have any simpler photo host to recommend, please let my friends and I know. I am using Flickr and it is a pain.

Anyway this is the Singapore post which got delayed.

My family and I went to 313@Somerset and ate in this shop called Tokyo Pasta Mario. Sounds like a n arcade game no?

You can choose to sit at the counter or you can look for more tables and chairs at the back. At the back, there's a long table. That was where I sat.

Look at this HUGE plate on display. The plates on the left are the regular sizes.

I took the menu for everyone! XD On the bottom left corner, you can see the Spicy Choice and the notice that says their curry contains pork.

There is curry for everyone. You can choose the level of spiciness for your curry. There are 5 types of spicy: Normal Hot, Extra Hot, Very Hot, Super Hot, Monster Hot. All of us chose Normal Hot.

Once you order, you'll get the familiar UFO. When it blinks or flickers red, it means your dishes are ready to be collected.

Fish Fillet Curry,  S$ 8.80

This is Fish Fillet Curry. It costs S$ 8.80. It was nice and all-meat. However I don't really fancy the salad dressing. The salad dressing did not taste like thousand island and was very sour for me.

Chicken Katsu Curry,  S$ 9.80

The next dish is Chicken Katsu Curry. It costs S$ 9.80. The fried chicken is not oily and done just nice. Juicy meat with yummy rice! Om nom nom! The curry got salty for me after awhile but it is alright when eaten with rice and the chicken meat. There is pork inside the curry so it is not halal.

Cheese Chicken Katsu Curry,  S$ 10.80

My cousin ordered Cheese Chicken Katsu Curry. It costs S$ 10.80. When it came to the table with Chicken Katsu Curry, we could not differentiate which was with cheese. We decided to taste the meat from each dish but it both tasted the same and we could not taste the cheese! Both of the dishes tasted the same so we just chose a plate and got on with eating.

Pork Katsu Curry,  S$ 9.80

The Pork Katsu Curry costs S$ 9.80. My dad said it was nice.

Cheese Omelette Curry,  S$ 9.80

My sister ordered Cheese Omelette Curry. It also costs S$ 9.80. This dish has only pork meat in the curry. She finished eating all the curry on her plate.

Address: 

313@Somerset,

313 Orchard Road,

#05-01/ 02/ 03,

Singapore 238895
(Food Republic, Stall 24)

Directions:

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Contact number: +65 6509 6643

Tamayaki Yummy Yummy @ Sunway Pyramid

Takoyaki! I had been craving for it and I got it satisfied that day in Sunway Pyramid. My sister told me about this new takoyaki shop near the ice skating rink so we decided to check it out. We usually buy the takoyaki in Asian Avenue.

The new takoyaki shop is called Tamayaki Yummy Yummy. Do not be surprised or taken aback when the workers suddenly say "Yummy yummy!" while working. It's like the workers in Uniqlo greeting you "Welcome to Uniqlo!"



This is what they have to say about their shop,

"TAMAYAKI (弹丸滋地) offers quality Takoyaki. Our Takoyaki are the combination of traditional Japanese recipe prepared via patented induction heating device. 

By carefully combining ingredients and flavours from various countries, we have successfully created different flavours of Takoyaki suitable to local palates. TAMAYAKI is an enhanced version of the traditional Takoyaki.

Our delicious Takoyaki has a ...distinctive crispy exterior with juicy and tender fillings." 

These were the said flavours.
You can see a better, clearer and neater menu by clicking Menu. It's in their FB Page.

From mon-yan

My sisters and I ordered Chicken Sausage and Cheese flavour. 

One box costs RM 6.90

The difference between this shop and the shop in Asian Avenue is the number of takoyaki balls served.

Here in Tamayaki, they serve four while the one in Asian Avenue serve three.

After placing our order, we would be given a plastic chip. This plastic chip is our number.

Front and back view of the plastic chips.

Our snacks were served in neat pink boxes. I like the packaging. Cute and portable. It also comes with the pink plastic fork.

And the inside looks like this!

Taste wise, I personally like the ones served in Asian Avenue. This takoyaki in Tamayaki is not as crunchy and the taste was very mild for me. No ooomph like when I chomp the ones served in Asian Avenue. Don't get me wrong, it's not bad. Just not as I expected.

Will I go back? Yeah, I guess I would try the other flavours and I'll let you know through this blog XD

To end this post, I give you the following details:

Address:
LG 2.41A, Lower Ground 2,
Sunway Pyramid Shopping Mall,
No. 3, Jalan 11/ 15, Bandar Sunway.

Directions:

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Email: enquiry@tamayaki.com.my

FB Page: Tamayaki Malaysia