Food (the lack thereof)

We haven't posted many food reviews these past few weeks. Well, there's a reason for that. We have been eating mostly take-aways, fast food and food thrown together in a hurry (see pic of our rye sandwich with tomatoes, ham and cheese).....it has been a hectic time at work and on weekends which leaves us little time to cook, and even to sit down for a proper restaurant dinner.

Fast food.

Weekends have been full of running around, trying on wedding gowns with the galpal, meeting makeup artists, and soon, meeting event photographers. Yup, the wedding prep has taken centrestage in our lives (finally!).

This blog may soon morph into a pseudo-wedding-event planning website with all the spreadsheets we have in place to monitor all the wedding-related data collected so far. And oh! I do so love to try on wedding gowns even if they don't fit me half the time. The best part is, my best pal is also getting married next year, so we get to fuss about this together and do the girly girl stuff and play dress-up. A far cry from our childhood tomboy days of crashing bicycles and chasing neighbourhood dogs.

Anyway, on the subject of wedding gowns, I've got my mind set on halter-necks while best pal has hers set on bustiers (which really suit her).....only to be told by a designer that halter-necks with V-necklines and me don't really go together like love and marriage unless I grow cleavage like Angelina Jolie's...sigh......well, plenty of time left to play dress-up!

Weekend Cat Blogging (Week of 27th October 2007)

Homeless kitties abound.........

Baby kitties seeking refuge in a box near a supermarket, huddled together.

Sleeping kitties, with one very curious baby wide awake.

Curious baby wonders where the camera flash is coming from.

New kitties on the block....curious glowing eyes. The new kitties (all sibblings) are a couple of months old, and have been wandering around the compound. Mom and dad, nowhere to be seen.

Wary of humans, a shy orange kitty hides amongst the bushes.

Grey striped kitty on the watch-out.

Closeup of grey kitty.

Left a pile of kibbles and water for the vagabond kitties, poor little fellas were famished.

Restaurant Ang Kee, SS2, Petaling Jaya, Selangor

We read Precious Pea's , WMW's and thedroolteam's posts on Restaurant Ang Kee and since we were near the SS2 neighbourhood last night (and I was craving lala again!), we went to give it a try. Having tried and loved fried lala bihun (they call lala pipis Down Under) in Sydney last May, we haven't found any other restaurants in the Klang Valley that serve this dish.

Juicy lala with bihun......the dish was a bit wet, but oh, I so love the gingery taste, sucking on the lala shells and bits of pork lard. Rm12.00 for a serving for 2. Yummy!! (I think hubby-to-be didn't have enough to eat, though!)

Since this was recommended by all the bloggers, we had to try it. Deep fried butter mantis prawns, the wet version. This dish was really creamy and rich, the taste was heavenly.........buttery, milky, savoury yet sweet. At RM14.00/plate, the serving wasn't too big, but the richness of this dish left us very full.

Although it was a weekday evening, the restaurant was about 80% full, which speaks well for its food. We will definitely come here again to try all the other tempting dishes that we saw fellow customers feasting on.

Restaurant Ang Kee

# 50, Jalan SS2/10,

47300 Petaling Jaya, Selangor.
Mobile: 012-2747148 (M. K. Ang)
Mobile: 019-2133205/016-3417812 (Shawn Ang Kee Chiews)

This restaurant is in the SS2 Chow Yeang area, same row as Kayu Nasi Kandar, a few shoplots away. Huge signboard that reads Ang Kee, you can't miss it.

Our rating system for overall satisfaction with what we eat and where we eat....

1-bam = don't even bother

2-bam = good enough to fill the tummy

3-bam = a very good restaurant in its category

4-bam = excellent cooking, worth a detour

5-bam = exceptional cuisine, worth a special journey

We would give this restaurant a 4-bam rating.

Kitchen experiments

Our recent kitchen experiments.....

Tandoori chicken, marinated overnight and baked in the oven. Hubby-to-be drenched them in ghee (ok not such a healthy thing to do, but they sure tasted good).

Deep fried squid. We just couldn't get the batter right......like the one in New Paris Restaurant, which is my favourite!

Restaurant Drunk Cat, Kuchai Entrepreneurs' Park, Kuala Lumpur

The crab obsession continues......It looks like we are going to every eatery in town in search of the best spicy & sour chilli crabs. That's the only flavour I seem to order (much to hubby-to-be's chagrin) as I'm addicted to the sauce...other varieties do not come with much sauce to soak mantou in. So every week we are eating the same flavour with slight cooking variation in different restaurants.

This past weekend, it was a trip to Restaurant Drunk Cat (haha like the name!) where we found out the crabs were going cheap at RM18.00/kg. Drunk Cat has a pretty garish interior of bright orange walls and hot fuschia table cloths, like Garfield on a Mardi Gras parade.

So here was our platter of meat crabs at RM18.00/kg.......with an extra RM3.00 for the mantou bread.

The sauce was not so much spicy and sour as it was salty. It had a very strong oyster sauce taste, which made it more savoury than usual. I would have preferred it to be spicier and eggier, and more true to the "original" flavour.

We ordered a side dish of deep-fried butter squids. Loved the stringy bits...loaded with a salty, buttery, sweetish taste, with a hint of curry leaves. Rm12.00/plate.

The fried rice was pretty ho hum, we could have done this at home (and done it better too!). At RM10.00 for a serving for 2, it was pretty steep, considering that there were no prawns or meat (except for the lap cheong) in it.

Restaurant Drunk Cat
33 Jalan Kuchai Maju 7,

Off Jalan Kuchai Lama,

(Kuchai Entrepreneurs' Park),

58200 Kuala Lumpur.

Tel: 03-79802573
Mobile: 012-3817399/012-2967780 (Frank Ng)

Our rating system for overall satisfaction with what we eat and where we eat....

1-bam = don't even bother
2-bam = good enough to fill the tummy
3-bam = a very good restaurant in its category
4-bam = excellent cooking, worth a detour
5-bam = exceptional cuisine, worth a special journey

We would give this restaurant a 2-bam rating. We saw other tables having steamed fish, and spare ribs in a pineapple bowl, and both dishes looked real good. So maybe on our next trip, we'll order those and the rating will improve.

BBQ char siew pork ribs dinner

Having watched too much Jamie Oliver and the new Asian Food Channel (703 on Astro, yay!), we ventured to cook this, with an Asian twist.

Our hunk of ribs.....baked to perfection!

The arch.

The dinner platter.....bbq char siew ribs, sauteed french beans and mashed potatoes. The ribs were tender to the bite, with the burnt caramellised edges (we used maltose) oozing with sweet meaty flavour.

Baked mac and cheese with siew yoke, sausages, ham, roasted tomatoes and garlic.

Dinner was a feast! And there's more marinated meat in the freezer just waiting for a go in the oven.... ;-D

Random Langkawi pics

Elephant at the Oriental Village.

Cherubs frolicking with furries.

Waffles with whipped cream and maple syrup (from the hotel buffet breakfast spread).

Shy monkey.

Not so shy monkey.

View from the room.

Kerbau having fun.

"Shrimpz" shrimp farm. They have a seafood restaurant right next to this farm.

Big tiger prawn by the road.

Wellcome Seafood Restaurant, Sunway Mentari, Petaling Jaya

We went crab-hunting at Sunway Mentari yesterday, the craving has been on for weeks. We found this place which sells crabs at RM18.80/kg; a big banner in front of the restaurant proclaims.

The walls were lined with posters of food dishes, helped abit in our choosing what to eat.

We ordered crabs (of course!), cooked Spicy and Sour style. The mud crabs were not too large in size, we got about two and a half crabs. To me, the sauce had too much plum sauce in it. I would have preferred it to be more spicy and eggy. No crab roe in the sauce too, unlike some we've eaten in other restaurants. But if you're looking for cheap crabs, it's kinda worth it as this dish cost us only RM18.50.

The "spicy sauce fried bamboo clams" was really good, the gravy was made of spicy bean sauce which gave it an almost Szechuan flavour. The gravy had us cleaning out the plate and shells. Plus point was that there was lots of clam meat, not many empty shells. At RM15.00, it was goooood.

"Four heavenly king vegetables fried with belacan" was the ostentatious name for this mostly bean mix of okra, petai, long beans and brinjal, fried with belacan and dried salty baby shrimps. I love petai and my other half doesn't, so guess who ate all the stinky beans! This dish cost RM10.00 which was pretty standard in terms of price.

The thing with eating crabs is, it gets digested fairly fast, and over an hour or so later, we were hunting for food again!

Wellcome Seafood Restaurant

# 15-1, Jalan PJS 8/5, Sunway Mentari Plaza,

46150 Petaling Jaya,

Selangor, Malaysia.

Tel: 03-56313064

Mobile: 012-6256817

This restaurant is opposite the Restoran Yuen Buffet Steamboat, on the same row as Romeo Inn.

Our rating system for overall satisfaction with what we eat and where we eat....

1-bam = don't even bother

2-bam = good enough to fill the tummy

3-bam = a very good restaurant in its category

4-bam = excellent cooking, worth a detour

5-bam = exceptional cuisine, worth a special journey

We would give this restaurant a 3-bam rating.

Weekend Cat Blogging (Week of 13th October 2007)

Sher and Upsie at What Did You Eat hosts the Weekend Cat Blogging this week....poor Upsie kitty is under the weather and on medication. Do hop over to give Upsie a purr and pat.

Langkawi kittykins. These cool dudes were spotted hanging out in Kuah Town, Langkawi, Kedah, Malaysia.


Spotted a Mankie-coloured tuxedo kitty dozing in front of a camera shop. Had to take some snapshots.

We named it Adolf. He bore a close resemblance to a certain Fuhrer (but cuter, not evil and more laid back!).

Adolf came over for a sniff and food......too bad we had no kibbles with us.

He decided to go back to sleep then, poor dear.

Island cat found sleeping on the job. It was a pregnant female fast asleep, didn't budge even when I patted her head.

Restoran Orkid Ria, Pantai Cenang, Langkawi, Kedah

7th October 2007, afternoon. Went to Pantai Cenang for some last-minute duty-free shopping at The Zon mall.....our loot.... 2 bottles of Chivas and chocolates.

Today, we were going to have our last lunch in Langkawi before flying back to KL. We decided to dine at the Pantai Cenang area as it was closer to our hotel and to the airport than say, some place like Kuah town. Restoran Orkid Ria looked cozy and crowded on that rainy day, so we went in to try.

View of our table, I like the quaint checkered table cloth.

We had fried chicken since hubby-to-be complained about not having had any meat for days. (It had been all seafood, seafood, seafood!) The fried chicken cost RM12.00, quite expensive for a mere chicken whole-leg (drumstick + thigh, deboned). It tasted really good though, with a hint of curry powder, crunchy skin and juicy meat.

This was something of a novelty, sizzling oyster on a hotplate. It's basically like o' chien (oyster omelette), except wetter. RM10.00 per plate. I enjoyed this dish full of baby oysters bursting in my mouth with each bite.

We divvied up the tomyam prawns and for RM16.00 it came to exactly 2 small bowls. It had a strong lemon taste, which was somewhat unusual for tomyam, I am more used to the lime taste rather than lemon. The prawns were consolably large for the price we paid. Tomyam is always a favourite, lemony or otherwise.

Restoran Orkid Ria

Lot 1225, Jalan Pantai Cenang,

07000 Langkawi,

Kedah, Malaysia
Tel: 04-9554128

Our rating system for overall satisfaction with what we eat and where we eat....

1-bam = don't even bother

2-bam = good enough to fill the tummy

3-bam = a very good restaurant in its category

4-bam = excellent cooking, worth a detour

5-bam = exceptional cuisine, worth a special journey

We would give this restaurant a 3-bam rating.

Wonderland Food Store, Kuah, Langkawi, Kedah

While researching and compiling our Langkawi restaurants-to-visit list, Wonderland Food Store popped up time and again. It's even in The Star's Guide to Malaysian Street Food. "Amazingly cheap and nice", is what it's famous for.

6th October 2007, evening. We finally found the shop, which was quite hard to locate if you are not a Langkawi native. I know Uncle M would never dine here...it was next to a big (odourless) river/"longkang" which leads to the sea. In fact, there was an entire row of seafood restaurants in the same locale, and people were happily munching away at their food, "longkang" notwithstanding. Greedy as we were, we joined the crowd.


Again we wanted to eat crabs, but found out that Wonderland only serves flower crabs (RM35/kg), not mud crabs. Flower crabs...not exactly meaty, hence we decided against it.

We had the mantis prawns kung pao style. Lovely, crunchy, fresh mantis prawns deep fried and coated in a sweet and spicy (from the dried chillies) sauce. Rm 8.00 for a small portion.


Everywhere we go must eat lala, my current craze. Chilli lala, also RM8.00. I loved the taste of the sauce, my only complaint is that the lala had more empty shells than meat. Oh well, I spent a lot of time de-gravying the empty shells.



I guess the only dish which was not so worth it was the grilled prawns served with chilli-assam paste. The 6 medium-sized white prawns cost us RM9.50 (priced according to weight). I had expected larger prawns at that price. Taste-wise, it was pretty mundane as well, I could tell the prawns were not the day's catch.


The restaurant has a 2-page menu, so if you're interested about how much dishes cost here, check the menu out....the fixed-price dishes typically range from RM8.00 (small), RM10.00 (medium) to RM14.00 (large).



Menu page 1

Menu page 2

Wonderland Food Store

Lot 179, 180, 181 Pusat Perniagaan Kelana Mas,

Jalan Trimula, Kuah,

07000 Langkawi,

Kedah, Malaysia.

Tel: 012-6230441

Our rating system for overall satisfaction with what we eat and where we eat....

1-bam = don't even bother
2-bam = good enough to fill the tummy
3-bam = a very good restaurant in its category
4-bam = excellent cooking, worth a detour
5-bam = exceptional cuisine, worth a special journey

We would give this restaurant a 3-bam rating.