Food Finds
Happy Mansion is perhaps the first area in PJ to be “hipsterized”, with Food Foundry, My Elephant, and other eateries having established at these three old blocks of low cost flats nested within Seksyen 17.
Pizza Mansion, Seksyen 17, Petaling Jaya
One of the latest addition is Pizza Mansion, brought to you in fact by the same people that were involved in other eateries around the area. The pizza house promises an ambiance that’s a mixture of old and new, with dark green and yellow color scheme that reminds me of green hornet era. I love it.
The menu had ten different pizzas to choose from at the time (first week of opening) with four side dishes, coffee, soda, and some craft beers.
The pizzas are priced from RM 20 to RM 35 each, all with the same size that serves two average adult with moderate hunger just fine, or one really hungry big fella, I assume.
zucchini eggplant chickpea pizza, truffle mac & cheese
We ended up with Zucchini, Eggplant, and Chick Pea pizza (RM 28) to go with Truffle Mac & Cheese (RM 20) for a totally meatless afternoon meal.
truffle mac & cheese
We got the mac & cheese first, and it came bubbly hot. It was creamy, torched just nice, and had a generous dosage of truffle paste that made this classic dish that much better. We really enjoyed this.
freshly baked, absolutely sumptuous
The pizza too was rather good, the crust isn’t overly thin (think Dominos), or overly thick (think Pizza Hut), but soft, fresh, and of course, freshly prepped and baked. The toppings did not disappoint either, thinly sliced zucchini and egg plant, with some sun dried tomato and copious amount of cheese and tomato paste, yums.
This is now my favorite pizza place, for now at least. 😀
Address:
Pizza Mansion
Block B,
Happy Mansion, Jalan 17/13,
Section 17, Petaling Jaya, Selangor
GPS: 3.123148, 101.634671
Hours: 10 am to 5 pm
Banh mi, or bread in Vietnamese, was developed in the 1950s as Vietnam’s own interpretation of baguette. It is a classic marriage between ingredients from both East and West – baguette, pate, and mayo from their French colonial times, and local ingredients such as pork, grilled chicken, or even cilantro.
If you find yourself at Hanoi like we did earlier this year, a freshly made banh mi makes for a great option as breakfast on-the-go.
Banh Mi by street vendor in Hanoi
This vendor selling scrambled egg banh mi set up her “stall” at the market just right outside the Ancient Lane hotel we stayed at Hanoi. We just had to give it a try after walking by and smelling the freshly made dish for the second day in a row.
The scrambled egg was prepared on the spot using her tiny frying pan with ingredients that undoubtedly involved fish sauce and pepper. The whole thing is then stuffed into this lovely baguette that was soft and yet crunchy on the outside, some thinly sliced cucumber, a bit of cilantro, a squeeze of chili sauce, and there you have it – one of the simplest form of banh mi.
Baguette with freshly cooked omelette
It turned out to be a lovely simple breakfast, and one that would go well with some local coffee for sure. Banh mi stalls can be found pretty much everywhere in Hanoi, give it a try, this version cost 15,000 VND if not mistaken.
Address:
Banh Mi
Ngõ Tạm Thương, Cửa Đông,
Hoàn Kiếm, Hà Nội 10000, Vietnam
GPS: 21.031808, 105.847593
Many of you may be familiar with my affinity with fish noodle. Fresh seafood in an easy to consume, single serving format that fills the stomach with healthy ingredients in a tasty way, what more can we ask for?
Well, a few of you have suggested that I should check out Little Eat Stall and what they have to offer in this space, so I did.
Little Eat Stall, Pudu
Little Eat Stall is located at Jalan Beruang in Pudu. It is technically a road side stall under zinc roof, but seating area is rather hygienic and somewhat comfortable if not a little too warm under our weather.
The stall serves a variety of different dishes on different days. And since I’ve only had their fish noodle, this is what I’ll concentrate on. The fish noodle is available on Friday and weekends.
garupa fish meat noodle soup
Unlike the huge variety of fish and other seafood available at B & Best, my favorite fish noodle place in PJ, Little Eat Stall offers usually just garupa or tiger garupa in either fillet or fish head format, with single type of clear soup. And these come with mihun, no yellow noodle or kuih teow or anything like that.
What they lack in option was more than made up in quality. I thought the fish was super fresh, and the soup base with that dash of rice wine was so good I left an empty bowl by the end of the meal. The choice of vege they include in the dish was definitely a plus as well.
makes for great comfort food
Simply put, this is now my favorite fish noodle, or rather fish mihun place in the city. Do give it a try if you’re a fan of this dish, but one thing you’ll need to be at least mentally prepare for is the wait time.. The place is called 等记 in Mandarin. I’ll leave it to you to find out what that means, literally.
Address:
Little Eat Stall
17, Jalan Beruang, Pudu,
55100 Kuala Lumpur
GPS: 3.135850, 101.716677
Tel: 012-220 8666
I have to admit that I’m not a huge fan of going to Puchong, and it is due to the reason perhaps most of us view Puchong as – the giant parking lot outside that old IOI shopping mall. Well, after so many moons, I ended up there again on a morning of a public holiday, for a short hiking trip to Wawasan Hill (see pic below).
Foo Hing Dimsum, Puchong
Well, what do you do after a good 2 hour or so hiking workout? Breakfast of course!
So by 8:20 am in the morning, we came to the most famous dimsum place in the area – Foo Hing Dim Sum House, at Bandar Puteri Puchong. Even at that ungodly hours, this place was already packed to the brim, with us having to take a number to queue up for a table.
Thankfully, the dimsum house runs a pretty tight ship and we did not have to wait for more than 10+ minutes before being ushered to our table, which was located upstairs, fully air conditioned and quite comfortable.
is there a bigger variety of food for breakfast than dimsum?
The menu consists of some 40 items you can order, but like most busy dimsum places, they also have servers carrying ready-to-eat items to your table from time to time for your picking, which we took full advantage of.
The dishes were competent though not very remarkable, but most importantly they were fresh and never stale (just look at the crowd!). I also love the fact that they use Kampung Koh garlic chili sauce, my chili sauce of choice!
the egg tart is definitely a must order
A few things to note though, the fried stuff here are something I probably would avoid in the future, they’re just not really crispy or enticing. The “wu kok” was pretty good though, and I really like the char siu pau as well.
The claim of fame here is their Portuguese egg tart, something I would positively recommend for sure, possibly better than the version I had in Macau, and not overly sweet either.
bonus pic – at the peak of Wawasan Hill, Puchong
If you already found yourself in Puchong on a morning, this is definitely one place worthy of a stopover. If not for the dimsum, then for those awesome egg tarts.
Address:
Foo Hing Dim Sum House
1st Flr, No. 31, 33, 35-G,
Jalan Puteri 2/6, Bandar Puteri Puchong,
47100 Puchong, Selangor
GPS: 3.022282, 101.617487
Tel: 03-8060 0546
Part of the charm of visiting a new city is to try some of the local dishes, and when it comes to Hanoi, there are plenty to choose from, with one of them being Bun Oc, or snail soup.
bun oc hawker by the streets of Hanoi
While this dish may sound a little weird at first, do remember that most of us readily eats all sorts of shellfish, clams, and even escargot, which isn’t at all too different from this Vietnamese offering.
We chanced upon this Bun Oc place by the streets at Old Quarter in Hanoi (you can find quite a number of these stalls) and decided to give it a try.
The snails are cooked and extracted out from its shells before being served in a sweetish soup base that’s packed with fresh vegetable and a hint of fish sauce (what else doesn’t have fish sauce in Vietnam?)
a warm bowl of snail soup, anyone?
The dish usually comes with vermicelli to make it a meal, we opted out of the carbs since we had just completed a full meal prior. The snail has a subtle taste with texture that isn’t unlike topshell or well cooked shellfish, which was quite pleasant. I
‘d recommend anyone to give it a try. Good stuff.
Address:
Old Quarter,
Hanoi,Vietnam
