Hunting for a simple and pleasant place for dinner, my buddy Kenneth suggested Restaurant Grandma Kitchen Cafe at Damansara Uptown. I just have to try it since the dude said this place serves the “xiao long bao” (小龙包) in a particularly interesting way.
the LMF is there too.
Though Uptown is notorious for having a horrendous parking situation, we didn’t find much trouble putting away the car legally since it was at night. Your luck might vary.
The restaurant is located just a few shops next to RHB bank. The decoration is simple but pleasant. There are plenty of choices to choose from, cook-to-order dimsum, fried rice, noodle, and various other local dishes to go with steamed rice as well.
suck the juice!
Once I spotted the Petai Seafood fried rice on the menu, the choice is simple. I ordered that and the famous “101″ premium juicy dumpling (the xiao long bao). The other noobs ordered Tomyam seafood fried rice and a plate of butter chicken with curry leaves.
The petai fried rice did not disappoint, and the xiao long bao was very tasty as well. A word of cautious though, since the xiao long bao came with a little straw for you to suck the juice, don’t do it straight! Wait for a couple minutes to let it cool down first, alternatively, you can steal a Starbucks super-hot-liquid friendly straw. hehe
get your own sambal
The fried rice costs RM 6.80 per portion, and the excellent xiao long bao RM 3.80. Drinks are priced pretty reasonably at RM 2.30 to RM 4+. Overall a pretty good value for the food and environment. Will definitely go there again.
map of uptown
Restoran Grandma Kitchen Cafe
Address:
6, Jalan SS21/39, D.U.,
PJ, 47400 Selangor
GPS: 3.137367, 101.622763
Tel: 03-7722 1886
Thanks to the invite by Sultan Muzaffar, I got the invite to watch Cinta the movie, a local production. Since FA and Suan wrote some lengthy reviews on this movie, I’m gonna try something else, here goes haiku.
Cinta, the movie
first Malay flick
I watched in cinema
it was a premier
five stories in one
many angles of affections
with ups and downs
an emotional roller coaster
some actings were great
some were a bit KAYUish
but overall
it was not bad at all
some shots were awesome
like postcards and pictures
but some sound and lightings
were not too impressive
I did not yawn
nor got bored
it was a flick
very much worth seeing
the movie opens
on 30th November
catch it on cinema
you will be surprised
side note:
One of the producers actually recognized yours truly and said something like “I recognize some of you but you don’t know who I am. I can see Suanie, Fireangel, and KY” before showing the movie. It was a bit awkward but I’ll take it as a vote of confidence. Thanks Tengku!
Also, Ally Iskandar is an awesome emcee. Hire him on your wedding or something.
Other reviews by Mimpi Pari & lyanna
I did not know the existence of this place until my house mate Huey Fang the SS2 dining specialist (been to almost all restaurants in SS2 since she will usually get lost at other places) pointed it out to me last night. We then decided to have a light dinner there instead of visiting our frequent mamak square since the sky doesn’t look to be staying dry for long.
The name of the place is 中国华佗馆, pronounced “zhong kwok wah thor kwoon” in Cantonese. I didn’t spot any English or Malay names other than the HERBAL TEA printed under one of the traditional herbal tea containers (see picture below).
smallish place with nice ambiance, excellent porridge
The restaurant, only occupying half a shop lot, is pretty small but not overly crammed. The menu is pretty simple, offering several types of Herbal tea, “thong sui” (糖水), “guai leng gou” (龟零膏), and a few light dishes that can pass for a meal.
I ordered a five flower herbal (五华茶) tea and fish ball with glass noodle, while the other noobs went for porridge (神仙粥), chee cheong fun, and snow fungus with longan thong sui.
“thong sui”, fish ball soup, “chee cheong fun”, and a satisfied customer
The porridge was probably the best dishes. while the chee cheong fun and fish ball soup were pretty good as well. At less than RM 4.00 per dish, there’s pretty good value for money too. My traditional herbal tea and the thong sui were RM 2.00 per bowl (yes, old school bowl, not glass) were excellent too. I have also heard good things about the fried rice, but don’t bother to order the carrot cakes or curry chicken rice.
situated just the row behind McDonald’s at PJ SS2
This is a pretty nice little hide-out at the frenzy that is SS2. I’ll definitely go there again.
Address:
Jalan SS 2/55,
Petaling Jaya, Selangor
GPS: 3.116959, 101.621400
Steamboat is best enjoyed with a group of friends, so I gathered the usual suspects last weekend and eight of us went to the relatively new Damansara Village Steamboat opposite ProJET gas station near Atria at Damansara Jaya.
very nice set up and excellent ambiance
This place is more than just a simple restaurant, there’s a little pool for kids to catch guppies (longkang fish) from, some furry animals, Iguana, and a giant tortoise on one side, a miniature vegetable farm, and even a guy twisting balloons for free. At least this local restaurant is catching up to McDonald’s concept of making the kids happy first.
As for the restaurant itself, there are indoor and outdoor areas, with everything set up in an open concept. No need for air conditioning when you have high ceiling, no wall, and plenty of fans. The tables are not arranged too close together either, very spacious and comfortable.
the standard steamboat set
For the eight of us, we ordered five portion of the standard steamboat set (assorted fish balls, prawns, mussels, eggs, bamboo clams, noodle, and vegetables). To complete the meal and add some variety, we also asked for 300gm of live tiger prawn (still jumping on the plates!), straw mushroom, 1kg of giant clam, and a pretty good size batfish that looks and tastes pretty much like pomphret.
the extras: tiger prawns, clams, fish, straw mushroom
As this is a Pulau Ketam style steamboat, we go for the traditional clear soup with some herbal ingredients. The sambal provided at this place was pretty good too.
We started out boiling the soup with some seafood, fish balls, and noodle for the first round. Finished everything in less than a few minutes; and proceed with the second round of giant clams and others; then it was the fish; and after that the live prawns; with the final round of more noodles and egg. The soup got better and better as the essence of seafood ingredients got sucked into it. It was a very fulfilling meal, fresh ingredients with very good soup. The food went well with the fresh coconut juice and a bottle of toddy we ordered.
the happy diners
The dinner came to slightly less than RM 30 per person. I would consider that a very good value for the ambiance and great food we had. A place worth visiting again.
less than 2 kilometers from Kelana Jaya LRT station
Address:
1067, Jalan Jenjarum
SS23 Damansara Jaya
47400 Petaling Jaya
GPS: 3.124233, 101.612672
Tel: 03-7803 1832
By the way, if you haven’t know already, the big boss is Patrick Teoh.
I was invited by photographer
chef Marco preparing four pasta sauce at the same time
When everyone finally arrived, we were introduced to chef Marco and his assistant Urs (pronounced uuhhrs). They were very friendly people. The good chef then went to do what he’s good at, making pasta.
Chef Marco was working with four pans at the concurrently, each with a different sauce. Two creamy sauce and two tomato based sauce. Considering the fact that this guy set the Malaysian Book of Record by preparing 402 sauce in 7 hours running 12 pans at the same time, this was no sweat whatsoever. Personally, I can only cook soup & fry another dish of vege while having the rice cooker running at the same time. =/
the four flavors
I was asking chef Marco about the name of his dishes, but he told me basically he doesn’t really name the dishes as he has over 700 recipes and it’ll be pointless to name them all.
Then of course, it’s eating time.
The four dishes were all very good. Two creamy seafood pastas each with its distinct taste, one with an Indian hint with the use of tumeric while another with sweetness to bring out the taste of the fresh shrimps. The two tomato based sauce, one vegetarian and the other with chicken tasted awesome as well. The fresh and sun dried tomato, the baby bok choy and the chicken was a surprising mix, but proved to be a good one. A slight oriental hint to the traditionally Italian dish.
the camwhores, and the cook book
After the excellent dinner, we were given a copy of the cook book “Pasta in Play”, authored by Chef Marco with photographs from Stephen Wong. The book is made in Malaysia and will be available at bookstores very soon (more on this once I get the details). Chef Marco is also planning to open a restaurant in KL sometime next year. He promised that he’ll stick to the true traditional ingredients (i.e: cooking with white wine in some dishes) in the new restaurant, I can’t wait.
Kelly Kel Li and Natalie, who took so many pictures of themselves it gave the chef and his assistant (and me!) a cultural shock has already written their piece on the experience too.
Update:
FA and foodlover‘s takes
