May
30th

KY eats - Local Delights at Wild Rice Restaurant, MV Boulevard Hotel

Earlier this month I was invited to the Wild Rice restaurant at Mid Valley Boulevard hotel for a food review session courtesy of foodstreet. I looked through the list of my MSN and found a dinner partner in Ringo to go there with me. (you know, a fehmes blogger to increase my street cred.)

Wild Rice Restaurant at Mid Valley Boulevard Hotel
wild rice restaurant, with indoor and outdoor seatings

The wild rice restaurant is situated on the 9th floor with nice indoor seatings as well as the open terrace with a beautiful pool view.

We were greeted by the friendly communication manager Mr. Huang, and shortly after that the dishes started coming in. The good chef prepared eight dishes for just the three of us for the night. Other than their weekend buffet, Wild Rice restaurant serves Malaysian food as well as Western dishes.

Wild Rice Restaurant at Mid Valley Boulevard Hotel
clay pot chicken rice, char kueh teow, Penang seafood hor fun

Our first dish of the night was none other than Char Kueh Teow. I usually have my reservations when it comes to this dish, but the chef (who has a very strong Penang tie) actually pulled this off rather well. The good size prawns, chives, bean sprouts, and egg combined to deliver a dish that tasted pretty good.

Similarly, the Penang Hor Fun was very nice as well. I like the way the egg is done with the yolk still half cooked while the white spread over the flat noodle. The hor fun comes with prawns, squid, dory fish fillet, and vegetables.

The chef also prepared two versions of clay pot chicken rice for us, the more usual recipe with salted fish, and a version with century egg. Although I love century eggs, I think the combination is a little weird though, this little experiment from the chef didn’t turn out very great (the dish is not on the menu). Then again, I always applaud chefs who are willing to experiment.

Wild Rice Restaurant at Mid Valley Boulevard Hotel
Hainanese chicken chop, avocado burger, pan fried salmon, oxtail soup

Then there’s the very crispy and juicy Hainanese chicken chop that I wish I have a bigger stomach to eat more. The chicken chop consists of 1/4 quarter chicken with thigh and drumstick, fresh button mushroom in brown sauce with some mixed vegetables, and of course, fries. (I wonder if they have fries in Hainan, but lets not digress)

The pan fried salmon was good as well, but I think the most interesting dish for the day goes to the avocado burger. This vegetarian dish has beet root, cheese, butter, and a generous serving of sliced avocado. If you had California Roll, you know how avocado tastes like. The combination of avocado relish, and cheese in the bun was actually delicious.

Wild Rice Restaurant at Mid Valley Boulevard Hotel
the good chef and Ringo

Ringo’s favorite dish, if my memory serves me correct, was the Malaysian oxtail soup. It wasn’t too spicy nor tasted too strongly. The soup was just nice with the meat tender and the carrots soft, serving it in a clay pot does help by keeping the temperature.

map to Mid Valley Boulevard Hotel
Boulevard Hotel is situated at the North Court of Mid Valley City

The best thing about Wild Rice restaurant is the fact that it is open 24 hrs a day. To me this spells the end of mamak after midnight show especially if I’m at Mid Valley.

As for price, I think they are pretty reasonable for a hotel. Soup is RM15; the burger and other local dishes are around RM 18 to RM 22. Expect to pay slightly more for western dishes, but the portions are pretty big. The good news is that the prices are nett, no extra 10% or 5%. I like that.

Address:
Mid Valley City,
Lingkaran Syed Putra,
59200 Kuala Lumpur

GPS: 3.119262, 101.677802
Tel: 03-2295 8000



Nov
12th

KY eats - Chatterbox at Bangsar Village (DongPo pork - 東坡肉)

Files under Bangsar, Eats, KL City | 12 Comments

A few weeks ago the three of us: Rachel, Kelvin, and myself were doing some shopping around the city that somehow brought us to Bangsar Village Shopping Centre. It was almost dinner time, so we were starting to look into potential places for dinner. After the unpleasant experience at Kim Gary, I would normally not look at another HK style restaurant, but the picture of the DongPo Pork (東坡肉) dish proved too difficult to resist…

Dongpo Pork, 東坡肉 Chatterbox at Bangsar Village
glorious DongPo pork

Background on this dish:
DongPo Pork is said to be created by accident when the famous poet Su DongPo (蘇東坡) started to cook pork out of boredom, his friend came and challenged him a game of chess which took his mind away from the cooking until the fragrance of pork came out from the kitchen. Viola! the famous dish is created. According to one recipe, the dish takes about 4 hours to cook.

Chatterbox at Bangsar Village
nice ambiance at an up-class shopping mall

The DongPo pork did not disappoint, it was truly a mouth watering dish especially for a pork lover. The texture is very soft and tender, you can easily pry the meat apart with your spoon or even just chopsticks. Broccoli offsets the texture and tastes of the pork fat and everything goes very well with rice. However, the 3 pieces of giant pork belly proved too much for my stomach, and I will recommend anyone to share the dish instead. I would have finished it if I had a bigger stomach.

Chatterbox at Bangsar Village
the other dishes, including noodle and pork patties with salted fish

The other two noobs had some sort of noodle and pork patties with salted fish rice. They rated the dishes favorably, and we also had a plate of vegetable to share. I remember that the DongPo pork was RM 18 while the other dishes are comparable to any other HK style restaurants, usually priced at around RM 8-12. If you are a pork belly lover, don’t miss out this good stuff.

Map to Bangsar Village
bangsar village

Bangsar Village Shopping Centre is located at Bangsar’s famous Telawi Road, just a stone’s throw away from the Laksa Sarawak stall that I blogged about last year.

Address:
Lot F9, 1st Floor,
No 1, Jalan Telawi
Bangsar Village Shopping Centre
Bangsar Baru, 59100 KL

GPS: 3.130435, 101.670088
Tel: 03-2287 8833



Nov
1st

KY eats - Sagar at Bangsar One

After having satisfied my cravings for Northern Indian food at the economical Spice Garden at Bangsar a couple months ago, I went to Sagar, an outfit serving similar type of food but of a lot higher class with excellent ambiance and exquisite menu at One Bangsar.

Sagar Restaurant at Bangsar One
this is a high class outfit worthy of bringing your in laws

Having arrived there on time (meaning too early for the Malaysian standard,) two of us ordered a plate of pakora and a couple of glasses of lassi to start off. Pakora is something like a North Indian version of tempura, except you dip it in several types of fantastic tasting sauce rather than the plain tempura sauce.

Sagar Restaurant at Bangsar One
baingan bharta, fish tikka, palek paneer

When the other two jokers finally arrived, we ordered a fish tikka, palak paneer, masala chicken, and black dhal to go with nasi briyani and some naan.

The food was very good, scoring well in all the three categories of presentation, smell, and taste (色,香,味). The baingan bharta, my favorite dish of mashed baked eggplant, did not disappoint either. The spiciness of the food were just right, and there’s always the sauces you can apply to fine tune the taste. It was a very good meal.

Sagar Restaurant at Bangsar One
Sagar is situated at One Bangsar

As expected of a place of this standard, the price came to be about RM 40 for each person. Still a pretty decent value for what we ordered. A fine place worthy of revisits.

Address:
One Bangsar, Jalan Ara,
Bangsar Baru, 59100 Kuala Lumpur

GPS: 3.130853, 101.666644
Tel: 03-2284 2532



Aug
3rd

KY eats - Kiku Zakura Japanese Restaurant

Kiku Zakura Japanese Restaurant

To have a real Japanese food experience, one shall never look into the two big conveyer sushi chains that sprung up like mushrooms after rain in every shopping complexes at Klang Valley. To begin with, the sushis usually has as much raw fish on top of the machine made rice blocks as a duck’s tongue, which isn’t alot at all. Instead, go to places like Kiku Zakura, while the price might be slightly higher, say, 50% more, the extra expenses is very much worth it.

In fact, I have since given up on fast-food sushis. Read the rest of the entry at moNSTerblog.

note:
MonsterBlog is no longer relevant.



Jul
27th

KY eats - Spice Garden at Bangsar, cheap northern indian food

Spice Garden, cheap northern indian food
doesn’t score well on esthetics, but very well received by the taste buds

Outside the the more familiar mamak servings, the other variety of Indian food consists of those originally from the northern region of India. While usually found only in up market restaurants (ie. $$$), I recently found one on the cheap, at Bangsar no less.

GPS: 3.127479, 101.669852

Read the rest of this post at moNSTerblog

note: MonsterBlog is discontinued