After having rojak opposite Taman Bahagia LRT station at 5pm (I really should blog about that stall) on Saturday, I kinda forgot about dinner till it was past way past 9 pm. Logged onto MSN and saw Haze online, so I asked what she was up to. Her reply “emoing cos no one eating dinner with me“.

So I asked her to join me for late dinner, and by the time we got started it was already way past 10pm.

While most restaurants have closed and started cleaning up already, the night is still young at Berlin Biergarten. That was the first reason I chose to go there, secondly, they sells non-halal bratwurst, and thirdly, the Guinness promotion is on-going.

Having the promotion is definitely one of the biggest reasons I chose Berlin Biergarten instead of other outlets. I’ve done quite a few Guinness food reviews and they’ve always been good experiences.

Berlin Biergarten German Bar & Restaurant

Berlin Biergarten is located on the first floor at Solaris, just a stone’s throw away from the now pretty famous Tenji Japanese buffet. While the name translate to beer garden, it actually does offer a pretty comprehensive food menu too.

While there are some tables inside the smallish outfit, almost everyone chooses to dine al fresco style here, and like most outlets of this type, there’s a projector screen showing live sports too. A pretty chilling environment.

free pork balls with Guinness, Farmer’s Bratwurst

The Guinness promotion at Berlin Beirgarten is pretty simple:

• 4 perfect pint (330ml) of Guinness for RM 60
• get a free finger food/appetizer from the menu

I chose the pork ball (worth RM 19.90 if I remember correctly). They were pretty firm and rather flavorful, the sweetish sauce and the pork went really well with the slight after taste of bitterness of Guinness that I love so much. It was the yums!

Berlin rosemary lamb

Upon recommendation from the server, I chose the Farmer’s Bratwurst (RM 28). The two German sausage doesn’t look big here, but they were actually quite a decent portion. It was a good thing I didn’t ended up ordering the Berlin Sausage Selection (RM 59) that comes with 7-8 bratwursts.

The pan fried sausages were very very good, with the accompanying gravy and dill potato salad being very good side kicks. However, I have to say that german bread dumpling (looks almost exactly like wedges) did taste a bit weird to me though.

Haze the awesome artist, and KY with some Guinness

The other dish we ordered was the Beriln Rosemary Lamb (RM 48). Stripes of lamb with plenty of mint sauce resting on mash, steamed vegetable, and surrounded by chili paste and bits of bell pepper. The presentation definitely scores an A. Thankfully, the taste department is in sync with how well the dish looked.

Other than the carrot being a bit raw, the lamb was soft and flavorful, with plenty of mint sauce to give it that aroma and if you so prefer, the spicy chili sauce to add some kick too.

There are interesting dishes in the menu like Scotch Egg (with pork!), carrot in beer, and sundried tomato with mussels that look pretty promising. I shall return to this place for a second round.

The Guinness promotion of St Patrick’s Finger Food Festival runs from now until 31st of March, 2010 with more than 100 outlets nationwide, don’t miss out! Other outlets that are participating in this promotion includes, but not limited to:

• Jarrod & Rawlins
• Meson
• Cafe Chulo
• Muse
• Delaney’s
• Ronnie Q
• The Magnificent Fish & Chips

Besides Finger Food Festival, there’s also the St. Patrick’s Hat promotion. A 13oz pint is a stamp, and 20oz pint 2 stamps, collect 12, send the redemption card in, and get a free St. Patrick’s Hat.

If you can’t wait, the Instant Reward gives you a Guinness St. Patrick’s luggage lock with every 3 pints of Guinness Draught or a bucket of Guinness Foreign Extra Stout. There are three designs in all!

There’s also the St. Patrick’s Day celebration at 1 Utama on the 19th of March from 6pm onwards! Check out guinness.com.my/stpatricks for more.

Address:
Berlin Biergarten
Lot J-01-04
Solaris Mont Kiara
50480 Kuala Lumpur
GPS: 3.174689, 101.659595
Tel: 03-6203 0958

Tags:  bratwurst,  guinness,  haze,  lamb,  sausage,  solaris

Posted by KY | 26 Comments »

When I first went to Melbourne a few months ago, I noticed that the local coffee scene is very different than Malaysia, and very vibrant.

Every other corner is a cafe, mostly locally owned and operated with some international chains like Max Brenners. Restaurants and breakfast places like too usually serves excellent coffee (MART 130 is an absolute must visit). It is a land where Starbucks aren’t doing well at all with their, as some agrees, watered down coffee.

breakfast set (blergh), flat white (awesome)

After getting spoiled with good coffee from down under, Mellissa then decided that we should hunt for the best coffee in KL, and her housemate Jun Wei happened to know just the place we need to go. Le Passione Cafe at Hartamas Shopping Center.

Other than 2 cups of flat whites (they are similar to latte, but served in ceramic cups), we also ordered a breakfast set and a baked potato during that particular late afternoon snacking session.

coffee with proper coffee art. KY & Mellissa

The coffees were excellent, smooth, creamy, and very flavorful. They’re worth every sen of the RM 7.95 Le Passione Cafe charges (with 10% service). A piece of biscotti and a shot of cold water accompany the coffee too.

The food however, were rather disappointing. The eggs were nice, but turkey ham and those canned mushroom were pretty miserable, baked potato wasn’t anything to shout about either.

For really good coffee around town, go to Le Passione Cafe, but eat at your own risk.

Address:
Le Passione Cafe
K9, Plaza Ground FLoor,
Hartamas Shopping Centre,
Sri Hartamas, KL
GPS:
3.163548, 101.656076
Tel: 012-882 0717

Tags:  coffee,  hartamas shopping center,  mellissa

Posted by KY | 33 Comments »

After hearing so much about Tenji from friends and other food blogs, Suan, Horng, and I decided to give it a try almost 2 months ago. One of the reasons it took us so long to finally go there was to actually avoid the madness during their half price promotion (which still runs once in a while, check their website).

Tenji Japanese Buffet at Solaris

Tenji is often compared with Jogoya, the first premium Japanese buffet restaurant not in a hotel to hit KL in early 2006. Personally I think that the comparison is justified as both Tenji and Jogoya caters for slightly higher end market and offers dishes that are quite similar, and more importantly, they’re priced competitively with each other at full price.

At Tenji, lunch is priced at RM77++ while dinner and supper at RM88++. Jogoya’s buffet is RM78++ for lunch, RM68++ for late lunch, RM88++ for dinner, and RM78++ for late dinner. (Jogoya pricing, Tenji pricing)

ohh, the oysters!

Located at Soho Solaris, Tenji is a much friendlier place for those who drives. Parking is a breeze if you don’t mind paying a couple ringgit for the underground carpark, on the other hand, Jogoya is accessible via public transport since it is located at Bukit Bintang.

As for the restaurant itself, Tenji is huge, with both air conditioned indoor area as well as quite a bit of alfresco dining, especially for those who wish to punctuate an extended buffet session with some nicotine.

KY, Suan, and Horng

I started off the late lunch with some oysters, steamed prawns, and sashimi.

The oysters here were pretty big and certainly fresh and juicy, the good thing is that the oyster bar is always being refilled anytime it is less than half filled. I am very very annoyed at places that takes forever to refill their most sought after ingredients/dishes (like Yuen steamboat’s chicken wings, or Talipon’s prawns).

always start with raw or lightly cooked food

I like their surf clam, scallop (albeit a bit small) and their rather fatty salmon sashimi, the butter fish was pretty decent too but I would stay away from tuna and squid sashimi if you’re particular about quality. As with most buffet places, the tuna served are of pretty inferior quality. This is due to the insanely high price of tuna these days I suppose.

There are also plenty of pre-cooked items on the buffet spread, the Singapore chili crab was actually very delicious, and there’s always the added advantage of choosing only the pincers (who cares about other customers, right? hehe). Other dishes include grilled vegetable, squid with dark sauce, fish, lamb, beef, and dozens more I can’t recall.

buffet spread, including drinks and dessert area

Like Jogoya, Tenji also employs the clips system whereby you drop a clip with your table number at the bowl indicating certain dishes, wait for a few minutes, and they will be served freshly cooked. The downside is that you might end up waiting for quite a bit if the restaurant is particularly busy, but since it wasn’t when we were there, we didn’t need to wait for more than a few minutes before our orders were served.

The steamed cod with soya sauce was good, but the serving was rather miserable so it’s best advised that you order 2-3 at one go. Another more memorable freshly prepared dish was the soft shell crab and this vegetable (a type of beans?) with black beans. We also ordered steak, some teriyaki dishes, mushroom, fish filet, and so on. In general they tasted pretty good and very few of them were disappointing (for eg. the soup with razor clam).

Singapore chili crab, soup, steamed cod

In the drinks department, you have fresh brewed coffee, cappuccino, latte, quite a selection of fruit juice, soft drinks, and my favorite – chilled fresh coconut. I think I had about 4 of those.

Haagan Dazs ice cream was what I had for dessert while the huge selection of pastry and other desserts lay sitting in front of me. We were simply full to the brim after spending about 2 hours having the late lunch. If I remember correctly, we skipped dinner.

Tenji is located at SOHO, Solaris Mont Kiara

Compared to my last 2 visits to Jogoya, I would personally prefer Tenji. Although the buffet spread is smaller, the food quality reminds me of the earlier days of Jogoya. Fresh, tasty, and with good service, they just somehow managed to aged in the last 4 years to a point that I stopped going there, hopefully Tenji never follow the same path.

Address:
Tenji Japanese Buffet
Lot L-01-01, Soho KL,
Solaris Mont Kiara,
No.2, Jalan Solaris, KL
GPS: 3.174689, 101.659595
Tel: 1700-80-1818

Tags:  Buffet,  crab,  horng,  mont-kiara,  oyster,  sashimi,  soho,  solaris,  suanie

Posted by KY | 42 Comments »

It’s been some three months since I had the string of Guinness food posts in accordance to the Guinness-infused Christmas main course promotion last year, those were some food with more than decent deals.

Most of us have heard about St. Patrick’s Day, it is a big celebration in Ireland (a national holiday on the 17th of March). With Dublin the home of Guinness, it is natural that the most popular international black beer celebrates this occasion across the world, with many promotions during the whole month of March.

Here in Malaysia, the celebration is in the form of Guinness Shamrockin’s St. Patricks with events, celebrations, St. Patrick’s collectibles, and of course, Guinness Infused menu (with those mouth watering Guinness Infused sauce used in the recipe!) in participating restaurants. In fact, the Shamrockin’s event was launched just a last Friday at 1U, which unfortunately I had to miss due to some personal reasons.

Gimmi a black one!

One of the restaurants that participate in the Guinness Shamrockin’ St. Patrick’s promotion is Boston Grill at Solaris Mont Kiara. The deal is very similar to the previous one, order a main course from the Guinness St. Patrick celebration menu and enjoy a half pint Guinness Draught for free (you are required to fill up a redemption voucher).

Boston Grill at Solaris, Mont Kiara

I’ve heard quite a bit about Solaris at Mont Kiara with the various new restaurants that sprung up there in recent months, but this was actually my first visit to the area. Parking is a pretty simple affair as there are underground car parks just directly underneath the restaurant.

The restaurant has a pretty big indoor dining area as well as several tables outdoor if you prefer to dine alfresco style. Interior decoration is very classy if somewhat unconventional (reminds me of hotel lobbies). There’s a very well stocked bar, LCD TVs for sports, sofas, and the more conventional dining tables.

Buffalo wings, the very awesome garlic bread, and mushroom soup

For dinner, Amanda and I ordered two main courses from the Shamrockin’ St. Patrick’s menu, the blacksmith’s bronze plate (grilled lamb chops) and giant prawn, bbq style. We also ordered some buffalo wings as appetizer.

The mains came with a bowl of pretty thick mushroom soup with mushroom bits that was pretty decent, and three slices of garlic breads I can’t help myself from eating. Soft and fully flavored with butter, garlic, and the aroma of spices (coriander I presume), very delicious.

The buffalo wings too did not disappoint (though they somehow arrived in between our mains). The wings were soaked with the sweet tangy sauce and topped with some sesame seeds. We didn’t even need to dip it in the chili sauce provided.

Black Smith’s BBQ Giant Prawn and Lamb Chop

The Black Smith’s Giant Prawn, BBQ was absolutely fantastic. The tiger prawns were as big as my palm, grilled to perfection with the Guinness infused sauce and served with fries, steamed broccoli, and very interestingly, cherry tomato with bits of sour plum (Amanda pointed out) in it. The black beer adds character to the sauce and gives it a slight sweet bitter taste that contrasts well with the prawns.

The prawns went very well with Guinness Draught, grilled seafood with black beer does make a good combination.

A half pint of Guinness comes free with the main course

Black Smith’s Bronze Plates is basically a grilled lamb chop served with the same sides and Guinness Infused sauce as the previous dish with an addition of half a corn. The lamb was rather juicy and flavorful, most importantly it was not overly done either.

Scrumptious would be the right choice of word to describe the meat, I think it was even better than the lamb chop at one of the bars at Bangsar where I reviewed the previous Guinness promotion. The corn though, were nothing to shout about, slightly too soggy to be honest.

Solaris is located at the far end of Mont Kiara

Total bill came up to RM 162 with 10% service charge and 5% government tax. The giant prawns at RM 88.95, lamb chops RM 33.95, and wings at RM 17.95. But hey, those prawns were really huge, and the two glasses of Guinness were free. The overall dining experience was certainly worth the price paid.

More pictures are available on my flickr set

Address:
Boston Grill
J-01-13, Soho KL,
Solaris Mont Kiara,
No.2, Jalan Solaris, KL
GPS: 3.174689, 101.659595
Tel: +603 6203 0830

Posted by KY | 28 Comments »

Remember at the post on Guinness Gastronomy Workshop with Chef in Black Emmanual Stroobant, I suggested that Western food places should look into adopting some Guinness inspired dishes? Well, about a month back I had some Guinness dishes, but instead of Western, it was something of an opposite: Japanese food at SOMO Mont Kiara.

SOMO mont kiara, dinner for two

I went to SOMO with the infamous Cindy, who happened to stay around the area.

The restaurant is basically fully alfresco with a smallish set up, a dozen or so tables under a retractable canvas. The ambiance is pretty comfortable and actually a bit unique as far as Japanese outlets go: outdoor, a bar, LCD tv player sports, and music.

two Guinness inspired dishes

The Guinness inspired dishes were not actually on the menu, so I spoke with the friendly manager and requested for them. The grilled beef set and seafood set was suggested, and I also ordered sashimi for two, shisamo (grilled pregnant fish), and a pint of Guinness as good measures.

SOMO was not among the restaurants that ran the Guinness-infused Christmas main course promotion like these below. However, like many restaurants, you can sometimes get the chef to cook up something different, if only you ask nicely.

• The Magnificent Fish and Chips at Changkat Bukit Bintang, KL
• SevenAteNine at Ascott, KL
• Gypsy Wine & Bar at Changkat Bukit Bintang, KL
• Ronnie Q at Bangsar
• Cafe Chulo at Jaya One, PJ

the girl, the sashimi, the seafood, and the soup & chawanmushi

The chef did probably take slightly longer than usual to prepare the dishes. While it was tough to find the hint of Guinness from the grilled seafood Cindy ordered, the beef I had was excellent. The slight bitterness contributed by the black beer was clearly present in the meat and actually adds character to the otherwise sweetish dish. It was really good, I think SOMO should consider making this dish a permanent fixture on their menu.

Cindy, Shisamo, and yours truly

The sashimi for two consists of squid, sweet shrimps, octopus, tuna, salmon, and a generous portion of salmon roe. They were fresh, served on ice, and made for very good appetizer. The grilled shisamo too was done properly even as first time eater of the fish, the girl said it was good. And of course, the Guinness drought was excellent.

SOMO is a stone’s throw away from Plaza Mont Kiara

The sets also come with miso soup and chawanmushi, they are priced at RM 35 and RM 45,  sashimi was RM 60. Together with drinks and shisamo, the dinner came to just a little over RM 200. It was very satisfying though, good food, great atmosphere, and of course, a very good company.

Address:
Lot 2B, The Shoplex@Mont Kiara, Jln Kiara
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
GPS: 3.166571, 101.652696
Tel: 019-312 6528

Tags:  cindy,  guinness,  Japanese-Food,  mont-kiara,  sashimi,  shisamo

Posted by KY | 27 Comments »