Hoho steamboat is probably one of the earliest “pulau ketam” type steamboat in town, it has been operating for so long that Kim said her parents actually dated there. It is then safe to say that this place has been in operation for well over two decades.

Hoho steamboat, established since forever

Housed at the same premise as the pretty well known Ipoh Road Yong Tau Foo at Segambut just a stone’s throw away from the intersection of Jalan Kuching and Jalan Duta, the restaurant is converted from a former Bungalow with ample parking space. There are tables inside the building, under the tin roof (with fans and ample lights), as well as under the moon light. The usual ingredients for pulau ketam style steamboat.

steamboat set, deep fried dumplings, bacon strips

Most of the porkgang and two extra guests braced the traffic last Friday evening for a good steamboat meal thanks to the suggestion by Cheesie.

For the eleven of us, we ordered steamboat set for nine pax that includes dumplings, pork balls, fish balls, fish noodle, tofu, prawns, vegetable, tofu skin, eggs, noodles (yee mee), mee hun, quail’s eggs, and fish cubes.

Kim and Cheesie doing the hardwork

We added a couple plates of deep fried dumplings to munch while waiting for the soup to boil, and they are actually rather delicious.

Other extra orders we had were clams (to make the soup sweeter), quail’s eggs (cos Eric has low cholesterol), and of course, extra pork balls and some raw bacon. Hoho is one of the very few steamboat places that offers bacon strips, the concept is a bit new to me as I usually like my bacon fried, but the boiled version is actually pretty nice too.

Haze is a very happy girl. Jac doing the “cooking”

Due to a bit of miscommunication, we ordered both tomyam and clear soup for our pot. While the tomyam soup turned out to be pretty tasty, I usually prefer to have only the clear soup. Having the pot split down the middle with two soup base that has very different tastes is usually not a great idea as they tend to mix up quite a bit when boiling.

The sambal supplied by Hoho steamboat is rather potent and fragrant too. To me a pulau ketam steamboat is never complete without good sambal, and this place does not disappoint when it comes to that.

Though not the absolute best out there, the combination of price (less than RM 25/pax with drinks), taste, and experience does make Hoho steamboat a place worth visiting. By the way, they have the best URL too: steamboat.com.my

Address:
Hoho Steamboat
67, Jalan Segambut,
Kuala Lumpur
GPS: 3.180645, 101.677523
Tel: +603-6252 6473

Tags:  cheesie,  dumpling,  eric,  gareth,  haze,  horng,  jaclyn,  kerol,  kimberly,  pork,  Steamboat,  suching,  taka

Posted by KY | 29 Comments »

Jarrod and Rawlins is one of the first non-halal “western food” joints that I was introduced to. Their pork burger and dynamite chili sausage sausage are two of my favorite dishes. After a long hiatus, I went to their Damansara Heights branch (they have four locations now) with Elfie to get some dinner and Guinness lovin’.

In case you haven’t found out yet, it is also because Guinness is running their Merry Guinness promotion this time around, more on that later.

Guinness beef stew meat with mash potato

I really like the set up of their branch at Damansara Heights over other locations. The restaurant takes the space of an old bungalow, with tables sprawling within the former living hall, balcony, and back yard. As such, it offers several different ambiance according to taste, I typically favors the backyard especially when the temperature is favorable.

open seafood sandwich with bacon, Guinness stew with mash potato

Jarrod and Rawlins is one of the restaurants that offer several Guinness infused dishes in their menu on a permanent basis. For dinner, I ordered the intriguing Guinness beef stew with mash potato while the lady asked for open seafood sandwich with bacon, and tomato soup.

We also ordered a couple sausages – dynamite chili and something else that is non-spicy, as Elfie is a noob who can’t take anything spicy.

Of course, I got me a pint of Guinness to go with dinner.

tomato soup and J&R’s sausages

The Guinness beef stew was better than I had expected, the slight bitterness from the black beer compliments adds character to the beef and goes really well with the mash potato. This was even better than the Guinness infused beef ribs I had at SevenAteNine during last year’s promotion.

The soup and open seafood sandwich received no complaints at all from Elfie (who is often critical), and the sausages were very tasty as usual. We left happy and very well fed, with my stomach full of a whole pint of Guinness goodness too.

KY, Guinness, and Elfie

Dinner came to around RM 160 with the four dishes and a couple drinks. Jarrod & Rawlins is one of the participating outlets that offer a free pint of Guinness Draught free of charge when you order from the Guinness Infused Menu. For more information and other outlets, check out Guinness Malaysia facebook page.

All my previous posts with Guinness (including last year’s promotion) can be found here.

Address:
Jarrod & Rawlins
No. 6, Lorong Dungun,
Damansara Heights,
50480 Kuala Lumpur
GPS: 3.153693, 101.665077
Tel: 03-2093 0708

Tags:  elfie,  guinness,  lunch money,  pork,  sausage

Posted by KY | 27 Comments »

I remember many many years ago when I was really young, there was this incident of contamination with a batch of lou shu fun that was served in a primary school somewhere in Malaysia that resulted in death of several small children.

After that tragic incident, the popularity of this unique noodle went down (at least in Penang) for quite a number of years. In fact, I don’t think it has fully recovered.

KY and Cheesie at Mama Kitchen Restaurant, TTDI

I recall we used to be able to order lou shu fun at most kueh teow soup places, these days, you only find them in several specific lou shu fun places. One of the more famous ones is Mama Kitchen Restaurant at TTDI.

Cheesie and I went there the other day for dinner. We ordered the signature clay pot lou shu fun, rice with fried roast pork, and spinach with century egg soup.

clay pot lou shu fun, spinach soup with century egg, fried roast pork with rice

The clay pot lou shu fun (RM came with plenty of minced pork and that signature raw egg on top. You usually mix it all up and let the egg gets cooked in heat still retained from the pot. Very rich and flavorful

What is better than roast pork? Fried roast pork (RM 6) of course! If you haven’t had it yet, give this a try. There are plenty of fried garlic to go with the crunchy roast pork too. It was not bad at all.

The vegetable dish (RM 6) was ordered to give some sense of balance and a dosage of vitamin C (basically for cheesie to show her mom).

Despite the popularity of this place, I like the fact that they still manage to keep the price very reasonable. With drinks, the bill came to less than RM 25 for the two of us.

Address:
Mama Kitchen Restaurant
No. 48 Jalan Datuk Sulaiman
TTDI 60000 Kuala Lumpur
GPS: 3.142177, 101.629457
Tel: 03-7729 3030

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Tags:  cheesie,  clay-pot,  lou shu fun,  roast pork,  TTDI,  xpax

Posted by KY | 24 Comments »

Ever since the last time we went for  fish head noodle at SS20, Kerol has kept saying that I should try the fish head noodle place at Taman Desa instead.  After a few rounds of Kerol cajoling Horng (who doesn’t like fish head noodle), we finally find our way to Taman Desa a couple weekends ago to try out Woo Pin fish head noodle that I’ve heard and read quite a  lot about.

no nonsense fish head noodle with meehun

At Woo Pin, they concentrate only on fish head & fish paste noodle/yee mee. You have either normal or deep fried fish head with meehun or yee mee, fish paste with the same two choices of noodle, or fish paste/fish head soup.

3 types of ingredients, 2 types of noodles, or without any noodle. That makes 9 different combinations, that’s it. No different types of fish, fish balls, or even fish fillets.

restaurant says A ONE steamboat but now it’s fish head day and night

We ordered a big bowl of fish head noodle for each person, with another big portion of fish paste soup to share (small RM 6.50, big RM 8). Food took a little while to be served even though they have plenty of workers in the kitchen, the place is simply packed the whole time we were there.

While fish head noodle around Klang Valley is usually served with evaporated milk, you can opt out and have it with clear soup. Personally I usually prefer the latter, but for this session I had it the way how most people around here would.

fish head noodle and fish paste noodle, kerol, terence, horng

The big portion was huge, with plenty of deep fried fish head, meehun, tomato, preserved vegetable, green onion, a bit of cilantro, fried shallots, and all the other things you’d normally find in a bowl of good old fashion fish head noodle.

The soup was sweet and definitely worthy of the reputation this place has garnered over the years. As for the fish, well, they’re good but filled with plenty of bones.

I read from Chuck Palaniuk’s RANT that when there’s so much hazard in food that makes you have to eat so ever slow and carefully, it tends to bring out the full flavor as opposed to gobbling everything down without tasting much of anything. I think that certainly make sense in this case.

This is one of the places I could go again for a bowl of good fish head noodle, perhaps to try the version without evaporated milk next time. It’s even more convenient now that they’re open from 7:30am to 10pm at night. If you haven’t gone there yet due to the fact that you can’t wake up before 2pm on weekends, now there isn’t an excuse.

Address:
Woo Pin Fish Head Noodle
Jalan 1/109F, Taman Danau Desa,
Kuala Lumpur
GPS: 3.09832, 101.686503
Tel: 012-201 3148

Tags:  fish head noodle,  horng,  kerol,  taman desa,  terence

Posted by KY | 34 Comments »

Sid’s pub is one of the very few places in town that is not only dog and kid friendly, but also serves up pretty good English/Irish food. The place is slowly becoming one of the places we frequent with Gareth and Kim when Charlie the dog is around. A few weeks ago Horng, Suan, and I went there to test out their kid friendly environment.

Sid’s burger (pork, beef, lamb, or chicken)

Sid’s is set up like a typical pub, with solid wooden furniture that aren’t placed too close to each other and a big bar at the center. Parking is also typically not a stressful exercise as there are plenty of space around the single row of shop houses opposite the condominium.

The pub is usually rather packed at night especially during important sporting events. However, seats are aplenty during lunch sessions especially on weekends.

breakfast set, scrum of bangers

I’ve tried quite a few of their dishes, pork vindaloo (RM 26) which is a type of pork curry with rice and chips, the bbq pork ribs (RM16) and fried sausage, onions & chillies (RM 16) that makes very good beer snacks, the scrum of bangers (RM 28) that comes with pork, chicken, or lamb & cranberry sausages with mash potato and baked beans.

All of them tasted pretty good, very hearty and very wholesome, but my favorite has got to be Sid’s burger. I’ve always asked for pork (chicken, lamb, and beef available) patty with bacon and cheese. The burger goes for RM 16 with RM 2 for each extra topping. The whole serving would be RM 22 if you decided to add the fried egg in addition to bacon and cheese, or for RM 28, you can have it with double patties, insane.

KY, horng, suanie, and Ryan

The burger also come with generous portion of fries and some really good mustard that goes so well with the pork. With the fats from bacon and the thick slice of cheese on top of everything, it’s just very succulent and super delicious. I love it.

Sid’s pub is located a stone’s throw away from Maybank at TTDI

Other than good food, Sid’s also serve one of the best Guinness drought in town, along with other types of alcohol. Give it a try, you don’t have to go there only if you need to find a dog friendly place.

Address:
Sid’s Pub
34 Lorong Rahim Kajai 14
Taman Tun Dr Ismail
Kuala Lumpur
GPS: 3.155621, 101.622934
Tel: 03-7727 7437

Tags:  english,  horng,  irish,  pork,  pub,  ryan,  suanie,  TTDI

Posted by KY | 36 Comments »