For the few of you who have been following this blog for a while, it is not something new that I’ve been a fan of Guinness. For those who are also a fan, there’s good news, the annual Arthur’s Day is coming again! installment number 251!
what’s better than enjoying a pint with your best buddies?
The world’s most popular black beer probably doesn’t need much introduction. A perfectly poured Guinness with it’s inch thick creamy foam on top of that pure black beauty is a sight that turns any bad day good, and good day even better!
Over the years, the black beer has also found a place in the kitchen. From the classic Guinness pork ribs from your typical Chinese restaurants, Guinness lamb shank, and to international celebrity chefs like Chef in Black’s creations, what other beer is more versatile?
Arthur’s Day 2009, Black Eyed Peas
Last year’s Arthur’s Day was a blast, Black Eyed Peas was brought in for the 250th anniversary of the famed black beer. We had an awesome time at Sunway Lagoon partying, the photo collage above is worth about 8,000 word’s description, so do exercise your imagination.
There’s no slowing down for Guinness, this year’s Arthur’s Day, we have the following line up of international and local artists performing at Surf Beach @ Sunway Lagoon on the 24th of September 2010:
Arthur’s Day 2010 artist line up
Tickets go for White, Black, and Gold zones (mosh pit) go for RM 98, RM 198, and RM 350 at Axcess.com.my or Arthursday.com.my. But of course, there’s always a chance to get in for free, by joining The Man of Action contest:
Simple isn’t it? On top of that, there’s a grand prize winner that’ll be announced on Arthur’s Day itself, and the lucky fella will walk away with a trip to Dublin to visit the St James Gate Brewery & Guinness Storehouse!! What are you waiting for? Lets do this!
Here’s my submission, a collaboration effort with the fehmes Cheesie, what do you think? (don’t laugh :/)
Oh, for those who are slightly less creative, there’s also The Man of Vision Contest where you decipher how many Guinness elements can be found in a given image. Go to arthursday.com.my to get illustration, and follow @GuinnessMY on Twitter to get more clues!
Grand Prize is another Dublin Trip + mosh pit tickets, and there’s weekly mosh pit tickets to be won too.
See you guys on Arthur’s Day!
Remember the news on the possible removal of One Bangsar a few months back? Well, I wish that won’t ever come true. The restaurants on the stretch at Jalan Ara provides one of the nicest ambiance you can get anywhere, with lush green lawn and quaint interior decoration, and more often than not, excellent food.
Bangsar Seafood Garden
I had actually been to Bangsar Seafood Garden once (during Galvin’s wedding) prior to the invitation by Jade to the food review session. Then again, it was a wedding dinner, and for some reasons I could never remember in details how food at wedding dinners tastes like.
Which means that the food review session was most welcomed. Together with Haze, Suanie, Kerol, Horng, and Cheesie, we went over for dinner a couple weeks back.
butter crab and deep fried mantao
I felt that it is appropriate to write about the butter crab first, even though it wasn’t the first dish served.
The crab’s fabulous, they are fresh, big, sweet, and best of all, soaked in the awesome butter sauce with a hint of curry leave taste that’s so addictive. Do order the deep fried mantao to take advantage of the sauce.
Also, forget about the steamed mantao, you won’t get much health benefit at all anyway if they were to be dipped into butter sauce, the deep fried version tastes so much better.
steamed cod fish with essence of chicken, baked chicken with cheese
No seafood dinner is complete without fish, and for the dinner we had steamed cod fish that came with plenty of mushroom, cilantro, ginger, carrot, and even bean curd skin. Like the steamed haruan from restaurant Yap Yin, a bottle of Brand’s essence of chicken is poured to give the soup base an even richer taste.
Of course, cod fish tastes (well, naturally more expensive too) more refine than haruan.
The baked chicken with cheese reminds me of lasagna, but not a very good one at that. The chicken’s fried, but it was a bit spicy, too cheesy, and just overall a dish that’s slightly too weird for my taste.
Thai style stir fried prawns, assorted greens with macadamia
The Thai style stir fried prawns is another must-order item here. Massive de-shelled tiger prawns cooked with tomyam-ish sauce and served sizzling on a hot plate, very very yummy. Goes best with some rice, but in our case, fried mantao.
The vitamin C quota was satisfied with a plate of assorted greens with macadamia nuts, a luxury if rather tasty dish. Combination of green peas, lotus roots, fungus, carrots, and more were just nice for this purpose.
desserts galore at Bangsar Seafood
A good dinner’s always followed by desserts (or so all the girls say), we had fungus, peanut soup, longan and sea coconut, mango sago ice, and a couple other more traditional style sweet dishes to conclude the dinner.
To be truthful, desserts aren’t one of Bangsar Seafood’s strength. They are decent, but not something to really anticipate after all those awesome seafood.
Cheesie, KY & Haze, Horng, Suanie & Kerol, Jade
We had a good time over the review session, and I’d like to thank Jade for the invite.
Oh, if you want to have a garden wedding, there’s a huge and “golf course perfect” lawn at Bangsar Seafood Garden that’s perfect for the occasion too!
Address:
Bangsar Seafood Garden Restaurant
One Bangsar, No 63, Jalan Ara
Bangsar Baru, 59100 Kuala Lumpur
GPS: 3.129461, 101.669294
Tel: 03-2282 2555
A few weeks ago, my younger brother drop by my place when he was in KL for some convention/seminar/boring events some weeks ago to give me a 3 packets of happiness tightly sealed in plastic bags, and a big cylindrical can of this strange looking snack that looks like very tiny potato chips.
say hello to my younger brother!
The generic pack of pork rind tasted just as good as any that I’ve had, super crunchy, slightly salty, and absolutely addictive. Since I had 3 packs, I gave one away to Kim my fellow #porkgang member. It is also her birthday today so I guess that packet of pork is now considered her be-earliered birthday present. 
For the uninformed, pork rind (or pork cracklings, scratchings, check wiki entry) is basically deep fried cured pork skin. It’s the best snack any Atkin diet followers could get, and contrary to popular misconception, pork rind actually contains more protein and less fat (since it’s deep fried to crunchy) than your usual chips!
Suanie, Gareth, Kim, and Ringo noming away
While pork rind was already one of my favorite snacks of all time, I didn’t know a thing about this little chips – Romulo’s garlic chips with chili!
It’s basically very thinly sliced garlic that’s marinated with a good dosage of chili, deep fried, and sprinkled with more spices and chili powder when done (based on pure speculation).
The end product is spicy, extremely fragrant, and absolutely vampire proof. If you find this anywhere around here, let me know, or if you’re going to pinoyland anytime soon…. get some for me! (and suan too, read her post!)
Mine is running out, I’m gonna miss the garlic chips. Might even need to make some myself once the kitchen is done. Warghhhhh!
Last week I went to Japan… or a restaurant in Subang that felt like it belongs somewhere in a Tokyo suburb.
Together with Haze, Cheesie, and Taka, we went to Sumi Ka at SS 15, a yakitori place swore by Taka, who is actually a Japanese and not some Malaysia with a foreign name (such as Gareth, for example).
Sumi Ka Yakitori, with more Japanese than Malaysian customers
It was a Wednesday evening, so we did not bother to call up for a reservation. After all, how many people could possibly go to a restaurant that’s located on 1st floor in the middle of SS 15 on a weekday?
Big mistake, the place was packed, and all but a couple tables were occupied by Japanese. The place is filled with smokes not only from the grill but from the tobacco loving people, it had the smell of a proper Japanese restaurant, the cacophony of chatters in Japanese completes the foreign ambiance. I loved it.
We waited at the stairs for a good 20 minutes before getting a table by the corner. It was the correct decision despite the look of protest in cheesie’s eyes.
uzura tamago (quail eggs), sunazuri (gizzard),
nankotu (cartilage), bonhiri (chicken butt)
Since the language on the menu wasn’t very agreeable with me, I left the task of ordering to the pro. Taka got us 7 different types of yakitori, 3 rice bowls, potato salad, and the customary cabbage salad too.
The yakitori were insanely good. We started out with uzura tamago (quail eggs, RM 3 each) and some sunazuri (chicken gizzard, RM 6). They were really good, but not exactly the type of ingredients that are difficult to grill well.
Then came nankotu (chicken cartilage, RM 4), which is actually the piece of “soft bone” from the center of chicken breast. The texture was superb, slightly crunchy and mixed perfectly with the little bit of meat on it.
Then there’s the bonhiri (chicken butt/bisho’s nose RM 3) that was just out of this world. There wasn’t any gross splashing of liquid fat in your mouth, it was just a mixture of fat, salt, skin, and meat that came together like an awesome symphony. You gotta try this one even if you aren’t particularly a big bishop nose’s fan.
kawa (chicken skin), lamb yakitori, gyutan (ox tongue)
Kawa (chicken skin, RM 3) was up next, again I failed to understand how massive amount of salt on grilled chicken skin could taste so good, but it was exactly the case. Baffling. I need more!
We also had beef and mutton yakitori (RM 4) that Haze described as the most awesome yakitori she has ever tasted. The gyutan (ox tongue, RM 6) was also one of my favorites. Just the right texture and that ox tongue flavor that carries the taste not particularly related with french kissing a cow.
potato salad, oyakodon (chicken & egg), yakitori don, tea rice thingy
Other than the yakitori, we had some yummy potato salad (RM 12) and a few rice bowls to help fill up the stomach. These tasted rather good too, authentic and true to the taste.
I learned that the chicken and egg rice bowl is called oyakodon (RM 14), which directly translate to “parents and children”. Chicken and egg, whole family murdered, just for our consumption, ahh, I love being a human.
Yakitori don (RM 14) proved slightly redundant, it was good but I think on hindsight we should have tried something else. The tea rice bowl thingy that Cheesie ordered was perfect to sorta wash off the greasy taste after all those grilled food though.
Cheesie, Taka, KY, Haze at Sumi Ka Yakitori
The meal was excellent, and I am going to get the list of restaurants to go to from Taka. This dudes really has good taste. By the way, don’t go to this restaurant, it is already packed as is, and Cheesie won’t be happy if she has to wait again, she’ll blame me. FML
You can instead go to Yakiniku at Cheras which is quite a lot cheaper to get your fix, they serve pork there. Go there instead, the food tastes decent, don’t go to Sumi Ka, leave the empty seats for me instead 
Address:
Sumi-Ka Restaurant
No. 19, Jalan SS 15/4
47500 Subang Jaya, Selangor
GPS: 3.075327, 101.588677
Tel: 03-5632 9312/016-224 9312
So some of you might have heard of Project Alpha by now, but for the rest of you who didn’t realize this blog owner has somehow managed to get on Full HD videos shot by professional camera crews. Though stranger things have happened, this is still pretty amazing, at least when it comes to yours truly.
Here’s the very short version of the story and what has happened last January.
Jojo, Cheesie, the crews, Kim & Gareth, and Cheesie pretending to be a diva
So our shooting location was chosen to be the Lost World of Tambun at Ipoh. To be honest, I had initially anticipated it to be boring. What’s with this lost world thing? Is it another tiny amusement park that couldn’t make it?
We made our way to Tambun, and to get the day started, we stopped by the very yummylicious dimsum place that is Ming Court at Ipoh. (my all time fav dimsum place)
and they put make up on me, wtflux :S
But as it turned out, Lost World of Tambun was this huge amusement park that has a huge water park, lots of attractions, hot spring, a petting zoo, free running horses, and even live Siberian tigers!
It was an amazing location to do the shoot and I think the #porkgang should seriously plan a day trip there one of these days.
the snake took some getting used to for cheesie & jojo
We did quite a lot of our shootings at the petting zoo, and even managed to sorta cured the snake phobia of Jojo & Cheesie at the same time though the latter screamed like Shrek on speed on burning charcoal when I first put the lovely albino python on her shoulder. (check out the video below)
Gareth and I were able to take some lovely shots when the girls finally settled down with the poor animal.
raccoon’s cute, slithering snake by my shoes, awesome Siberian tiger
I somehow volunteered myself to go into the Serpentarium and almost got myself bitten by a reticulated python, but it was all fun and my Chinese zodiac namesake didn’t do me any harm. We also visited the raccoons, the monkey that bit Cheesie’s blackberry, and the really amazing Siberian tigers. They were so awesomely magnificent.
Guess I shall save writing more cos it’ll take forever, watch these videos instead!
