After the interesting grilled frog at my favorite foreign city, I headed to a Vietnamese seafood restaurant for dinner the following night. At the heart of the city, the Hong Hai (pronounced as 红海, or red sea, in Mandarin) restaurant is not particularly lavish nor it is very eye catching. However, judging by the crowd of locals congregating at this place, it must offer some pretty good and authentic seafood.

fresh fish, shrimps, and various types of clam

The restaurant was quite packed, but luckily we managed to secure a table at the balcony on the second level. My friend made the order as I would have no idea how to go about reading the 100% Vietnamese menu, with no translation nor any pictures. I doubt any of the servers speak English either.

three types of clam, including cockle (blood clam)

The first four dishes that came consists of the various types of clam. The boiled cockles (I think) were very delicious, and goes extremely well with the fried garlic (including skin) and vegetable garnish. The fresh and somewhat bloody cockles with the slightly salty but strong tasting garlic was just perfect. A salt + dried pepper + dried plum + lime dipping sauce accompany the dishes.

We also had a grilled clam and a plum sauce clam dishes. While the grilled clam is best enjoyed with the dipping, the plum sauce actually goes well with some bread. Pretty interesting contrasting taste among these three dishes, the bloody cockles, the dry grilled clam, and the sourish plum sauce clam.

oyster with cheese, and a great tasting hot pot with eel

Next in line were the two huge oyster with cheese. Though this dish isn’t something that is unique to this part of the world, the oyster served were the size of my palm. Needless to say, you can guess if I enjoyed it from the photo above.

Other than all the shell fish dishes, we ordered a hot pot with eel. As with most Vietnamese dishes, the pot came with a huge serving of vegetable consisting spring onion, bean sprout, okra, and interestingly, shredded banana flower, all arranged in a neat and pretty presentation. The soup tasted a little spicy and salty, but compliment the vermicelli noodle and the fresh vegetables. It was a very good dinner.

Pham Ngoc Thach road is located at the heart of Ho Chi Minh City

Hong Hai is located at the heart of the city, not more than US $2 taxi ride away from any major hotels in District 1. The dinner itself was somewhere around RM 50-60, value for money indeed.

Address:
54, Pham Ngoc Thach,
District 1, Ho Chi Minh City
Vietnam
Tel: 8.292977, 0908-103547

Tags:  clam,  cockle,  hcmc,  ho-chi-minh-city,  hot-pot,  seafood

Posted by KY | 7 Comments »

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.

Tags:  clam,  damansara,  damien,  dree,  fish-ball,  galvin,  hot-pot,  margie,  prawn,  pulau-ketam,  Steamboat,  suanie

Posted by KY | 26 Comments »

It was probably more than year since we went to Nong and Jimmy Thai BBQ Seafood place the last time. A place we usually refer to as “that Cheras tomyam place”, though it is actually located in Taman Cahaya and geographically not even really in Cheras, but Ampang instead. Last friday 5 of us decided to do treat ourselves some good ol’ favorites.

we ordered up a feast

ST, faggot, margie, kerol and I got to the restaurant and luckily was able to find a table without much hassle though it was a busy friday night. (I called suan but she didn’t manage to pick up.. ) The restaurant is more like a roof with some light fixtures and fan over concrete surface where they put lots of cheap tables and chairs. Do not expect air conditioning or comfortable chairs, they concentrate on food, not comfort nor the whole dining experience thingy.

ST, faggot, margie, & kerol

We ordered a basket of BBQ cockles, a claypot tomyam, BBQ prawns, BBQ stingray fish, fried squid, and kailan vegetables to go with some fried rice that includes big juicy prawns in it. The claypot tomyam and the BBQ prawn is a must, tomyam is served with prawn and squid as the main ingredients. The tomyam here tastes a little different from those that you get from mamak restaurants or Malay outlets, it is a little closer to authentic Thai flavour, we like it.

cockles, prawns, special chili sauce with peanuts, BBQ fish

Not everyone eats cockles, but if you do, do not pass it up. The chili sauce with peanuts goes very, very well with the BBQ cockles, and basically other BBQ dishes like BBQ prawns and fish. The fried curry squid was pretty good too and provided a nice departure from having too many BBQ dishes. You can order white rice to go with the dishes, but to really get some serious prawn overdose, go for the fried rice instead.

claypot tomyam, fried rice, squid, vege

Needless to say, we gobbled up everything and had happy stomachs to kick start the weekend. You can too, check out the patented map!

oh such lovely map

Address:
Lot 27363, Jalan Cahaya 1,
Taman Cahaya,
Ampang, Selangor
GPS: 3.142669, 101.754727
Tel: 03 4251 1807

Tags:  clam,  damien,  gareth,  kerol,  margie,  seafood,  thai,  tomyam

Posted by KY | 26 Comments »