A few weeks ago I went to Room Eighteen at Berjaya Times Square for a food review. I was in fact, already quite a  fan of this relatively new franchise from Tai Thong group ever since the branch at Tropicana City Malls opened. However, this was the first time I visited the BTS outlet.

I brought along Terence, Jaclyn, Eric, Kerol, and Cheesie for the session. I love food reviews where I can bring friends along, it always make the occasion a lot more fun.

room eighteen at BTS, eric, jaclyn, cheesie, kerol, terence, KY

Coincidentally, the senior manager of the chain hailed from the same high school as me in Penang, my junior in fact. Since he is also from the same island that is known as sort of a food capital of Malaysia, I placed a higher trust on his taste and let the guy handled food selection for the evening.

And just like how the pork gang’s dinner always go, we over ordered.

siu mai, papaya cream puff, herbal xiao long bao, tofu skin with pork

We were first served with some dimsum as appetizer. The siu mai (steamed pork dumpling) and tofu skin with pork were really tasty, as good as some of the best dimsum I’ve had. The papaya cream puff too was quite good, albiet a little different from what you’d expect from dimsum.

We were served two different types of xiao long bao. I felt that the normal version was just rather average, and favors the herbal version (photo above) a bit more. However, it wouldn’t be something I’ll necessary order again, they weren’t really on par with those I had from Dragon-i.

roast duc, char siu, and roast pork, fried venisen with you char kwai, vegetable

The roast duck and char siu were really done very well, I particularly love them with their really fragrant chili oil. The roast pork though, didn’t particularly capture my attention, but perhaps I’ve been spoiled by the excellent roast pork at wong meng kei at pudu, literally just a stone’s throw away from BTS.

The fried venisen with you char kwai was quite an interesting combination. The meat was tender and juicy, with the contrasting texture of the you char kwai it was rather good. We ordered a plate of Hong Kong choi sum as the vegetable dish to counter all those meaty dishes. Always have your vegetable!

wanton soup, fragrant chili oil, fish ball noodle soup

The wanton soup was one of my favorites at Room Eighteen. Instead of prawn or pork, the wanton filling was half pork and half prawn, that really gave it the best of both worlds in terms of taste. Quite excellent!

The fish ball noodle soup was quite good too. The fish ball quite firm and tasty, together with the noodle and soup it can make a pretty simple meal when you feel like giving the taste buds a bit of a rest.

lotus leave rice, steamed chicken rice, two types of porridge

Lotus leaf rice and the steamed chicken rice with mushroom were two more dishes that I really liked. The chicken was really smooth and delicious I wish I can have some right now, writing this at the wee hours. Ah well…

And as if we were not already overly fed by then, our host insisted that we should try out their porridge. Both the two different porridge we tried were really good, but at this point I seriously couldn’t really take more than a spoon full.

black sesame soup, drinks, blueberry shaved ice

We capped the evening with some desserts to share (seriously couldn’t finish one by myself anymore). The sesame soup was decent, and the mango sago wasn’t bad either. My favorite of the bunch though, was the blueberry shaved ice, really “kao” and really sour with just the right amount of sweetness. That freshened me up pretty good, I liked it.

Prices at Room Eighteen are comparable to Canton-i and Dragon-i, a typical meal would fetch about RM 15-30 per person, but of course what we had here would have been more than that if we split 6 ways.

Address:
Room Eighteen
Berjaya Times Square
LG 50 & LG 18C
Lower Ground Floor
No 1, Jalan Imbi
55100 KL
GPS: 3.142444,101.710621
Tel: 03-2148 8688

Tags:  char-siu,  cheesie,  dimsum,  eric,  jaclyn,  kerol,  roast pork,  roast-duck,  room18,  terence

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 »