Tag / porkgang
After having a great time celebrating AhFa’s birthday at 42 East a few weeks ago with plenty of Kilkenny Draught, we decided to have an encore. This time our excuse was Suan’s birthday.
OK, maybe it wasn’t just an excuse, Suan is a dear friend and a big fan of Kilkenny (in fact, I first learned about this beer from her). Since she won’t be around on her actual birthday, we decided to get together a few days earlier.
Barfly, and these Kilkenny’s reserved for Suanie
Our destination of choice this time was Barfly at Solaris Dutamas. A place where solving the parking puzzle requires a PhD, but hey, we do it for friends right?
Luckily we had the foresight in calling in a couple days earlier to book for a table.
Michael, Li Ling, Suan, KY enjoying some Kilkenny
The place was well packed with people when we reached there at about 9pm. I always like going to a busy place for draught beer, you know it will always super fresh.
In the case of Kilkenny at Barfly, yeap, the draught were fresh, fragrant, and every bit as how a good pint of Kilkenny should be. Something that we learned from the Kilkenny Masterclass experience.
some of the beer food we have to pair with Kilkenny beer
Of course, when you have beer, you gotta have some beer food to go with.
Dark ale like Kilkenny pairs well with chicken, pork, and generally slightly stronger tasting food. Barfly happens to have quite a decent selection of snacks & even main dishes that goes well with beer.
Mike showing that all pint glasses hold the same volume
We had their flaming chicken wings, superfly potato skin, pig in haystack (enoki mushroom + bacon), fries, ikan bilis with onion and chili, nachos, sausage kau, and commando chips.
Many of the dishes were a bit spicy, and when you wash down that spicy kick with a big gulp of cold beer, that feeling is just the best!
and.. we had a great time! Happy Birthday Suan
Awesome friends, great beer, and some food over a few hours – good times!
When do we do this again?
Thanks to the good people at ROYCE, I got my hands on a few limited edition chocolates slated for their upcoming ROYCE Maccha Fair (available from 1st August, 2013 for limited time) a short while ago. Since Lance invited us for his almost-birthday BBQ party at Genting last week, I took the opportunity to bring those chocolates some 1000 meters above sea level for sharing.
ROYCE Maccha Fair chocolates and the bunch at Genting
I’ve previously wrote an entry on ROYCE chocolate and was impressed with the quality of this chocolate maker from Hokkaido, therefore I was quite keen to sample this latest offering.
While many choose to buy chocolates in duty free shops, ROYCE is one of the very few brands that have their outlets in various malls around Klang Valley (check location here), offering a wide range of chocolate products.
To me, the only downside is that they don’t serve coffee on location since these two goes so well together.
ROYCE Maccha Almond chocolate, Kerol as the model
Anyway, lets talk about these Maccha Fair chocolates.
The Maccha Almond chocolate is pretty self explanatory. Roasted almond coated with green tea flavoured chocolate on the outside. There is something about nuts that always goes well with chocolates, and I think this goes extremely well with beer too.
Lance & Haze with ROYCE’s Prafeuille Chocolat
ROYCE’s Prafeuille Chocolat made by having fragrant green tea sauce sandwiched between light-textured chocolate and mixed with powdered green tea leaves. A box of this contains 30 pieces of chocolates, all individually wrapped.
The taste of green tea is very strong and suppresses the aroma of chocolate somewhat. Whisky did not go well with this, but I believe coffee would be lovely. Kinda reminds me of those minty chocolates you get for Christmas, except this one tastes a whole lot better. Perfect for those who loves green tea, but if you just want the taste of chocolates, this might not suit.
Michael enjoying some ROYCE Nama chocolate – Machha
Then there’s the Nama chocolate, ROYCE’s most famed product. This is one of the smoothest and tastiest chocolate you can get. Laced with a hint of liquor with perfect balance between the aroma of green tea and fragrances of chocolate, this was pretty much everyone’s favorite of the night, including myself.
If calorie intake and money isn’t a problem, I want ROYCE Nama chocolate to be in my fridge at all time. So good!
You can find locations of Royce’ stores in Malaysia from http://www.e-royce.com/english/shop/shopintheworld/malaysia.html and their facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/ROYCEMalaysia
it was Lance’s birthday BBQ celebration, did it like a rock star
Well, the chocolate was just desserts for this awesome BBQ party that we had. Lance made us plenty of awesome BBQ goodness, which includes lamb rack, steak, bacon, mushroom with cheese, chicken, salad, clam chowder, and more.
The birthday cake for the boy was a pavlova cake from Alexis at Bangsar, which is of course, one of the best pavlova cakes you can get (Serai serves pretty good pavlova too).
plenty of drinks, meat, and good times with friends
Mike’s job for the night was handling all the alcohol related drinks since Ahfa was unable to join us on to night. We had great fun as always, and as always, looking forward to the next session!
If I get the story right, it all started with one of Rumah Hope’s volunteer, Lydia, asking for a quote from BBQ Addicts because she was thinking of organizing a lunch for the kids.
So instead of writing up a quotation, Grill Sergeant Lance decided to sponsor the BBQ. In the process, we were asked to help out. And of course, we gladly agreed, not really knowing what to expect.
porkgang at Rumah Hope, Taman Paramount
Rumah Hope is a sanctuary for the abused, neglected, and under privileged kids between the age of 4-17 and was set up by the Good Hope Church in 1994. It is located at Paramount Garden in PJ, and today houses some 60 kids.
Rumah Hope is operated solely with public donation, you too can contribute with cash, or other things – see “our needs”
stationaries for the kids, compiled by suanie
The biggest credit for this event is shared by both BBQ Addicts and Suan. She laboriously compiled dozens of goodie bags filled with stationaries (different sets for different age groups too) and “sold” them to those who are willing to buy them for the kids.
This beats any candies or toys any day, very practical.
chicken wings, mushroom with cheese, satey too
Oh yah, the BBQ session itself.
Lance was operating a big BBQ pit and left 2 tiny ones for us to toy with. I think Gareth, Horng, Terence, and myself spent a good 20 minutes to get the fire going (without any fire starter), and yah, we helped grill the easier stuff – satey, bell pepper with cheese, mushroom with cheese, and sausage too.
The grill sergeant himself worked on the those, and more serious stuff, like awesomely marinated chicken wings and juicy lucy. I think the kids enjoyed the food, we certainly did.
the kids at rumah hope mingling with everyone
The rest of us played cards with the kids, and there was also a craft session by Melissa too. There was also a bit of music going on with a single speaker hooked up to an iPhone, it was a party!
We stayed till late into the afternoon, and I had to basically pry Haze from the kids as they asked her to draw yet another personalized painting.
the kids at Rumah Hope
I think we took a lot from this little event. I know it’s awfully cliche, but it was good to see the kids smile. We left with a better sense of how lucky we are too.
All of us agreed that we need to do more of things like this, and I think we will.
For those who have had the privilege of joining one of these sessions, there’s a consensus:
You haven’t had BBQ until you had BBQ Addicts!
Today, you, my dear reader, gets to drool over these wonderful grilled food that we had at Michael and Lance’s place at Genting the very last day of 2010. You’ll also fint out how to get your hands on them, read on.
pork ribs, pigs in blanket, asparagus with bacon
Firstly, lets look at the first few dishes we had: baby back ribs, marinated to perfection, grilled over charcoal fire, le yums! Asparagus wrapped with bacon, and pigs in blanket, all piping hot and awesomely delicious.
BBQ Addicts – Grill Sergeant Lance
The super happy dude in windbreaker from early 90s, that is Grill Sergeant Lance, the uno supremo of BBQ-Addicts. Don’t let the windbreaker fools you, his BBQ outfit is complete with super short running pants and old school badminton jersey from the same era.
One thing for sure though, this dude is the best in the business when it comes to BBQ.
beef burger with bacon, rolling pin
At BBQ-Addicts, don’t expect to find boring old chicken wings, fish balls, or sausages you find from supermarket. Everything is of premium quality, like the home made burger pattie, sandwiched between buns that’re also grilled, add a piece of bacon in it, and viola – you get instant carb + heart attack material, but it tastes good.
Then there’s rolling pin – marinated chicken wrapped with streaky bacon that is then grilled (well, almost everything is grilled anyway) so that the pork fat seeps into the chicken to make it that much more tender and flavorful…. ah..!
watermelon salad, fren cut lamb, clam chowder, steak
There’s more, the french cut lamb is one of my favorites, and that big piece of steak over fire till medium rare, grilled mushroom with cheese and actually we did have some marinated chicken wings too.
Other than grilled food, these guys make some pretty fine watermelon salad (you gotta try it!), and seriously “life altering” clam chowder (that appears in xmas eve at Suanie’s post).
porkgang and more at BBQ Addict’s New Year Eve party
We had an awesome time at the little party that had way too much awesome food, good drinks, and glow sticks. It was a New Year Eve with many satisfied stomaches.
frankenstine junior at new year eve party
To have your own BBQ-Addicts experience, head over to their facebook site to find out more. They can deliver the ingredients to your event or even be there to cook for you too, BBQ pit rental’s available too. If you want to have a kick ass BBQ party, you know who to contact!
Update: BBQ Addicts is now too busy to be doing BBQ stuff!
Whenever a restaurant selling the same food with another more famous counterparts just a few doors a way and somehow still manage to survive all these years is always worth a visit.
Peng Yuan Hokkien Mee in Ah Fatt kopitiam is situated on the same row as the vastly more famous Ahwa Hokkien mee that I’ve blogged about, another example would be Satellite chicken rice located a few doors down from New Restaurant Ipoh Chicken Rice. If the two places can co-exist, one of them can’t be worse than the other.
Peng Yuan Hokkien Mee in Kedai Minuman dan Makanan Ah Fatt, off Jln 222
That said, we actually ended up at Peng Yuan because we had initially wanted to go to Ahwa, a place that is fast becoming one of our regulars. It was on a Tuesday, and Ahwa was closed. After a flurry of BBM messages, we decided to check out this joint to minimize logistic issues.
The place was packed, I suspect quite a lot of the extra customers ended up there due to the same reason. We made our orders, and waited, and waited, and waited….
wat tan hor (Cantonese flat noodle), hokkien mee, and fried chicken
Before our main dishes arrive (took some 20 minutes), we ordered some fried chicken wings and drumsticks as appetizer from the stall that claims to serve them “cheaper, bigger and better” (there’s a famous fried chicken wing stall at Ahwa to0).
Sure enough, the fried chicken turned out to be excellent. They were packed with flavor (asam?) and very succulent too, Jac ended up asking for an extra order, and that skinny bitch usually only eats as much as a small cat.
As far as Hokkien Mee (RM 15 for portion of 3) goes, I think Ahwa still has an edge, this dish at Peng Yuan was slightly too wet for my liking. The Cantonese flat noodle (wat tan hor, RM 15 for portion of 3) though, was fabulous. I especially like the very addictive sauce.
dessert soup, #porkgang, and nutmeg drinks
The kopitiam also serve “four fruits soup” (四果汤) that comes in a bowl with jelly and several types of nuts in a sweet soup. This is something that’s quite popular in Penang especially around those make shift theater that’s set up to worship the spirits/gods. The availability of nutmeg drinks, another Penang speciality, put me over the moon! If you haven’t tried it yet, you should.
Dinner turned out to cost less than RM 10 per person including the fried chicken and drinks. Though the hokkien mee was a bit of a let down, I’d come back here for the chicken wings and cantonese noodle, and oh, the drinks too!
Address:
Ah Fatt Kopitiam
42, Jalan 14/48,
Petaling Jaya, Selangor
GPS: 3.097563, 101.629334
