Masak - masak Melayu ~ Ikan kembung masak kicap berempah

This is a variant of masak kicap ikan kembung recipe, more spices and tamarind paste added in instead of just soy sauce. Has some sweet and sour taste to it, also spicier. I think this is the Southern states variant.

Hey ho Penang 05 ~ Seafood dinner @ Golden Cafe, Golden Sand Resort, Penang ~ the dessert part!!!

Of course, after a wonderful gorging of seafood, the ending is dessert! Not disappointing us, the array of desserts presented by the Golden cafe's chefs were simply amazing. We have the usual butter and cream cakes, chocolate cake...

Hey ho Penang 04 ~ Seafood dinner @ Golden Cafe, Golden Sand Resort, Penang ~ the seafood part!!!

Ohimgosh... look at those shiny prawns... And those miniature crayfish and mussels...





Welcome to the seafood buffet dinner @ Golden Cafe, Golden Sands Resort. Adult pricing RM99+, kids RM 49++... for that prices you can have your fill of seafood to your heart content.

Windmill Restaurant @ Shah Alam Mall - a trial of my hometown Western food diner

It was there for quite some time until for some reason I decided to drop by. I meant, few blogs offered a so - so opinions on this place, so of course I wont be jumping to go.

 But anyway I decided to drop by one day at the restaurant, at level 2 in Shah Alam Mall.

 My first thought was, why the tacky balloons and blue and pink cloth hanging up there?

Ok, a better view. Looks cozy enough.

 The Windmill.

I am expecting better than this. Can someone please learn to produce a signature in - house bread and butter please?

 Starters: shrimp cocktail salad and onion soup. I feel that they can do better with the shrimp cocktail salad by not using just plain old thousand island sauce. Onion soup was OK, but need to cut down the salt a tad.

Too buttery escargot, kinda overpowered the escargot taste a bit.

 Lobster baked with cheese. OK la. But what's with the frozen vege...

 Baked black cod.Typical Malaysia style of Western menu, french fries and coleslaw and salad.

But the pricing was quite OK, considering that it is not a fine dining place. A family restaurant, if I may. I still feel that it needs some polishing up especially on food presentation. A pity for the lobster.

By the way, what shall I classify this under?

Japanese food @ Rakuzen , Empire, Subang Jaya

It's becoming a Japanese food monthly galore for me ^_^ And this post is dedicated to Rakuzen, another high end Japanese food restaurant. For me this means seafood feasting more than anything else as high end restaurant usually served high quality seafood.

The hotata miso soup almost out from the picture as the hotate and salmon sashimi shines.

Above: Dragon roll consisting of a king prawn and avocado maki.  Below: my toro and ni anago sushi. Toro (fatty tuna) beats salmon, salmon belly and maguro (plain old tuna) thoroughly in taste and texture and price, while ni anago (sea eel) beats the hell off even the premium river eel as it melts in your mouth!

Cooling down with dessert: Strawberry Ice which is strawberries cored and filled with vanilla ice cream on a crown of cream

Total up - RM 111.35 for all these goodies.



NOTE:
Status: Serve no pork. Cooking may contains alcohol


Service: Excellent! Any place that refills my tea without prompt is always good ^_^

Japanese food @ Senjyu, The Curve, Mutiara Damansara

Finally, after reading so many reviews about Senjyu and the quality of Japanese food served there, I decided to give it a try.

Senjyu is reportedly, a high end and high class Japanese restaurant, and here I may confirmed that those reports and reviews on many blogs are delightfully true. Indeed, it was a wonderful experience to enjoy good Japanese food at Senjyu.

My jobless picture of cutlery and the menu while waiting for the food to arrive. Dunno why the lighting was so orenge-y.

My beautiful Jasmine Faery tea and my lovely lobster chawanmushi. There is no simple green tea here; in Senjyu the green tea are steeped with flowers, giving it a hint of sweet aroma with an exotic tang.

My beautiful Faery in the beautiful cup ^_^

Carppaccio Moriawase: half broiled salmon, tuna, butterfish accompanied with 5 condiments (sake is the clear coloured one, ponzu sauce, soy sauce, spicy sesame oil, sesame seed) and sprinkled with salmon roe. Loved the popping!

I could not get enough of the salmon roe so I had the sushi, along with premium river eel (Jyo Unagi Sushi, which tasted better than the usual eel, but cannot beat the sea eel) and surf clam (Hokkigai Sushi). Above is my salmon belly sashimi which was superb with a pinch of lemon!

Oyster! Made into Oyster Roll with the combination of light tamago wrapping around the oyster and Japanese mushroom, prepared in a special sauce.

My hotate... freshly flown in. Ike Hotate & Kinoko Yaki : they serve this in simmering broth in the scallop shell. I quickly took the poor hotate off the fire and asked the waiter to take the fire pot away as it was getting too hot... =p

Lastly, a dessest of plain old green tea ice cream ^_^

When the bill came, it total up to RM 157.76 including taxes. Considered excellent for the load of seafood.




Note:

Status: serve no pork. Cooking may contain alcohol


Service: Excellent! The server explained the menu well, keep appearing to refill the teapot, and I changed my plate 3 times (they keep offering to change for a fresh plate)!


Ambience: lovely! Tatami sitting on cushion actually but who cares.

Seafood: New Gaya Seafood Restaurant

Status: Serve No Pork
Address: Inanam


I was driving at night so I really couldn’t recall the roads very well. So rather than misguiding everyone, I rather not describe it then. It’s somewhere in Inanam, near a housing area and always fully packed. My memory is a bit fuzzy, though I only went there like a week ago before departing from Sabah.

Since I was about to leave Sabah in few days time, we decided to go on a spree and indulge in seafood at this place because as compared to other places, their price is the most affordable. For what we ate below, we were charged only RM155.




The soft shell crabs are very popular, we learnt this when we came for the first time and were told that the place ran out of stock due to high demands, especially on weekend. So a friend of mine pre – ordered the crabs earlier before we came in this time. They were fried crunchy to be relished for every single bite till nothing is left! Nothing wasted and hassle – free, literally since you consumed the shells together with the flesh. RM28 for half kg.

Soft shell crabs in batter, deep fried.

Scallop was the expensive part of our meal. RM35 for half kg or less. They cooked it with celery which was a good combination.


My favourite, fish teo chiew style (did I spell that correctly?). RM20+ for this tilapia. The thing I like about this fish is the salty - sour taste and of course, the tofu =)


Prawns! Half kg for RM25 I think, fried in oatmeal batter. Yummy!


The tom yum soup for 5 is surprisingly cheap, only RM12 for the savoury large bowlful and generous ingredients.

They served the rice in bowls, I got a plate since I requested for fork and spoon, not wanting to risk dropping my precious prawns and crabs.


And our vege, simple pak choi stir – fry with garlic. But it cost us RM10.

Overall, I think this place is pretty good. Fresh seafood, decent price and good service. Waiting time can be quite long on weekends and the place is usually packed by 6 pm on those days.



Rating: 3.5/5

Western food: Fish & co

Status: Serve no pork

Venue/landmark: Warisan Square in KK city (behind Times book store); ground floor entrance, 1Borneo Hypermall

Time open – close: 11.00 am – 10.00 pm (roughly)

Contact no.: 088 – 485878 (1Borneo); 088 – 484989 (Warisan Square)

Basic RM per meal: RM 25.00 (w/o tax, +/- drinks)

If you like fish, this is another alternative to Manhattan Fish Market in Kota Kinabalu. Fast food and western style, that is.

What I like 2nd best here next to their food is their chic serving style. Unless you find it odd to eat in a frying pan, you’ll find it rather charming to eat freshly cooked fish out of its pan served on its wooden fish platter.

I particularly enjoy the items listed below:
1. D Best Fish n Chip In Town: agree! One of the best indeed.
2. New York Fish n Chip: oh… the cheese…
3. Coriander Catch: Catch of the day with coriander sauce. Love the dori!
4. Peri peri Catch: again, catch of the day with Peri peri sauce. It turns out a bit like sambal fish.
5. Seafood Platter for 2: small eater beware! It may need more than 2 of you.
6. Mussel Penne with Garlic & Butter Sauce: never has my kupang tasted so nice…
7. Chockie Junkie: sinful… chocolate shake with luxurious topping of whipped cream!

Service and hygiene so far are excellent. Nice ambient, family – friendly.

Seafood: Kampung Nelayan Floating Seafood Market Restaurant

Status: serve no pork (Serve alcohol)

Venue/landmark: near a psychiatric hospital (Hospital Mesra), Bukit Padang in Kota Kinabalu city. You can see a huge red prawn neon signboard from the round-a-bout.
Time open – close: 12.00 pm – 10.00 pm
Reservation: available
Contact no.: 088-231003, 231005
Website: http://www.kampungnelayan.com/

Expected RM per meal: RM 60 - 70 (2 pax, rice, 1 fish x gram, 1 vege, w/o tax)

Floating: yeah it's floating alright on the lake, open air and air-conditioned. Take your pick.

Seafood market: quite, since they have everything that is legal swimming in the tank. Tthere are also frozen ones, but for this if you are taking AirAsia then Terminal 2 has their own seafood shop selling frozen and dried seafood too.

Fresh seafood, yes indeed. Everything is still swimming and squirming in the large tanks and you pick what you want to eat and watch with glee and rumbling stomach as the workers scoop out the catch. Take your pick, lobsters, crabs, squids, prawns, udang lipan (they really look like centipedes, squirming and rolling around in their individual bottles), fish, mollusks of all kinds (oyster, shellfish, some weird looking snail-look-alike that I dunno what their names are, escargot maybe)… in short, all sorts of sea inhabitants which are legal to be sold to public. Though you may ask the cook how they cook these catches, I think it’s better if you come out with your own request if you are confident of your own judgment.

I’d recommend the soft shell crabs which they deep – fried nicely. If you don't mind your garoupa steamed with soy sauce (which apparently is the only steaming method here) then go ahead and steam your fish.

Anyway, the place also offer steamboat. They offer 2 variant of this, the expensive set and the economic-eat-somewhere-at-the-back-there set. Both have the same choice of soup base, chicken base or tom yum.

So, the expensive one is RM45+. You get a platter of seafood array (prawn, shellfish, squid, crabstick), yong tau fu stuffs (fish cake, fish ball, tofu), vege, mushroom, egg and noodle. You’ll be served in one of the main halls and get to see the cultural performance.

Then there’s the economic set, RM35 w/o 5%tax (hidden charge, shrug). This is under Beijing Open Air Buffet BBQ Steamboat. Buffet style, as the name imply, take what you want from the selections they prepared at the buffet table. The stove is somewhat special, you can also cook your meat on the side hot plate. You’ll be served somewhere at the end hall where you can’t see the cultural show. Time the buffet starts: 6.30 pm – 11.00 pm

Service is good. They are polite and all, fast and attentive. The only thing that irked me is dirty table cloth. Nothing can be done with that I suppose since they can’t be stripping the table cloth every time a customer spilt something.

The main attraction they boast of, aside from the seafood, is their cultural show, scheduled at 7.45 pm – 9.00 pm. Seats in front of the stage can be reserved earlier, or you can come early before 7. The cultural show features the traditional dances of the local tribes, and you get to participate in them and blow darts to some balloons.