Tuesday, February 10, 2009
KL Diary - The Food
I think we were hungry the moment we touched down at the airport. After we dropped our luggages at home and had a
nice shower we headed to 'Tang House of Fishball' at Sea Park - recommended by my in-laws. The place was clean and
most importantly air-conditioned. They serve Hakka noodles with minced meat, fishballs, fish cakes, etc. I'm not sure if it was because we were hungry but the food certainly tastes good. If you search 'Tang Fishball Sea Park' on Google, you'll get quite a number of hits, but here's one for you with lovely photos (http://eatinout.blogspot.com/2006/08/tang-house-of-fishball-sea-park.html).
Once seated, we looked around and noticed other patrons slurping from huge bowls and so we made the assumption that the serving would be large. Besides, the price listed on the menu was for RM6.50 per bowl of noodle. As you would have guessed by now, it was a mistake because there wasn't even enough for Dominic!
Later that night, we had 'Lou Sang' and seafood at 'Pantai Seafood' restaurant at Kampung Kayu Ara (in PJ). We ate here twice this year - once with family and once with Raymond (our friend). It was said that the food is good and cheap.
The days after that, we had 'Lou Sang' with this friend and 'Lou Sang' with that relative and etc, etc. By the 6th time we had 'Lou Sang', I was pretty sick of it and Dom had become quite expert in tossing with the chopsticks. :-D Not only was I sick of 'Lou Sang' but I was also sick of seafood and Chinese cuisine, so much so that when we met up with my uncle for dinner on the 9th day of CNY, we had Mexican food at Chilli's instead.
I'm not sure what happened but there wasn't enough time (or space in the stomach) for curry mee, satay, chicken rice, laksa, fried kuey teow and I'm not sure what else I've missed. We also didn't have Har Mee but we imported the 'Ibumie Instant Har Mee' with us when we came back (this is the one recommended by Cattypants). We had it for breakfast on Sunday (the day after we came back) and it was delicious! Dominic said that it was a little bit 'lat' (spicy) but he finished his. I thought it was more than *a little bit* 'lat'.
Another good and cheap restaurant that we frequented is 'King Crab' situated along the LDP opposite the Kelana Jaya LRT station (http://www.kingcrab.com.my). Their signature dishes are of course crabs but I would like to try everything in their menu because so far nothing we ordered were disappointing. The menu comes illustrated with saliva-inducing photos of the dishes.
This year, I'm glad we had KFC - yes - Kentucky Fried Chicken which was about 5 times better than the ones in the UK. Sadly, the ones here taste nothing but like eating salt.
For our reunion dinner this year, we had Mongolian Steamboat & BBQ at Holiday Inn Hotel Batu Ferringhi Penang - the first time we had our reunion dinner away from home. The food was only so-so (hotel standard) but it was certainly great not having to do any washing up after dinner.
Hotel breakfast in Malaysia is sooo much better than the ones in the UK or Europe. In the UK, there's the typical English breakfast (if you're lucky), otherwise it would just be bread, plain croissant and cheese, whereas in Malaysia (Holiday Inn Penang), we had nasi lemak, mee hoon, various types of eggs, waffles, even rendang and sambal sotong and everything you would get in an English and continental breakfast. There was even rice porridge with 'yau char kwai' and also 'Kuey Teow' soup. The variety was a bit overwhelming.
Another restaurant worth mentioning is the 'Damansara Palace Restaurant' (http://dpalace.com.my/main.html) - which is like your typical Tai Thong or Overseas restaurant. We had dinner here on my MIL's birthday. The food had a certain quality to it but most noticeable was the excellent service. I liked that the tables were spaced quite far away from each other, unlike the normally crowded ones with hardly any space to walk.
On the 2nd day of CNY, we had dinner with my grandmother and uncles/aunts/cousins. My grandmother called this the 'Hoi Nin' dinner and the venue is the same every year, i.e. the Tai Thong restaurant at Heritage Hotel Ipoh. Eating out in Ipoh during the CNY is challenging. The restaurants run two *shifts* per evening, normally with the first shift at 6:30pm and the 2nd shift at 8pm, which means that if yours is the first shift you will have to eat quickly and be out of the place before 8pm. Dishes would be served so quickly that you would have to ask the kitchen to slow down - which happened to us this year even though we took the 8pm shift. And because my grandmother was considered a 'valued customer' (according to my uncle who could be boasting), we managed to get a room.
Eating out (for brunch) in Ipoh the next morning was even more challenging! Every restaurant was overfilled. Further more, there were 16 of us including kids which made it the more impossible for us to get a table (or tables because there wasn't one table which could accomodate all of us). It took strategy. We spread out over the restaurant and with sharp eyes and quick move, grabbed a table as soon as someone left it. We were so good at it that we managed to get 4 tables all next to each other (probably with a little bit of luck as well :p).
