Dinner at Lala Chong Seafood Restaurant

Dinner at Lala Chong Seafood Restaurant (2nd review actually)

August 21st, 2009

Just before I headed back to Melaka after almost a week in KL, my auntie Cat and May took me to have dinner at the newly relocated Lala Chong Seafood place. I must say, am pretty impressed with the food and also the new place; so much bigger and airy. Ample parking spaces and tables and even an air-conditioned section for more comfortable dining. Our meals came pretty quickly and that was a good thing as I was starving and it was almost 9pm when we had our dinner. I saw the mantis prawn on my way in, swimming in the tank and I remembered that the last time I had those were probably 2 years ago!

Kung Po Mantis Prawn. This was really crunchy and tasty, perfect to go with a bowl of white jasmine rice. Very good kung po, I tend to get lousy kung po especially when dining overseas. Honestly, I make pretty lousy kung po's too, so time for some improvement when I stay in England I guess. Anyone got good recipe??

A must order dish every time I come here. Pat ku choy (I don't know what this is called in English) stir fried with red chillies and tuna. This was really delicious too!

Stir fried bee-hoon with lala. The lala used were those really small ones and look a little different from the other type that we usually order. Nevertheless, it was still pretty good and I would be back again to order this.
Overall, the meal came up to slightly around RM40, very reasonable for 3 of us dining in. Funny when you can't really find good cheap seafood place that does Chinese style in Melaka. :(

Thanks May!

F4 Fish Head Restaurant & RT Cake House review

F4 Fish Head Restaurant & RT Cake House review

July 21, 2009

This is actually a back-dated post, made the trip to KL to bring my dad for some makan-makan trip and also to meet his sister (my auntie lar). We have heard a lot about this place F4 and Dad and me could not wait to try this restaurant out and Auntie Jacky took us there for lunch. It was raining cats and dogs on that day I remembered as we headed there after buying lots of cakes from RT Cake shop for my family back in Melaka. A friend of mine, CCY recommended me to RT Cake shop and he was so nice to actually buy me some green tea and black sesame swiss rolls to bring home and my Mum was hooked on to it. I had a strict order to make sure I went home to Melaka with some RT swiss rolls- green tea and black sesame, from Mum. It was kinda pricey but good quality cakes I must say! We ended up spending more in RT than F4, just imagine!! Our tea costing more than a full fledged lunch!

Photo of me, Dad and Auntie Jacky, while waiting for our fish head to come..

I swapped place with my sister, Laura.

Our fish head steamed with ginger. The fish was totally delicious and fresh! I'd give this a 10/10. Perfectly done. Typical Chinese dish. Dad truly enjoyed this dish and has been bugging me to take him to F4 again and I actually went to F4 today (August 21, 2009) again and I rang him up after my lunch just to wind him up. Haha! Anyway not too worry as I will be taking him again to F4 next week just before our trip to Penang.

Stir fried sliced pork belly with salted fish and dried chillies (aka Ham yu fah lam pou, in Chinese) This dish also scored a perfect 10! Brilliant. I could eat this everyday if I had a normal cholesterol level :( You could just eat this with a small bowl of white rice and that should make your day! Highly recommended for all pork belly lovers.

Stir fried clams with curry leaves and bird's eye chillies (aka Kam heong lala) Another perfect 10 scored here. Man, we had a blast here, the dishes were super impressive and tasted great! My auntie made superb recommendations and just like what she said, the clams or lalas here were quite meaty and fatter than the usual clams we get at other places. I love the clams here where I could actually bite into them and taste them, unlike some places where I have to probably eat around 15-20 clams to "get the kick". Nice one here.

Stir fried romaine with garlic and some bird's eye chillies. Very healthy option compared to the previous dishes. Tasted great and we have nothing to complain about this awesome place, complimented by the very reasonable pricing. I can't wait to go there and try more new dishes! Let me know if you want to try, I probably can tell you where it is located.

RT Cake shop. Check out those green tea swiss rolls at the far back and then the pandan layer cake (possibly the best pandan layer cake I've ever had, again recommended by my auntie) and the black sesame swiss roll. We love it!

Green tea sponge cake. I like this one too.. It had some azuki (red beans) in the middle and to all green tea lovers, do give it a try. I am a green tea freak, so I go crazy whenever I see anything with green tea in it. Anything.

Cheers guys! and hope you all have a great weekend.

Popiah, flower and a car wax..

A day at home.. (Melaka)

August 12, 2009

Melaka can be quite boring after some time, I thought. Especially when you are not working there and just back for almost 6 months, I finally thought I kinda had enough and it's finally time for some changes. Probably I am well rested now after almost 5 gruelling years in audit. I felt like this is was a very much deserved break for me. I am excited at the next phase of life which I am about to embark on, quite a big step for me and I hope things get settled soon. Would be nice to have a decent job and a home.

Couple of friends asked me the other day, how does your typical day looks like at home? My answer was pretty straightforward:" I have nothing much to do so there's not much point waking up too early and I usually have a lie in and then get my lunch and time it perfectly to the highlight of the day, which is simply a Chinese drama showing on the local TV at 1.30pm and after that, I kinda struggle to think what I'd like for tea and then off for my exercise. Then wait for dinner and just get on the Net to surf and chat. After that, I go to bed and the same routine again the following day." They usually laughed at me but hey, that's awesome and being able to do nothing is something every single auditor desires for.

Below: a friend suggested the popiah (Malaysian version of spring roll) nearby in town and I decided to try it. It's somewhere close to Yok Bin School in Semabok, a push-cart stall. Please avoid going there for popiah. My grandma also said it was pretty decent last time but now, easily one of the worst popiah places ever. I'll stick to the ones in Bunga Raya and Bukit Beruang. I think I will really miss this in England.

Started to get bored and thought of taking a couple of photos and this was probably the most decent shot. I don't know what plant is this but the flower's rather unique.

Proud of my work. Look at the shiny car! Could not help gazing at it after I finished waxing the whole car. Hehe.

I was beginning to wonder if my mum pretended that she didn't know how to wash and keep my old car clean and shiny or she just wanted to make me her car-wash slave. She always gave me the same excuse, oh I don't know how to wash a black car. :) I had a cunning plan this time, got it washed in Toyota first and then took it back to the house and waxed it. One thing I miss about KL is how easy it was to find a place and pay RM8 to get your car washed all clean and tyres gleaming with the polish. Probably car wash is not a common concept in Melaka. People just wait for the rain to pour or simply, D-I-Y. Check out the difference between a well polished car (black) and the other one (light gold). This could be easily one of the most useful thing I did in the entire week!

Next up, I was starting to get really sick of the chemically treated hair colour and Mum tried colouring my hair to black but it came off quite quickly. Lousy products for home use. I was getting annoyed when I get comments like they could see the new patch of hair growing and all that. I wanted to keep it long but for some reasons, my hair stopped growing. So I am stuck at this length and finally went to my stylist and I told her, I miss my long black hair!!! Haha, I think the grass on the other side is always greener. After almost 2 years with permed and highlighted hair, I miss the long, black straight hair dearly. Below, closest I got to what I wanted. It was pretty good job I think, especially when my sisters commented that I looked fairer! yay!!

Dinner At The London West Hollywood, by Gordon Ramsay

July 3rd, 2009

Dinner At The London West Hollywood by Gordon Ramsay, Los Angeles

This was something we both wanted to do for a long time, to try out his restaurants after our pleasant dining experiences at the Claridges in London and At The London in New York City. Therefore during our holiday to Los Angeles, we booked in and arranged for our hosts, Daniel & G to join us there. We arrived in LA around half past four and had to trouble G to go back to the airport to pick up my baggage as they missed one bag and sent it on the following flight from New York. Well, at least it arrived an hour after that. I've had worse experience with Emirates in Dubai. Incidents like that always tend to happen to me, I don't know why! Anyway, main purpose of my trip to LA was to meet and spend some time with G. It was lovely meeting an old friend of mine, had always wanted to visit her in Los Angeles and see the place she worked in, stayed and all that.

Didn't take us too long to get to the restaurant and we had a couple of drinks before we decided on the menu and it was a lovely meal and a night's out between us.

Inside the restaurant. Pretty nice ambience.

Enjoying a glass of Mojito before the meal began.. It took us probably almost 3 hours by the time we left the place. So, might be a good idea to make earlier reservation if you don't wanna wait until ten pm for your dinner.
We had some potato crisps served also and they were absolutely delicious and super thin crisps with amazingly tasty dips. The crisps were extremely thin and slightly salted, complimented perfectly with the dips. I think the best crisps I had ever tasted!

Complimentary starter. Sweet corn chawanmushi with sweet corn foam. I enjoyed it, rather an unusual combo of sweet and savourish, since I am so used to the traditional chawanmushi.

Below: Laughton's starter. Scottish Salmon Gravlax, Confit Kumquats, Horseradish Cream.

Oh this was amazing too! I managed to try some of this and the salmon was thick, fresh and perfect. The kumkuats were really delicious too.

I ordered a Carpaccio of Hamachi with Spring Onions, Caviar and Citrus Dressing. The presentation was absolutely lovely, the caviars looked like grapes from the vine. Very very good and I loved the carpaccio. Wonderful!

Next up was G's order of a Yellow fin Tuna Tartare, Wasabi Tobiko, Shiso Tempura and I sneaked a photo of it because I liked the presentation and the green fish roe looked rather interesting. :)

Next up were our orders of Maine Lobster Rissotto finished with Mascarpone, Fresh English Peas and Sudachi Lime. Oh we were absolutely delighted with our rissotto. I think it was superb and I enjoyed it just as much as I had the rissotto in the New York city restaurant that we went to in March. Kind of difficult for me to illustrate it but it tasted heavenly! Best combination I could imagine, a Maine lobster and a rissotto!
Laughton's main course: Roasted Breast of Jidori Chicken, Buttered Baby Carrots, Stuffed Gem Leaves and Thyme Jus. Another good one here. It looked simple, just slices of chicken breast i thought at first. After tasting a bite of the slice, oh! It was good! Perfectly timed and cooked. It was moist and tender too.
Up next, it was my turn: A Braised Alaskan Halibut, Green Asparagus, Toy Box Tomatoes and Citrus Emulsion. Oh another perfectly timed dish! Look at how beautiful the piece of fillet was! The flakes were just falling off individually. Amazing! Very fresh and tasty.
We took a Wine and Dine 4 course menu and had a glass of wine paired according to our courses and it paired pretty well I must say!

Part of the restaurant.. I was trying to be as polite as I could without flashing my SLR as often as I had wished. But hey, the waiter was pretty cool as he said I had a nice SLR hehe. I guess it's ok taking photos as long I don't disturb other diners? I don't know, you decide.

My dear friend, G and her boyfriend Daniel posing one for our camera. :)

And us.

Happy faces from the guys before the bill arrived.

An even happier face from the guy who ended up paying for my entire holiday! Cheers man!

I forgot what this was called already, maybe anyone can still remember??

And this too.. I need some help guys.

One more for the road. Outside the London hotel. Happy faces after a memorable dinner, good companion and good food!

Laughton wanted to make this his Facebook display picture. I wonder why??

Goodnight everyone, stay tuned for the next entry on LA.

Short visit to the Gadek hot spring and A' Famosa

Short visit to the Gadek hot spring and A' Famosa Resort, Alor Gajah Melaka.

I am sitting here, staring at the Macbook screen just waiting for dinner time. Had not been updating my blog as often as I would have liked to as I had been pretty busy running around preparing for the visa paperwork for me to move over to England as planned. Finally handed in my application and we are eagerly awaiting for the good news. I had been ill too, was in bed the whole of last week. Suspected I probably had the infamous swine flu as I pretty much had all the symptoms and after taking medicines and also some anti viral meds, I am up and about now. :) Had a busy weekend since my ex-colleagues were visiting Melaka and they arrived on Friday and just left Melaka today. It was really nice to see some of them again.. Below are some photos of our outings.

We took a visit to the Gadek Hot Spring which is located in Kampung Ganun, a sub-district of Gadek in the district of Alor Gajah, Melaka. This hot spring has been in existence since time immemorial in the form of springs from underground sources that gave rise to mini pools. The spring has a surface temperature of 56 degree Celsius (we seriously think it was higher than that!) and with an average water flow of 5.4 litres per minute containing hydrogen sulphide gas. Apparently, the hot water of this spring which contains sulphur is believed to be capable of curing various types of skin diseases. We had to pay an entrance fee for Rm4 per person, a little pricy just for a short dip!

Yeah weather was already quite hot and by the time we got there it was 4pm and we just merely soaked our tired feets and we headed off to A' Famosa at around 5pm. The hot spring would be good if I was in England, not really a good idea for a country with such high heat!

A kampung style environment setting at the hot spring.

Little pools of waters at the hot spring.

Soaking me tired legs in the hot water. :)

The natural source of the hot water spring.

My wonderful ex-colleagues Lo & Jenny! Note: this is only a part of their happy family. Another set of twins being absent from the outing.

A picture of Lo, this amazing doting dad of this little boy and the wonderful twin girls.

Jenny and me.

Lo, Jenny, Me and Chua (one of my best-est buddy and also an ex-colleague)

Truly a good weekend spent with these lots and also had a chance to speak with some of my ex-bosses. :)