Restoran Robson Heights Seafood, KL

Before we wrap up the Year of the Tiger, a few of us uni friends decided to meet up for a lou sang session- before our rousing welcome for Brother Rabbit...

It was a wet evening, we were hungry and reached the restaurant at 730pm, ready to order the crabs..Alas, we were in for a disappointment, they ran out of crabs! (aint that a tad early??). I'm rather surprised to hear that, the restaurant was not even filled :(

Anyways, we ordered some festive dishes...

Yee Sang (RM38)...

Robson serves a very traditional version- with lots of pickled, dyed vegetables and fruits..

Topped with fried dough bits, lots of peanuts and sticky sweet plum sauce. Was an ok version if you're just innit for the lou.

Steamed har (prawns) RM45 to bring joy and laughter into the new year..

Fresh, sweet and springy flesh. Enjoyable.

The Yat Zhi Guat (a pork dish, RM53) fills up the meat quota...

This was the most popular dish among my friends. They simply love this- the meat was meltingly tender and juicy, the skin had a thin caramel crisp, and slightly tangy- reminiscence of sweet and sour pork. Delicious.

Ah, some fried kailan (RM15)to meet our greens requirements...

Would have preferred a larger portion. Macam tak cukup je...

The Salted Egg squid (RM12)

This I must say, was rather disappointing. Though the salted egg coating was aromatic, it was slightly soggy and the squid texture was rubbery.

And what excellent way to end the meal than a piping hot pot of waxed meat rice (RM45)?

A variety of waxed meat (and sausages) neatly stacked atop fluffy rice. The rice had fully absorbed the essence of the waxed meat, give it a good stir and it's ready to eat. Satisfying, though I secretly wished that the waxed meat were sliced thickly, rather than thin :p

Restoran Robson Heights is located at 10B, Jalan Permai, Off Jalan Syed Putra, KL. Tel 03-22746216.

Food4thot would like to wish all my readers a Happy Chinese New Year! May the Year of the Rabbit be a harmonious, joyful and prosperous year! Gong Hei Fatt Choy!!

Bukit Tinggi BBQ, Bentong

When Gary mentioned of a quaint restaurant in Bentong, he was referring to the interesting way the bill was written and not the food. The food, Gary assured us, is delicious.

It was a warm day to have lunch at Bukit Tinggi BBQ..The restaurant was open air and walls were in fact, made of arranged beer and wine bottles. The zinc roof was ultra hot and patrons who visited left their umbrellas as souvenirs hanging at the ceiling, which was also use to absorb the heat. Luckily the restaurant did some sprinkling system above the roof when it gets too hot, to cool down the place.

We were here for 2 main dishes, the rest of the dishes- well, we got them to recommend..

First up, to whet our appetite, some grilled green chili..

I was worried that it's be ultra spicy, but this grilled chili was fresh, crunchy and sweet. The light sauce coating the chili works well to tone down the spiciness (not all of the chili was hot :p). Do try it if you're here. Pretty yummy.

We wanted to have white rice to go with our dishes, but the waiter recommended their 'special rice'..

It's mun fan (braised rice), liberally braised in multi coloured fresh vegetables. I'm quite sure I've absorbed the required vitamins for the day from this plate of rice.

One of the dish that we came for...The seafood pot..

The large pot of clams, lala, prawns, crabs was served as simply as possible and I do applaud them for that. The natural, wonderful flavours of the seafood was retained, the texture of the seafood was heavenly. Gorgeous dish.

They didn't waste any part of the seafood pot- the essence of the seafood- the sweet juices, dripped to the bottom layer of the pot was cooked with the vegetables they harvested for the day. Wonderfully belly warming and satisfying.

We were also recommended to try their Mm Hou Sek Gai (directly translated as Bad Tasting Chicken in Cantonese)..But why should we order that?? The waiter laughed and took that order for us..

Here's our chicken dish. Looks decent, taste wise, it's quite good- feels like a cross between salt baked chicken with roasted chicken, with small hints of herbs. Ah, so it's not Bad Tasting chicken, it's actually, Mmmm Hou Sek Gai ( means Mmmm, delicious chicken! in Cantonese).

And finally, the dish that I've been waiting for..Their grilled Rack of Lamb..When Gary raved about it before we came, I was wondering what was all the fuss about. Now I finally understood. This was the best rack of lamb I've ever sunk my teeth into and I'm so very glad I made my way here to try it. The lamb was tender, ultra juicy and so fresh with the gamey flavour I love. But nothing can compare to the ultra crisp lamb skin. The aroma wafting from the skin was a killer and the taste, omg, was simply divine! It was akin to biting into a piece of crunchy butter, the flavour was mouth-watering thick and beautiful. Too rich for your liking? Have it with their freshly made mint and lime concoction, lightens the flavour- still tasty nonetheless.

Overall, it was a very good meal, though the pricing was not that cheap (given it's location).

Can you take a guess what's what in my bill? :p

Here's the address and map of Bukit Tinggi BBQ.

Seafood at Miri town

Miri was a stop over before we flew to Mulu.

A quiet town, it was quite easy to explore this town was by foot. As Bollywood Queen did a last minute cancellation to join us, we didn't really know what's good in Miri..so we followed the easy rule to find a good makan..walk around and see where's crowded :p

The first dinner place came about when I was in my hotel room and I took a look at the hotel's surrounding. I noticed that this restaurant has customers trickling in at 5pm. Food should be good ;p

So we popped by Shanghai Seafood centre..

We were recommended to try the '3 types vegetables' (RM10)

I had the impression it'll be like the '4 heavenly kings' sort of dish, but to my surprise it came in 3 sections- bidin ccoked in thai sauce, stir fried vermicelli in some local veg and stir fried cassava leaves with egg. A nice variety to try, but I thought the bidin sauce was too sweet. The stir fried cassava was top notch, the wok hei was fantastic for this dish.

Since it's a 'Seafood centre', we had to order some right?

Had the steam prawns (RM14)

Oversteamed. Such a waste. Rather ex too for 7 midsized prawns...

Since many tables had crabs, we decided to order 1 each :p

Cooked in their sambal, sweet spicy sauce, the crabs were so fresh and sweet. The springy flesh goes very well with the thick, spicy sauce. The sauce was extremely addictive- had hints of sour plum sauce too- was somewhat different from those I've tried in Peninsular. And the happiest part of this meal? This big plate of crabs only costs us RM14 :D

Our second dinner was chosen as the restaurant was really packed with customers..

Located in the city centre, Meng Chai is hard to miss during dinner time.

We chose the seafood from the front counter and asked for some recommendations..

But it was ultra busy, the lady didn't have time to recommend much :(

We ordered some veggies while waiting for the seafood..

Local bidin with stir fried with belacan..

This was way better than Shanghai Seafood's version in thai sauce.

We still liked a portion of the cassava leaves stir fried with egg..

Pretty good but not as delicious compared to Shanghai Seafood's.

We asked for some mantis prawns and squids cooked in belacan (RM20)

A large portion given the fact that the mantis prawns had been shelled. The flavour was just ok, there was not much spiciness or pungentness of sambal belacan.

Every table had a large plate of foiled dish..And we got ours too..Giant river prawns cooked in chinese wine (RM28 for 2 prawns). The river prawns here are humongous, it's head was the size of my fist. The wine was strong but aromatic, the prawns was ultra fresh, the flesh was very bouncy and the thick roe melted into the sauce perfectly. So very unforgettably scrumptious, you must order this if you're at Meng Chai's.

Shanghai Seafood Centre is located at 544, South Yu Seng Road, Miri, Sarawak.

Meng Chai Seafood is located at Jalan Merbau

Pantai Seafood Restaurant, Kg Kayu Ara

I cant recall the exact year I had my first meal at Pantai; my guess would be a few years back, for my birthday dinner.

Fast forward a few years later and I find myself back here again, this time with new found friends who were gracious to invite me along for dinner one weekend.

But Pantai has definitely expanded it's area over the years, it was much larger and caters for even more customers now.

We left the ordering to the man, the ladies continued with the bantering..

The prawns made its grand entrance first..

Cooked to perfection, the prawns were springy, sweet and so fresh. The accompanying addictive sauce complemented the prawns beautifully..

Stir fried fish slices with ginger..

An ubiquitous dish which Pantai did a slightly above average version of. The fish slices were thick and had nice flaky texture. Sauce was quite light.

The 2 style kailan

I think I first tried this style of kailan preparation in Pantai. Though a tad oily, this was still as tasty as I recalled.

The salt and pepper deep fried squids

The batter was a tad hard, which took more effort to chew. Not very impressive, this was an average dish.

The main reason we were in Pantai... we wanted crabs..

To our dismay, the local meat crabs were fully taken up (that was before 8pm!) and we were recommended to have the irish roe crabs.

Irish crabs at RM100 a kilo... well it better be good. We ordered 5 crabs to be cooked in 2 styles- with salted egg yolk and steamed.

The salted egg yolk version was served first..

The salted egg coating was pretty good, but when we tried the crab roe, we were disappointed. Although it had quite a substantial amount of roe; these irish crabs roe were more bland and not creamy :(. Nevermind the roe, I took a bite into the meat. Gosh, there were so many segmentation on the insides of the crabs that it took all of us a long time to finish each piece.

The steamed version..

We could really see the difference of these crabs to it's local counterparts. First thing we noticed was the weird 'curry puff' looking shell. And it's really hairy legs! And those darn hair were though bristle like ; which succeeded in hurting my fingers quite a number of time.

After all the digging and scraping for the flesh (which was not a lot); the crab meat was not worth the effort at all. It was just plain bland.

I cant recall the cost of the meal, but I sure did remember the crabs were RM320 (the rest of the dishes were ok priced). Felt cheated? Most definitely.

Pantai Seafood Restaurant is located at Lot 13575, Jalan Cempaka PJU 6A, Kg Sg Kayu Ara, Petaling Jaya. Tel No: 03 - 7725 5099/1099

Jin Chwan Seafood Garden, Selayang

Many years ago, I used to go down to Selayang for seafood as my friend's father was a seafood wholesaler there. Uncle would choose some fresh seafood for us and we'll meet at a local restaurant where they'll whip up delightful seafood dishes.

So when Vincent suggested a trip to Selayang for fresh seafood recently, how could I say no? :p

We managed to get to Selayang in good time, lucky for us, traffic was pretty fabulous that day. After many turnings and driving deeper into Selayang, we finally saw Jin Chwan Seafood Garden.. First welcome I got? Full blast of cold air as the Alaskan Crabs were placed at the entrance..Water's ice cold to keep these babies happy..

I had the impression that we were going to a restaurant, but Vincent explained that Jin Chwan is a wholesaler; we'll buy the fresh seafood here and bring to the restaurant of our choice for the preparation.

And gosh, there were plenty of seafood to choose from! After spending quite some time choosing our seafood, we walked over to Kedai Makanan Chef Tam (just a stone throw away, same row) for our dinner.

We bought some beautiful Pearl Clams (RM76)

Figured the best way to cook it was steaming. The sauce, ginger, shallots, garlic and fresh clams combo was simply stunning! The pearl clams were so fresh; the meat was springy and sweet and the killer sauce; it complemented the clams very well.

Some Japanese snails (RM 23) Slightly rubbery, chewy with a hint of Q in texture, the snails were stir fried with dried shrimps and bird's eye chillies. Very appetising indeed. I rather liked this dish too.

For the large sea grouper we got (RM93), the obvious choice was to steam it.

Our fish died in vain. Over steamed, the fish meat was coarse and unrefined. :(. poor fish.

We had a simple vegetable dish of stir fried celery and lily bulbs. Sweet and refreshing. Love the crunch in the veggies.

Some Philippines meat crab (RM126).. We decided to have it prepared 2 methods..

Steamed..

The sauce was way too sparse that I could no savour much of the sweetness. Could have see traces of steamed egg at the base of the plate too. The crabs were quite sweet; meat texture was just ok. Vincent said they were in the tank for too long. :(

The Chilli Crab fared much better.. The sauce was spicy, and sweet sour. A tad different from those I've tried in PJ area, I find this sauce very tasty. Swirls of egg thickens this sauce wonderfully and goes amazingly well with the sweet flavours of the crab. And of course we mopped it up with some fried mantaus (we had steamed too, but the fried ones are much better).

Total cost is RM309 for fresh seafood.

Cooking cost at Kedai Makan Chef Tam (inclusive of rice, drinks and vegetables) RM120.

Jin Chwan Seafood Garden is located at 9, Jalan 2/4, Taman Bidara, 68100 Selayang, Selangor.

Kedai Makanan Chef Tam is located at 6A, Jalan Bidara 2/4, Taman Bidara, 68100 Selayang, Selangor.

Coca Restaurant, Subang Parade

Andrea, of Coca Restaurant, invited me to sample their dishes last month.

I got to bring along a guest, hence Dragon girl came along. While we make our way to Coca, we were expecting to try the famed steamboat. So, I was rather surprise when Andrea ran through our dinner menu and steam boat was definitely not one of them.

Many had the impression that Coca only serves steamboat, in fact, we serve a variety to Thai dishes..Andrea informed me

And looking at their menu, I can definitely attest to that....

We had huge glass of mango pineapple juice/ blend..Very refreshing.

Some appetizers to start the meal...

The popular pandan chicken Coca's version was absolutely scrumptious! The meat was well marinated, exudes a light yet lovely fragrance while the meat texture was extremely tender and juicy.

The stuffed prawns were huge...Stuffed to the brim with mince prawns, onions and mushrooms (and some other ingredients), these babies were very tasty and I was pleasantly surprise on how juicy it was although the prawns were deep fried.

The mains came next...

Squids with garlic and pepper..

The batter was very light, and the garlic pepper bits were delicious. Most unfortunately, the squids were chewy and hard. Such a pity.

Next dish, Steamed Siakap We were served with a humongous fish and it was prettily sprinkled with chopped chillies, garlic, lime and ginger. The fish was very fresh and sweet (they just took it from the tank), and the sauce was a killer! So, so spicy that it definitely was on par with the level of spiciness I have had in Thailand. The waitress did comment that the sauce looks more 'wicked' that normal.*wipes sweat*. Not for the faint hearted. We both enjoyed this tremendously nonetheless..

The house specialty, Thai Curry Crab was next... One huge crab that filled the plate, this thai curry crab looks somewhat different from those I have sampled in Thailand. Though the crab flesh was succulent and compact (again, freshly taken from their tank), I did not like the sauce. While the curry crab sauce I had in thailand was creamy and sweet spicy, Coca's version had very pungent curry flavour (the curry powder's imported from Thailand). The eggs were also not as smooth (the versions I've tried previously was smooth like custard). Served with deep fried mantau.

We had some Seafood Tomyum

It was very sweet and not too spicy. In fact, the soup was a tad too thick to tickle my fancy. I felt like I was drinking diluted gravy :(. The prawns were fresh but the squids were not.

Green Curry Chicken

I enjoyed this dish tremendously. Really good and lip smacking. The chicken meat was very well marinated and tender; and I love the aubergines. I was informed that Coca replaces coconut milk with yogurt and evaporated milk for it's dishes and frankly, I could not really taste any difference. This green curry still tasted wonderful without the extra cholesterol from coconut milk.

And of course, for a more balance meal, we had a plate of vegetable.. Cooked in fish sauce and sugar, this was slightly sweeter than the conventional chinese stir fry.

Andrea offered desserts, but Dragon girl and I were so stuffed that we had to turn down the offer :-(. The gracious hostess was also very open to our comments (good and bad) and I find that a really positive way to improve their food standard.

Overall, we had a good meal, shall pop over to try other dishes in the future. :-)

We noted that Coca now serves fresh seafood, and the tanks near the counter attracted many children's attention.

Coca Restaurant is located at Lot G28, Level G, Subang Parade, 5, Jalan SS16/1, Subang Jaya, 47500 Petaling Jaya. Tel: 03 5632 8766. Coca also has another branch in One Utama.