Arab Street

My brother treated me to a Middle Eastern meal for my birthday.

The shop is at the corner of the CEO building. We went upstairs to the air-conditioned area, and the seats were actually on the floor. We also had to take off our shoes halfway up the stairs.

There were three areas that could be cordoned off with curtains. But we were the only ones upstairs, so there was no need to pull any curtains.

We ordered two dishes for the three of us.

shawarma mix (chicken + beef) with mandy rice, RM25

chicken kebab, RM26

The grill sets (like the chicken kebab) come with fries and a choice of either flatbread or mandy rice. Since we already had mandy rice with the shawarma, we opted for the bread with the kebab.

We went to ask them for an extra plate, but they told us the extra plates were already stacked below the dishes. 👍🏼

Both dishes were good, though my brother said the beef was quite tough. (my mother and I felt it was fine). The chicken kebab is made from minced meat, making it soft and easy to chew. The spices on it also smelled amazing.

As for the drinks, we ordered a mango lassi (RM11.50), a chocolate milkshake (RM12.50), and a karak tea (RM4.90).

They also had adeni tea. I had tried adeni tea at Halab before, and so decided to try the karak tea here, which I had heard was good, from reviews. Similar to adeni tea at Halab, it was a kind of spiced milk tea, probably with different spices.

The mango lassi was good but I felt it was not so thick, more like a yoghurt drink. The chocolate milkshake had a very thick chocolate flavour, which makes it probably the best drink (depending on your taste preference)

There was a 10% service charge for dine in, making the bill come up to RM87.90 for the three of us.

And we need to mention the washbasin...it uses a petrol pump!

To my surprise, switching on the tap is the same way as pumping petrol. We even need to lock the pump, or keep pressing to have the water flow. Initially I thought that the tap switch would be somewhere else, and only the spout was using the shape of the petrol pump.

However there is a huge drawback of this unique design...the pump handle was extremely oily. I guess that the people who need to wash their hands have no other way of switching on the tap without making the handle oily. So I would actually recommend against using the tap...I was going to rinse my mouth (we ate with cutlery so our hands weren't actually dirty), but the tap made my hands dirty!

I wasn't going to post a photo of the receipt, but as I was going to throw it away (after checking it for all the prices above), I realized that our table number was "Sofa 2"!

Pickleball!

Pickleball has been quite the hype lately, and some of my badminton kakis have been talking about trying it out. We were lucky enough that one of them has a cousin who is opening a pickleball court soon, and we were invited to play there. Could I say that we were the testers? :P

The place is called Pickle Garage, and we can see why:

(the entrance is on the left side)

I reached earlier than my friends, and snapped a photo first:

two courts

After that, we received a quick briefing of the rules, and then we started playing.

The basics are: For the first serve and the return, the ball needs to bounce on the court before we are allowed to receive it (otherwise it is a fault on the receiver's side). After that we can receive the ball before or after it bounces. There is a zone in the middle, near the net, which is painted a different colour here, and they call it the "kitchen". Players are not allowed to enter the kitchen area until the ball bounces in the area. The service should be done while standing outside the court (behind the last line), and the serve should not go into the kitchen area.

There may be more details in the rules, but we simply started with those. I found that those of us who played badminton seemed to pick up the rhythm fairly easily. And as for me, I found that applying whatever I had learned for tennis worked quite well. Note: There was no overhead serve (I mean the one in tennis where we throw the ball up and hit it) for pickleball it seemed...we could just serve by hitting the ball directly, or we could drop the ball onto the ground first and serve it when it bounced up. (The latter is easier, so I just did that)

The ball is slightly bigger than a tennis ball I think...a hollow plastic ball with holes (pickles) on it. I think the holes make it bounce less high and less far than a tennis ball. The ball is also lighter, and the court is smaller than a tennis court...which makes it easier for me compared to tennis. Basically in tennis I had to run farther to get to the ball, and the ball was also faster and needed more strength to hit. In pickleball, these drawbacks (for me) are removed, turning it into an easier game.

The problem is that the court rental costs a lot...at least RM40 an hour as far as I've heard...and that is only during non-peak hours, aka working hours. I've heard that the paddle is very expensive as well, and probably because of that, most courts offer paddle rental (or include it in the court rental).

Anyway, it remains to be seen whether I will play again... it was really fun though. :D

Pocari Sweat

The other day, I saw this price tag in the office cafeteria.

Pocari sweat? Who is Pocari and why is his sweat so valuable?

I looked at each of the bottles, but couldn’t find anything that could be mistyped as Pocari sweat.

But then, I noticed that the rack below it was not empty.

Turns out that it is a drink!

When I posted this on Facebook, a friend informed me that it is the Japanese version of 100 Plus.

And guess what, it existed since 1980. It is older than me!

An MSG-laden meal?

One night in KL, we ordered shawerma from Alqas Aliraqi.

We ordered a mandi rice bowl with beef and chicken.

The rice is underneath, and those dark brown pieces are fried bread, still pretty crispy. (we can see a corner of the bread in the first photo above)

The meat was good, but we didn't like the pickles very much (the green and pink pieces), and the mandi rice seemed to lack flavour. It wasn't fragrant like those in some other places.

The second thing we ordered was a sort of sandwich that seemed to be their signature; the name was the name of their shop: Alqas beef. (we selected beef over chicken)

It doesn't look great, but it was the tastiest item. The bread was thin and crispy (except for the edges which are still white).

My mother and I were very happy with this one, but my father found the beef too tough (in both dishes).

That was all we ordered, but the shop gave us a free gift, a sujuk beef. We had seen sujuk on the menu, it was a spicy Mexican flavour.

a small wrap, probably not on the menu, and only prepared as a gift

The beef is minced. It was okay, but we didn't find it that good. The beef and the chicken that we ordered were both better. The wrap was just plain bread, so we didn't even finish it, since the two items that we ordered were already enough for us.

It seems that this is a regular free gift, because there was a sticker on the wrapping that said "free gift", including the name of the item (we wouldn't have known otherwise), and also we had seen reviews on Foodpanda saying that they received the gift.

We were happy with the meal, but unfortunately later that night I got really thirsty...so I suspect that there was a lot of MSG in the dishes.

Food-tasting at Bukit Bintang

We walked to Pavilion Bukit Bintang from our hotel. On the way, we saw a shop selling crispy beef roti. There was quite a queue, which we decided to join.

This is the queue as we were leaving, not when we joined it. When we joined the queue, it also turned the corner a bit.

We could see them making the roti at the front of the store. There were two stations, for making either the beef or chicken version, and I alternated taking photos of either station while standing in the queue, which is why you will see the photos of the two mixed up below.

They first roll the dough out into a strip. (on the left are the "completed" ones; I'll mention later why I use quotation marks)

Then they spread the meat on half of the dough...then put a mound of chopped onions on it.

the mounds of onions before they roll it up

I captured a video of them rolling up the dough:

So we get the loose balls below, and the remaining part of the dough is somehow used to wrap it up into the tight balls that you saw on the side.

After that, the balls are moved to another table behind these stations, where they are flattened into pancake/biscuit shape. (which is why the word "completed" above was in quotation marks) Then they are fried in several huge round pans (covered when frying)

I snapped the photo above when we were finally approaching the counter. For some reason, they stopped taking orders when the tray on the right was empty, but the tray on the left was still there. So the queue was at a standstill for quite a long time. When they started taking orders again, we noticed that the tray on the left was the chicken version. So they only took orders when they had both the chicken and beef versions available...which was seriously idiotic if you ask me. They could have asked whether anyone in the queue wanted to buy only the chicken version. (there really was someone...)

As it was, we were waiting for the beef version, so it was fine for us...but if we had been given the cooled down biscuits after waiting for so long, I would have been extremely upset.

See the trays at the back? Those came out a while after the tray on the right started being sold.

Long queue just for one biscuit... well, it was hot from the pan, and yummy. The skin outside is crispy, the dough inside is a bit chewy, and there are pockets of meat inside. Not sure whether it was actually worth the queue, because when we reached Pavilion, we found that the same shop had a stall at the food court...and the queue was shorter. (the queue was longer by the time we were leaving the food court)

Frankly, I wouldn't have captured so many photos (or the video) if I hadn't been bored while standing in the queue. :P

In Pavilion, we tried the egg tarts from Oriental Kopi. They had a Belgian chocolate version, so we got both kinds.

They said they only sold the egg tarts in twos, so we got two of each. The original version costs RM4.90 each, and the Belgian chocolate version costs RM6.40 each.

Both tasted good. I felt that the Belgian chocolate covered up the original taste of the custard though, so I might prefer the original kind if I really want to eat an egg tart. But the chocolate is really thick and tasted good too.

Because we had eaten all these snacks, for dinner we shared a bowl of noodles and some lamb skewers at One Bowl Lanzhou Lamian.

additional photo to show the noodles

additional photo to show the actual name of the shop, which is really long :P

There was an "animated" bowl of noodles in front of the shop, so I took a short video of it. Turns out that the shop name in Malay is nicely framed in the background!

We saw a similar bowl (with the same animation) in front of another ramen shop at Lalaport, so I guess it is a popular thing for noodle shops :P

7 tiao lor in Bercham

It isn't only Penang that has a 7 tiao lor (7th road) :P We discovered a nice yong tau foo place in Bercham that also sells yummy desserts. It is a house converted into an eatery, and the address is at Lorong 7 in Bercham.

The fish balls were really springy; we liked it! The sar kok was a little hard, and we didn't have any soup to dip it into, which was a pity (we didn't order any of their soup/curry noodles).

The fried shrimp rolls were fat and good. (RM1.60 each) It contains minced meat with a whole prawn inside (or was there more than one prawn? I'm not sure). The fishballs also cost RM1.60 each, and the other yong tau foo items were RM1.30 each.

The lotus leaf rice (RM4.20) has plenty of chinese sausage and cuttlefish pieces (the dry stringy pieces) in it.

Dessert was thick! We ordered red bean soup and bubur cha cha. (RM2.60 each) The bubur cha cha was really good...our only complaint is that there were so many ingredients inside, that we didn't get enough of the soup.

A turn into Pusing

Ever heard of a town called Pusing?

Not me...but the day before we were to drive to KL, my mother suddenly recalled that there was a special dish called puppy duck in Pusing. So the next day we made a small detour into Pusing to try this dish at Ming Feong Sun Restaurant. (Plenty of restaurants in Pusing serve this dish, but this restaurant seems the be the one that the most people complimented on their puppy duck.)

puppy duck, RM45

According to my mother, this dish is cooked in the same way that they used to cook dogs in the past. But now no one eats dogs any more, so the recipe is used to cook duck instead.

When I searched online, another explanation was that this dish tastes like dog meat. That kind of fits with the explanation above too.

The smallest portion we could order was half a duck. A bit bigger than necessary for the three of us, but we finished it without much problem. :P

Xi Hu sweet sour fish, RM35

The lady boss recommended us this dish. She said that she learned the recipe from West Lake (Xi Hu) in China. The fish was fried till the skin and the exterior was nicely crispy, and we loved the sauce. It had strips of ginger in it, and tasted slightly of sour plum (which we are guessing is one of the ingredients).

handmade noodles, RM2.20

Besides the fish, she also recommended us their handmade noodles, which she said could be tossed into the puppy duck sauce. Since we were worried about the dish being too big, and were planning to just order one plate of rice anyway, we decided to order noodles instead of rice. (and only one!)

The noodles didn't taste that special...simply like normal noodles, slightly springy.

Lastly, here's a photo of all three dishes together, for size (otherwise you might not be able to appreciate how big that fish fillet was :P ). Here, all dishes had been eaten a bit.

On the way from Pusing to KL, we passed by Kellie's Castle. Never having been there before, we decided to drive in to take a look. We did not plan to really visit the castle; we just wanted to see it in person.

But as we drove in, we were stopped at the ticketing booth before we had even reached the parking lot. The lady there told us, we need tickets just to set foot into the area.

So I made a U-turn out. Before driving out, I stopped the car and snapped a quick photo from the window. (The castle was behind the car at this point, so I think I did a pretty good job.) My father actually went down from the car and snapped a few (not-so-quick) photos. Luckily no one was driving in or out at the time, so we didn't get honked at. :P

Circumventing the sun

"This day is momentous considering that you have circumvented the sun once more."

Since a few years back, our HR has been sending us e-mails with a GrabGift for our birthday every year. (Before that, it was a physical Starbucks card.) The first time I read this in the birthday greeting, I felt that it was original. (though not very impressive :P )

I think I started disliking this phrase starting from the second time I read it. And each year, I dislike it more and more. It's like our HR keeps copy-pasting the same stale greeting every year. This year a new person sent out the e-mail, but it seems like they still decided to keep the same old greeting. Maybe they are new to the company and find it original? :P

A second visit to GLK

Read about the first visit here.

This time, we ordered the same kind of steamed fish, but with a different fish.

cai po steamed tilapia, RM43

fish maw tofu, RM23

sambal paku, RM13

We initially ordered two plates of rice, but when the tofu arrived (the first dish to arrive), we were shocked at how big it was, and told them we would only take one plate of rice.

Together with the thick meat on the fish, this was a very filling meal for the three of us.

Lim Kee curry fish head

My mother found this restaurant in Klebang, so we went there to try some of their dishes.

Quite a lot for three people!

Curry fish head (RM40) was nice and creamy, not very spicy. Though my mother said it did not have the proper fragrance of curry.

Char siew (RM23) was not as tender as I would have liked, but my parents both said it was fine. The sauce was a little too sweet for our liking, but otherwise it was good. It came with some pickled cucumbers on the side.

The tofu (RM18) was super soft and smooth! The sauce was normal, but the silkiness of the tofu made this dish very good.

A cafe within walking distance

In Meru, there is a grocery store cum cafe in a row of shop lots just beside our apartment. We had gone there before, but never tried the food.

The morning before we drove to KL, we decided to give this cafe's breakfast a try.

There was a huge selection of nasi lemak dishes on the menu, but the cashier/barista told us that they only had ayam goreng berempah. Too early, maybe? It was 8am+, and they open the whole day from 7am till night (11pm I think).

The fried chicken was crispy, and the sambal was not bad. Plain nasi lemak costs RM4.90, and adding the chicken costs an extra RM4.90.

The stars were the drinks, though.

matcha latte, RM6.90

cappucino, RM8.90

We enjoyed both drinks. The matcha latte was very creamy. The cappucino was good too, according to my mother (I tried it, but since I'm not a fan of coffee, I didn't like it). When we ordered, the barista asked whether we wanted sugar in the cappucino, and we said a little (he didn't ask about the matcha). The drinks arrived with a packet of sugar on the side, but we didn't need them; the level of sweetness was just nice!

The name of the shop is MS Grocer & Caffé. Classy enough to use an Italian word...I don't think there were any Italian dishes on the food menu, though. :P