restaurants – Page 2 – HEALTH FREAK MOMMY

RMCO Day 52 ~ Friday, 31 July 2020

Today is Hari Raya Haji holiday and we had lunch at Restaurant Saikee @ Lorong Syed Putra Kiri.

Sweet and sour pork (Gu Lou Yoke), spinach in superior soup with homemade fish paste (my favorite!), steamed 3-variety eggs, fried Seabass with fermented black bean and steamed chicken with minced garlic and scallions.

The last time we dined at this restaurant was 7 months ago, in December 2019 with my parents. Today we were seated at the same table as we did on that fateful evening in December 2019. We even ordered the same dishes as that evening. Part way through having our dinner that fateful evening, hubs received a call from my elder brother who was driving from Singapore to KL. My brother had met with an accident and an ambulance was called to bring the entire family to the hospital in Seremban. We lost our appetite after that call, rushed off our dinner to rush home, hubs showered and rushed to the hospital in Seremban with my younger brother. What an eventful evening it was for us and thank God my brother and his 3 small kids were unharmed, except for my sil who had a cut on her forehead.

After lunch at Saikee, hubs bought these mini tartlets from Encore Patisserie for dessert:

After I’d posted the photo of these tartlets on Facebook, some of my friends thought that they were baked by our baking queen as she’d baked similar tarts recently😁. These super tiny tartlets cost a whopping RM5 each (which is just 2 tiny mouthfuls) and the bigger normal size tarts cost RM10 each!

Dinner was chicken bolognese and lemang from hubby’s shop:

This is my kind of holiday, a day that I don’t have to clean up after the in-house chef cooks. I really need many, many days like this to rest and heal my painful right wrist and Carpal Tunnel Syndrome right hand! No amount of physiotherapy or deep heat rubbing would help if my poor right hand keeps exerting itself through cleaning, mopping (culprit!), washing bathrooms (holding the toilet brush is another culprit!) and carrying heavy pails of laundry 😢. Any activity that requires turning my wrist is an agony. And if only there’s someone to open the door for me, life would be just a little sweeter for me. I’m sure those who suffer the same fate as me would know the pain when turning the darn door knob — the electric shock that sparks from the wrist up to the arm!! ☠️

No. of times viewed = 44

RMCO Day 40 ~ Sunday, 19 July 2020

Lunch today was at Seoul Korea, a Korean restaurant run by a Korean couple. Our family consisting a persnickety foodie and two older girls who are K-pop fans and K-food lovers and including moi think that Seoul Korea serve the BEST Korean food. We’d tried almost a dozen Korean restaurants but none compares to Seoul Korea. Food is priced reasonably and the waiting staff keep replenishing your appetizer plates with really delicious Banchan (side dishes). We’ve all been missing the food here ever since the owners went back to Korea for a couple of months late last year. Then we were hit by the pandemic and lockdown and finally after more than half a year we’re able to dine in here again.

Fortunately we were at the restaurant early as by the time we left at 1 p.m, the steps on the stairs leading to the first floor restaurant were lined up with fans waiting patiently for their turn for a table. This is one restaurant that I don’t mind going to every weekend.

The girls love the food so much that they even requested that all leftover food, including the Banchan, be tapau back so that they could bring the leftovers to school the next day.

Sherilyn had to ask for a pair of scissors to cut up her food as she’s still finding it hard to chew with braces on. She’s currently in her second week on braces and has cuts and ulcers all over her inner mouth. This is the sole reason why I didn’t want braces to fix my snaggletooth when I was a teen – I have really low pain threshold.

After lunch, we segued into Family Mart to have Sofuto, just because Family Mart released a new Sofuto flavor recently – French Crème Brûlée Sofuto!

I still prefer Belgium dark chocolate Sofuto but this flavor is not available at our neighborhood’s outlet, bummer! So we settled for Matcha, which is also a delight. I shared it with Cass.

We’re never too full for a Sofuto treat. I was so stuffed after a heavy lunch with ice-cream that I gave dinner a miss.

Leftover Korean rice and kimchi for Cass’ lunch box the next day:

No. of times viewed = 42

RMCO Day 12 ~ Sunday, 21 June 2020 (Father’s Day)

Hubs has been swamped with work for the past two weeks on a project. He’s providing consultancy service to a client to set up a kitchen for a bistro. As the client needs the kitchen to be built in express speed so that it can be ready for the bistro to start business pronto, hubs has to camp at the client’s site, literally. Everyday, he leaves the house for his office very early to settle his catering and arrangements for the food boxes for delivery before rushing to the client’s bistro. He doesn’t come back until way past 10 p.m. We try to have a short conversation everyday to update each other on what we’ve been up to. I communicate via Whatsapp with him most of the time, mostly on customers’ orders as I’m now helping him in his bento box delivery orders while he concentrates on his client’s bistro. So to those of you who’ve been getting super slow replies from him on your orders (or sometimes he may even overlook your messages), my apologies 🙏 You can Whatsapp me instead at 019-266 4297 if you need a quicker reply pertaining to order enquiries 😄

As part of the SOP of the bistro, all staff and workers must undergo a Covid-19 swab test, including hubs. So he did his very first swab test early last week and thank God, the result came back as negative! 😁

The bistro opened its doors to customers on Friday and today hubs brought us to the bistro – Sky Pe Cafe to celebrate Father’s Day.

These are the dishes that we ordered. The photos are taken from the cafe’s website as the lighting inside the bistro is a little dim and not ideal for producing good quality photos taken with my cheap phone.

Grilled salmon fillet with lemon dressing:

Mushroom soup with crispy garlic toast:

Fried chicken wings:

Beef burger with curly fries

Mee Siam:

Seafood pasta:

Australia grass-fed ribeye steak:

Everyone thoroughly enjoyed the food, comprising Western and local cuisines which are priced pretty reasonably.

Patrons’ temperatures are scanned by a facial recognition thermometer before they go through a Bacteriostatic Atomization Intelligent Door where disinfectant mist will be sprayed all over their bodies! And hands must be sanitized too, of course.

Sky Pe Cafe
🖲 No.15, Jalan PJS 8/10, Dataran Mentari, 46150 Subang Jaya
☎️ 012-236 6933
⏱ RMCO operating hours ：11.30am – 10pm

Facebook page and website are still a work-in-progress as this is a new bistro.

I’d like to wish all the fathers out there a very happy Father’s Day, especially to my beloved papa whom I can’t be with him together this year to celebrate this special occasion together. But we had a great time chatting via Whatsapp video call in the evening💖

No. of times viewed = 31

Green View Restaurant and Durian Man @ SS2, Petaling Jaya

Youngest SIL treated everyone (immediate family members, aunts, uncles and cousins from the Yaps) to a lavish dinner of sang har (fresh huge prawns) and crabs at Green View Restaurant @ SS2 Petaling Jaya last Saturday (2 November 2019) before her return to Hawaii on Tuesday after a 2-week holiday here. The last time she came back to Malaysia was 6 years ago and most of the relatives haven’t seen her since. And the last time the girls and I saw her was in Hong Kong 3 years ago. We’re not sure when we’ll see her again and in which country.

I’ll let the pix do the talking. To lovers of crabs and prawns, sorry if I made you drool and sent you on a seafood frenzy 😜

We ordered 6 huge prawns and specifically told the captain to divide the dish into two plates with more noodles on each plate. But when the bill came, it showed double entry of this dish. The silai-ness in me (I was the one who checked the bill), prompted me to query the captain; he double checked and realized that they billed us double! RM512 extra charged to us!

One of the best sang har meen in KL – big fresh prawns in crispy fried noodles drenched in insanely moreish egg sauce.

Suckling pig and deep fried pumpkin with curry leaves. The fried pumpkin is addictive. ‘Healthier’ than fries and tastes so good!

Yin Yang Soon Hock fish ~ half steamed and half fried. One is definitely not enough for the 13 of us.

Kam Heong Lala.

Another show-stopper ~ crabs. We ordered crabs cooked in 2 different styles: Lai Yau (milk and butter) and sweet and sour.

The waiting staff at our table helped us to break the crab shells. He wrapped each claw and leg with clean disposable plastic bag and patiently stood at the side table for over 20 minutes hammering the shells for us.

Deep fried buns to be dunked into the zangy tangy sweet and sour sauce. One plate was definitely not enough and hubs eventually ordered another plate and another!

Salted fish fried rice.

This silai’s eyes popped out when she saw RM1,024.14 for the Sang Har Meen. I was certain there was a double entry but hubs said “it’s this price la. It’s that expensive as the prawns are so huge” but the silai insisted that the Captain double checks the bill. And the Captain came back apologizing profusely for double charging us RM500+!

Wrongly printed bill:

Correct bill:

Green View Restaurant
8, Jalan 19/3,
Petaling Jaya, Selangor
Tel: +60 3-7954 9263

After a hearty dinner with lots of photography (as usual), SIL said that she wanted to eat durians ~ one last round before she flies back to Hawaii. So off we went to the durian street on Jalan SS2, to Durian Man restaurant for her to get durian takeaway for her breakfast, lunch and dinner tomorrow ☺️

Durian Man is the biggest durian restaurant in Malaysia, opened in August 2019. Durian lovers get to savour almost all the durian species here, which includes Musang King, Black Thorn, Raja Kunyit, Red Prawn, D24 and more in a modern and comfortable setting. For those who intend to bring durian back to their country, Durian Man provides service to vacuum pack and seal the fruit neatly without emitting an iota of smell.

Durian Man
Lot 7680, Jalan SS2/24
Petaling Jaya, Malaysia
Call 012-234 5619

No. of times viewed = 379

Botanica + Co @ Vertical Podium, Bangsar South

I just realized that tomorrow is Sunday and I still haven’t posted food photos that we took last Sunday when we were at Bangsar South (AGAIN!) for lunch. I have a hunch that the hubs will be going there again for lunch tomorrow, or even for dinner tonight! The bite-list at Bangsar South is replete with novelty cuisines, from The Sphere to the Vertical Podium. We’ve still not tried so many restaurants there yet.

Back to last Sunday’s lunch! This time we tried Botanica + Co, a restaurant inspired by the botanics. The feeling of dining outdoor amidst lush greenery is captured inside the restaurant as you dine amidst a greenhouse-themed interior.

Photo credit – EatDrinkKL

Pizzas are a cornerstone here and my pizza devotee girls ordered a Maui pizza.

No prize for guessing who ordered this refreshing salad with lemongrass chook.

Big breakfast set.

Sherilyn ordered this Mexican wrap and she didn’t quite like it. She made something similar recently and it tasted way better than this, ahem! And her tortillas were made from scratch, as with her guacamole and salsa. That girl certainly has good taste (thanks to the foodie hubs who brings us on a food hunt every weekend ), is aesthetic savvy and a perfectionist too when it comes to cooking, baking and dancing.

The Pasembur features crunchy deep fried prawn and vegetables fritters (with generous amounts of vegetables) against refreshing raw strips of yam bean, cucumber and bean sprouts as well as hard boiled eggs, potatoes and tofu strips. I love the peanut sauce that goes with this Indian rojak. All the ingredients work together harmoniously to deliver a gastronomic delight. This is definitely an item that I’ll order again when I dine at this restaurant again.

Grilled chicken, which has a hint of cumin and middle East spices. It tastes very much like the grilled chicken thighs that I usually cook for the girls 😉

Botanica + Co’s menu is a passport to cross-border cuisine-hopping, ranging from the Middle East mezze of textured hummus, spicy muhammara & creamy baba ganoush with house-baked flatbread to the American hot Reuben sandwich with pastrami, salami, melted Swiss cheese, BBQ sauce & an extra flourish of kimchi. Portions are constructed for sharing if you’re not an extremely big eater. Our family of 6 shared everything you see here and portions were just right for us, though we had to doggy bag the Pasembur home for dinner.

Overall the food that we ordered was average. I love the Pasembur though. The menu is quite extensive and the next time we visit again, we’ll try Sam’s Crab & Crayfish Laksa, which, from my online research, has garnered positive reviews. Botanica + Co is a great place for Insta-worthy photos to boast, good place to people watch and for photography as lighting is amazing. I love restaurants with natural lights.

Botanica & Co
G5 Podium, The Vertical,
Bangsar South City,
No. 8 Jalan Kerinchi,
59200 Kuala Lumpur.
Tel: 016-965 6422

Business hours:
Mon to Thurs: 11.30am – 10pm
Friday & Eve of Public Holiday: 11.30am – 12am
Sat: 9.30am – 12am
Sun & Public Holidays: 9.30am – 10pm

No. of times viewed = 106

Rasa Viet By Xin Chao Viet Nam @ The Sphere, Bangsar South

The Sphere is now the foodie hubby’s favorite place to hangout on weekends and public holidays. He likes this place as finding a place to park is a breeze and traffic is not crazy unlike at Mid Valley Megamall or in the heart of KL. Each time we visit, a new restaurant pops out. When we visited on Sunday, 15 Sept 2019, we noticed a quaint and colorful Vietnamese restaurant and hubs was raring to try it.

Rasa Viet by Xin Chao Viet Nam was opened just two days earlier on 13 Sept 2019. Service was excellent and if you’re new to eating Viet food, the staff will explain to you how to savor the dishes. Food was scrumptious and served the authentic Viet way.

First dish that arrived was chicken cabbage salad, which came complimentary on a time-limited basis ~ condition was we have to Like the restaurant’s page on Facebook and order a minimum of 2 dishes. We received two plates of salad on the house as we ordered more than 4 dishes. The salad is to be put on top of the prawn cracker before you savor it. This dish is extremely appetizing and will surely explode your taste buds to life before you devour on other exciting dishes!

Chicken on skewers made from fragrant lemongrass stalks.

Chicken and prawn summer roll, served with a special peanut sauce dipping.

Sizzling pancake, eaten with rice paper. The chef/owner came over to our table and personally rolled the pancake with the rice paper before serving it to us while another staff explained to us how to prepare the rice paper by dipping it briefly into water to soften it and the correct way of savoring this dish.

The basil and mint leaves rolled together with the crispy pancake, crisp juicy lettuce and rice paper and dipped with a house-made special spicy sauce give this roll a flavorful minty aroma in what proves to be an addictively good compilation of intense flavors.

Classic beef pho, Special beef pho, tendon beef pho and beef meatballs. The beef was cooked to a tee in a very flavorful broth. Each mouthful offers so much euphoria that I had to stop the foodie hubs from saying ‘hhhhhmmmm, so yummy!” 😁

Chicken liver pate, tuna and fried egg Bánh mì on super crispy baguette.

Ice-blended Viet coffee

Viet caramel pudding ~ this pudding is to die for! If you’re a fan of santan-ish desserts, the taste and texture of this pudding will surely stimulate the papillae in your mouth and make you crave for more. It’s complimentary from the chef too. The pudding has a hint of aromatic coconut cream (santan) and gula Melaka and super creamy. Alycia liked it so much that she asked her dad to takeaway four puddings for enjoyment at home later in the evening!

Fried cempedak with coconut ice-cream and fried sweet potato with coconut ice-cream are another to die-for desserts. They are filled with all manner of yumminess and a stellar combination of strong flavors and texture (love the crunch of the batter on the fried stuff). If you’ve not tried cempedak and sweet potato and coconut together before, you’re in for a real treat! Sinful but totally worth it. You can work out later 😉

This meal definitely put everyone in a good good mood! I’m very sure the foodie hubs will visit this place again soon. They have another branch at Solaris Dutamas.

Rasa Viet by Xin Chao Vietnam
Unit no. 3-GA, Level Ground
The Sphere, Bangsar South City
No. 8 Jalan Kerinchi, KL
Tel: 03-2242 1880

No. of times viewed = 810

Random Updates

The littlest one is back to her usual self finally and we’ve started to have our nightly before bedtime light-hearted chats on the bed once again. But as with most cuddly toddlers who turn into tweens and teenagers, she still greets any public display of warmth with revulsion and sullenness. Grown children do not want to be the object of all our affection or the main repository for all our dreams. I totally understand it and I’d gone through this phase once when I was a teenager. How I miss those days when my baby girl still loved her Telly Tubbies, High 5 and My Little Pony; those super UHU glue days when we would even hold hands when we were in the car 😥

Anyway, onwards and upwards! On the bright side, my baby girl is growing up. Today she told me that her teacher has chosen her and a few other classmates to take part in an inter-school drawing and painting competition. Cass is pretty good with her hands. She’s good in drawing, constructing things, putting together gadgets, self-assemble furniture, jigsaw puzzles and LEGO when I would freak out. She’s just like her dad. She’s so happy that she gets to take part in this art competition and can’t wait to start on it.

Here are the photos of our late dinner or rather supper last Sunday on 8 September 2019. The next day was a public holiday.

I can’t even think of the vaguest connection between these food pix and how Cass has morphed and remorphed, so I’m not even going to try. So jumping right into it – after rounding the roads of KL and PJ and don’t have any idea on what to eat, hubs drove to Green View Restaurant, PJ to dig into crabs and jumbo prawns. As it was already 9 p.m., I told him to go easy on the dishes. I don’t normally eat after 8 p.m. So we only had 4 main dishes, juices and dessert.

Ice Plant served with sesame dressing.

Fresh prawn noodles

Sweet and sour crabs with fried mantou

Longan herbal jelly

There was also an individual bowl of crab meat sharks fins broth that hubs ordered for himself which I didn’t snap the photo.

Food was superb and by the time we finished our dinner, it was already close to 10:30 p.m.

No. of times viewed = 17

Dealing With A Difficult Tween

I’ve been feeling a tad melancholic since the start of school on Monday. On the first day of school, my 11-year old found it extremely hard to wake up for school. And when she woke up after much resistance and kicking, she morphed into a totally different person… like someone has just cast a spell on her. Errr, it’s still the 7th month in the Chinese calendar 👻🥶

The moment she got up, she was very moody and extremely stroppy. Suddenly, everything that I said to her wasn’t well received by her. Everything I did and said were wrong in her world. Suddenly she became so volatile and disconnected from me that she’s a totally different person. It’s a shock to me as my previously sweet little baby girl starts tantrumming and hating me! Hate is such a strong word but this best describes her behavior towards me.

Who is this girl?!

What did I do wrong?!

This went on for two days and today is the third day and she’s still behaving coldly towards me. It could be the lack of sleep that’s affecting her growing body and mind. She’s been waking up at 9 – 10am everyday for the past one week during the school holidays and forcing her to get out of her comfy bed at 5:30 a.m. can be ruffling this angry bird’s feathers. Ideally kids need to get 9 hours of sleep but I’ll be happy if she can chalk up at least 7.5 hours. Sleeping early is another issue that I am currently battling with my Gen Z girls. For those of you with Gen Z tween and teens, you’ll know what I mean.

Another factor is at her age, this girl is seeking to find more independence. She’s a tad more sheltered and controlled than her two sisters when they were her age because of her health issue. Until the repeat MRI is carried out (too long a wait at HKL), we are now waiting to know anxiously what’s going on in her urinary tract that’s causing the issue. Because she feels that her wings are clipped and she can’t fly like her peers who are all like birds who have just learnt to fly, she feels that life is unfair to her and she’s left behind in the baby nest alone.

I’ve read that the more I insist on controlling all her choices, I am inviting rebellion, or worse. If I can find appropriate ways to give her independence, she won’t have to rebel against me to start standing on her own two feet. Of course she’ll make mistakes. That’s how humans learn. And of course she isn’t ready to make all her decisions. I’m still the parent. Deciding how much to weigh in is the hardest part of this parenting dance, especially so when I am dealing with a tween who is facing not only wacky hormones flooding her body but also with an undiagnosed condition that may require another surgery that’s causing the both of us a lot of anxiousness. It’s been a long and frustruating 11 years for the both of us.

Feeling down, I had brunch alone today after dropping Sherilyn in school. Hubs was busy at work. At the shop, my eyes were bigger than my tummy ~ I over-ordered and had to doggy-bag some of the food home 😬

Two portions of spinach, 3 types of balls, 1 lobak, 1 stuffed bitter gourd, 1 stuffed brinjal and a bowl of pumpkin barley sago tong sui. This shop uses premium Sanbanto pork in their fish paste. Even their pork balls are from Sanbanto.

It’s an achievement that I could eat so much food for brunch! I was so stuffed to the gills that I felt like my denim skirt was going to burst. I am a pathetically small eater, thus I always find someone to eat with me to share my food. I had to tapau the stuffed brinjal and lobak home. I couldn’t finish the pumpkin tong sui.

I love the yong tau fu from Taman Desa Yong Tau Fu & Dessert but the bill can be a tad stressful on your budget if you, like me, get too excited and ambitious and stack the tray mountain high with all the stuffed items, balls, vegetables, etc. My brunch today was RM18 plus RM1.50 parking ~ budget exceeded for lunch but I felt some of the blues melt away as I tucked into the delish food and yummy tong sui. Food indeed has some destressing effect!

Exactly my sentiments!! A slow death with doses of cortisol injected into the body everyday 😩

No. of times viewed = 55

HFM’s Breakfast

The clock is ticking away to the day that Maria, my beloved part-time helper of 7 years goes on a 3-month maternity leave ~ only two more days with us 😭

Though Maria can’t do much strenuous work lately, we still love having her around in the evening to help us wash the dishes and do other light chores. We treat her like she’s one of the family members and our 3 girls adore her… more than they adore me! But that’s OK and I don’t get jealous. Maria gives me a sense of comfort whenever she’s around. I can just leave the house to her to clean up and go out and I will surely come home to a spic and span and clean house, every single time. I hope she’ll keep her promise and return to work for us in October 🙏

My breakfast for the last few days ☺️

Sherilyn’s homemade pie crust with papa’s homemade pandan kaya. So yummeh!!

Tucker’s gourmet caramelized onion crackers with papa’s homemade pandan kaya and a wedge of Mozarella cheese. I always eat some protein with my carbs to slow down the release of insulin / spike in blood sugar.

Tucker’s gourmet crackers are made from non-GMO ingredients and yeast-free. They’re pretty low in carbs too. Goes well with Western soups, curries, jams and even good on its own.

And my mid-morning breakkie with the hubs yesterday:

One of the best pork noodles in KL can be found at Sun Sea kopitiam at OUG, where the morning market is. The coffee shop is kind of unkempt and run down. It’s very stuffy and hot to sit inside, so we sat outside and still had to sweat it out to enjoy our bowl of piping hot pork noodles.

What’s so special about the pork noodles is the broth – it’s infused with the umami sweetness of seafood. We heard that the seller adds seafood into the broth, to add depth and flavors into it. Outside the coffee shop, you’ll see foreign workers peeling tons of prawns and squids.

Restoran Sun Sea OUG Pork Noodles
(Beside OUG morning wet market)
Jalan Hujan Rahmat,
Taman Overseas Union Garden (OUG),
58200 Kuala Lumpur.

No. of times viewed = 51

J’s Gate Dining and The Tokyo Restaurant @ Isetan, Lot 10

We spent half our day at Lot 10 on the first day of Hari Raya on 5 June 2019. My bon viveur hubs has been wanting to bring us to J’s Gate Dining @ Isetan, Lot 10 to savor the best of authentic Japanese cuisine since their launch early last year but only has the time to do so today. All his staff are on leave and his kitchen will be closed for a few days before they all work on full steam again next week.

J’s Gate Dining is the Japanese food lover’s one-stop haven to enjoy 17 of Japan’s best authentic cuisines featuring superior Japanese ingredients and hospitality. Depending on what your liking and cravings are, you can pick any of the outlets to appease your appetite.

With so many outlets to choose from, we were really spoilt for choices and it was pretty hard to settle on one or two. Finally my gourmand hubs settled for Umai Sushikan (for sushi and tempura) and Osaka Kitchen (for teppanyaki).

Umai Sushikan
Umai means ‘’delicious’’ in Japanese and sushikan is sushi. Only fresh ingredients handpicked by the team from the fish market (air-flown from Japan) are used. The sushi and fish that we had were indeed very fresh and these don’t come cheap either! The bill came up to over RM300 for only 6 dishes that came in small portions!

Below: Grilled premium cod fish flown in from Japan and this piece of cod the size of half my palm (or maybe smaller) costs almost a hundred Ringgit! So expensive that I ate the super sour pickled spring onion 🤣

This is one restaurant that we’ll probably only try once. It’ll cost the hubs an arm and a leg to feed our 3 hungry piranhas (with a bottomless pit) till they’re well fed and satiated at this restaurant. Even with two teppanyaki sets ordered from Osaka Kitchen, the girls were still hungry!

Osaka Kitchen
Osaka Kitchen is known for their popular signature Osaka dishes, including okonomiyaki and yakisoba which features food cooked on an iron griddle in front of diners. The ingredients are also sourced from Japan, including the finest quality wagyu beef.

Osaka Kitchen is situated just opposite Umai Sushikan. For orders above RM200, patrons at Umai Sushikan are allowed to order food from other outlets. Thus, we ordered a beef teppan set and a pork teppan set. Each set comes with a meat, stir-fried pea sprouts, salad, appetizers, grilled avocado with cheese and ice-cream (matcha and yuzu flavors). The bill at Osaka Kitchen is over RM200.

After lunch we segued into The Tokyo Restaurant for their signature cheese cakes. Hubs has been wanting to try the much raved about “best burnt cheesecake in Malaysia” (it seems) available at Tokyo Restaurant and finally he has the time today. And indeed, one spoonful of this super smooth and creamy, oh-so cheesy cake sent me to cake paradise! If not for the price, I would have sent in another order for the Classic Burnt Cheesecake and Matcha Cheesecake.

The original famous Classic Burnt Cheesecake @ RM 20 is Tokyo Kitchen’s signature 6th Avenue Cheesecake. The cake is served with a scoop of silky smooth whipped cream.

The Yuri/Macha Cheesecake @ RM21 is the bomb for matcha lovers. It’s over-the-top delicious, like heaven in my mouth!! Both Sherilyn and I are matcha lovers and couldn’t get enough of it. The cake is made with artisan 100% stone-ground aromatic macha powder sourced from Niko Neko, the matcha powder specialist.

Gateau Chocolate cake @ RM18 is rich, very chocolaty and surprisingly not cloy and sweet. Very nice!

Classic Tiramisu @ RM18 looks perfectly executed and tastes just as perfect as the other cakes.

The next time the hubs brings us to Lot 10 again, I think I’ll skip the main course and jump right into cakes at Tokyo Restaurant. I’m willing to sacrifice gaining a pound or two for these killer cakes and then go on a diet and workout extra hard for the next one week just to get my cake fix!

The Macha Latte is one of the best I’ve tasted besides the one we tried at Sunbather Coffee recently ~ the milk to macha ratio is spot on, I don’t get the heart palpitation and tea drunkenness that I usually do after scarfing down half a cup of it and it’s not sweet. Love it to the max!

I now know what cake I want for my next birthday 😊 😋 Thank you darling. I know you secretly read my blog posts 😉

No. of times viewed = 503

Sunbather Coffee @The Sphere, Bangsar South City

After our sumptuous lunch at The Farm Foodcraft @ The Sphere, we segued into Sunbather Coffee, located on the upper ground floor.

Sunbather Coffee’s menu highlights a worthy list of Instagrammable dishes, from impressive pocket sandwiches, Japanese-inspired rice bowls, delectable cake rolls, comforting pastas, irresistible house-made ice-creams, beautiful art-topped latte, specialty drinks and much more.

The ice cream served here is prepared in small batches to give you different flavours, some with a Japanese slant

Specializing in Western-influenced Japanese cuisine and third wave coffee, Sunbather Coffee opened its doors at The Sphere in December 2018. The cafe was packed to the brim with mostly youths when we were there on a Sunday. We only ordered desserts, coffee and fancy beverages for the girls as we’d just had a heavy lunch but the pretty pocket sandwiches (which I initially thought were cakes) made me drool! The pocket sandwiches in dark rye bread will be a must-order item the next time we patronize the cafe.

For a light lunch, opt for the 'ajitsuke tamago' sandwich made with dark rye bread
Photo credit: The Malay Mail

Photo credit: EatDrinkKL

My favorite Sunbather temptation is the Affogato with Madagascar vanilla ice-cream tinged with blue pea flower.

The iced matcha latte with Hojicha Kanten is not overly sweet and with just the right ratio of milk to matcha which has a strong aroma of premium green tea. I loved it! Hubs ordered Osmanthus latte which has a pleasant and mild sweetness of Osmanthus in each sip.

Sunbather’s Black Forest Roll Cake – very rich and chocolaty.

The Raindrop Anmitsu is of course for our Gen Z girls – fanciful, colorful and replete of their favorite chewies – jelly, mochi, red bean and watermelon balls. I find it a tad sweet for my palate though. Two of the mochi balls were not thoroughly cooked and the cafe supervisor gave us a RM1.80 discount off the bill.

There’s still so much more exciting items to try at Sunbather, sufficient for potentially half a dozen repeat visits and I am sure the girls will be more pleased than I am 😋

Sunbather is not only for the younger Generation. Even older people like myself get perky and happy at the sight of their colorful playful drinks, impressive Yoshoku (Western-influenced Japanese food) meals and desserts with unique combinations.

Sunbather Coffee
UG-12, Upper Ground, The Sphere, 8, Jalan Kerinchi, Bangsar South,
59200 Kuala Lumpur.

No. of times viewed = 408

The Farm Foodcraft @ The Sphere, Bangsar South City

Today the hubs decided to bring us to try something new for lunch. So to Bangsar South we went! We were impressed that within a short span of one year, so many eateries have opened up at The Sphere. We were there for the first time over a year ago and The Sphere was still pretty much empty with only a few eateries. The lifestyle hub now features about 24 restaurants as of end May 2019 and does not only stop at local cuisine but a host of international options as well. The Sphere is split into four levels with its anchor tenant, Aeon MaxValu Prime Super-market, covering a large section of the lower ground, acompanied by Miniso, Juice Lab and SOG Eyewear.

After a 15-20 minute walk around The Sphere, deciding on which restaurant to try, hubs finally settled on a new eatery ~ The Farm Foodcraft, which we later found out from the staff that it opened its doors just 4 days earlier. No wonder the menu was still pretty limited. Hubs ordered almost all the main courses in the menu and we left feeling totally satisfied with our meal! We were told by the staff that more exciting items to the menu is under way.

Inquisitive me also found out from the staff later that the herbs and some of the vegetables that we had in our salad were harvested in the restaurant’s own urban farming lab within the compound of the restaurant. What they can’t grow, they source from the local farmers and vendors. There’s no middleman, no long drives to a remote farm for organic produce. Their ingredients get to the kitchen the same day they’re harvested.

Happy Harvest salad and Green Supreme juice for me. The salad serving is pretty huge and is enough for our family of six.

Ox tail soup and truffle mushroom soup, both served with a crispy thinly sliced of buttered toast.

The main course items on the menu are fusion inspired and combines the best of both Asian and Western worlds. The creamy mushroom pan mee with an assortment of different mushrooms (with sambal as condiment) was superb and curry beef lasagna comes with a bowl of mildly spicy aromatic curry.

East Meets West curry noodles is a flavorful curried broth with noodles and seafood. It’s spiciness level is so mild that I can stomach it very well. I can’t take the typical fiery Malaysian curries but this spiciness level is perfect for me!

Everyone’s favorite dish here – Nasi Kerabu with very aromatic herbs and spices in every mouthful of rice.

Kuih Gulung is a marriage of Malay and Western flavors where the traditional Kuih Ketayap is metamorphosed into a whole new image, adorned with ice-cream and caramel cage to give it a restauranty edge. The ultimate utopia was that moment when I took the first bite ~ the familiar fragrant dessicated coconut cooked in palm sugar nestled within the soft pandan kuih, oozing out as I popped the spoonful of kuih into my mouth, heaven! One mouthful is definitely not enough. I can actually chomp down the entire kuih by myself and not share it with anyone! The girls can take the ice-cream and spun sugar, not the kuih! This has to be one of the yummiest desserts I’ve ever tasted.

It’s not easy to please my bon viveur hubs and he’s pretty happy with the food, service and ambience. We’ll definitely return again; this time to try their new dishes. We’ll order the Nasi Kerabu and Kuih Gulung again for sure.

After our meal here, we segued into Sunbather Coffee for desserts! That’ll be in another post.

Level Ground, The Sphere, Bangsar South City
59200 Kuala Lumpur.
Tel: 03-2242 0964
Hours 10:00 AM – 10:00 PM

No. of times viewed = 3271

Sunday Lunch at Stone Nine by Jiro Shabu @ Old Klang Road, KL

We had a sumptuous lunch of Japanese hot pot at the newly opened Stone Nine by Jiro Shabu today. Upon entering the restaurant, we were awed by the awesome interior decor. The center piece of oranges in a steamy pool was breathtaking. The restaurant covered in shades of wood exudes a sense of tranquility while the dining utensils were elegant.

As expected, the price tags are hefty. Do expect to spend a minimum of RM40 onwards per person (depending on what item you choose from the menu), with the cheapest beverage (Green Tea) priced at Rm 5 (but it’s refillable). The dining experience is exclusive and we enjoyed our lunch so much that I have already requested for the hubs to bring us here again on Thursday for my birthday! Alycia was so disappointed that she was left out in today’s lunch as she has a 3-day camp in school, which only ends tomorrow.

Everyone gets to savor his/her own personal hotpot and the ingredients are impressively fresh. You can choose from a variety of different flavored soups from chicken to winter melon, miso, spicy miso, seaweed, tom yum and much more.

When the raw meat arrived, we were again awed by the impeccable presentation and quality. The premium New Zealand Scotch fillet was both top notch in quality and the presentation was superb.

Hubs ordered a plate of Iberico pork that’s fed with acorn and the meat tastes delicate and superb.

We ordered 3 pots of soups (chicken, winter melon and spicy miso). Each pot costs RM6.

Plenty of choices for toothsome dipping sauce and condiments to go with the meat.

Handmade pork balls with cheese within and house-made fish paste.

Sea grouper slices

Watermelon and lime juice, on the house..

The damage was RM317.45. Pretty expensive for a lunch but worth the price as the ingredients were of good quality and fresh. As the portion of the food was pretty small, we were not overly stuffed. In fact, I wasn’t exactly full after lunch 😬

The food passed my very sensitive throat test too, i.e. NO unquenchable thirst after lunch, though I’d guzzled down a lot of soup and yummy dipping sauces.

Address:
Stone Nine by Jiro Shabu
C-G-1, Southbank Residence.
No 179, Jalan Kelang Lama
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Thus, we could still have a very meaty and heavy meal of Ba Kut Teh for dinner! And walloped everything clean!

Have a great week ahead all and sundry! It’s no holiday for me though it’s the school holidays. Tomorrow I have to wake up at 6 a.m. for school run! 😩

No. of times viewed = 2811

Helloooo!

Hey everyone, HFM is back! Sorry for the lack of updates. I haven’t been out of town but have been hibernating at home, dishing out not dishes but close to 40 articles for my online boss. That’s an average of between six to eight articles a day. This marathon of assignments reminds me of the good old days of 2007 – 2009 when I had to write up to 20 articles in a day. I remember holding a newborn baby C with my left hand whilst she suckled to her heart’s content and with only the fingers on my right hand, tapped the keys on the keyboard to finish 20 articles in one afternoon before the job offered expired! That’s how hard my job was and still is. My brain is often squeezed to the last drop of creative juice whenever I have to write over 20 posts on the same product, over and over again in a different style and flavor. But I have no complaints. It’s a blessing to still be able to earn some pocket money from what I love to do most.

Last night, we tasted the most expensive pizza in KL at Pizzeria Dihyang @ Yap Ah Shak Road! But we were a tad disappointed with everything from where we were seated to the pizzas. And the bill came to a whopping RM276.10 for only 2 medium sized pizzas, 2 glasses of Draught beer and 1 plate of salad!

Insalata Caprese salad with buffalo mozzarella cheese, flown in from Italy.

Salsicce Friarielli pizza – toppings of watercress and sausage and cheese flown in from Italy.

Verace Margherita pizza.

As we did not make any reservation, we had to be seated outside the restaurant. It was pretty uncomfortable in the current heat wave but our consolation was we could dine under the moonlight, though it was still very dim.

The damage! And we were not even satisfied with the quality and taste of the pizzas, albeit we’ve read rave reviews on how good these sticker shock pizzas each costs – a choking RM88 and RM86 respectively.

We were however consoled by the fact that the ingredients were flown in from Italy – the ingredients are either – DOP-certified San Marzano tomatoes, buffalo mozzarella DOP, and Parmigiano-Reggiano DOP. The long-fermented pizza dough that comprises a high-protein wheat flour mix are meant to fulfill regulations set by Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana.

As everyone was still hungry after our pizza dinner which was akin to our appetizer, hubs brought us for Japanese for supper and by the time we finished eating, it was already close to 11 p.m.!

We also had Chawan Mushi and Udon and dessert of Inside Scoop ice-creams but I was too drowsy and sleepy to snap the photos as it was already way past my bedtime! 😬

No. of times viewed = 39

Monday, 11 February 2019

After a week long Chinese New Year school holidays, the girls got back to school today. I had to cut short my morning exercise to fetch Sherilyn to school at 6:45 a.m. She’s representing her school in the athletics event and had to be in the stadium at 7:30 a.m. today.

This is my peace path. I jog on this path at my condo five times a week and find so much solace doing what I love in absolute peace on this path. It’s my me time. My quiet and quality time where I do a lot of soul-searching and trouble shooting on this path with no interruption from anyone.

Breakfast was with the hubs, just he and I, at Les Deux Garcons (LDG) Patisserie.

I had sourdough toast with mushrooms while he had sourdough toast with scrambled eggs. We have not had breakfast with each other, just the both of us for over 2 weeks as he has been busy with CNY events.

This French almond croissant is the BEST in the world. I don’t like croissants as they are often too greasy and too buttery, making me feel very cloy after eating. But the almond croissants from LDG are my exception. These are the only croissants that I will eat and truly enjoy. A bite into the flaky, airy and rich buttery layers of the croissant with crispy almond flakes on top will send you to pastry heaven. Each layer is thin and buttery but never overly greasy or heavy. With each bite, the paper thin layers and butter melts in your tongue, but it doesn’t leave you feeling cloy. It only makes you want more bites! Our friend whose wife is French commented that the croissants from LDG are the best she’s eaten and as good as the ones from Paris.

No. of times viewed = 90

Tuesday Eats

My breakkie this morning was something pretty healthy ~ high in protein, high in fiber and almost zilch carbs.

Leftover dinner from last night, eaten cold: organic long beans omelette, organic broccoli and red + yellow bell peppers. I only remembered to snap this photo half way through eating, thus what you see here is just the remains.

Did you know?
Broccoli is a nutrition powerhouse that supplies loads of nutrients for few calories. While there are no single ‘superfoods’ that can prevent cancer and certain risk factors for cancer are unrelated to diet, there is evidence that eating a healthy diet can reduce the risk of cancer. A key component of broccoli is a phytochemical known as sulforaphane, which also gives broccoli a slight bitter taste. Studies have shown that sulforaphane may play a part in enhancing detoxification of airborne toxins, such as cigarette smoke, and could help reduce the risk of certain cancers. Further research has suggested that broccoli may have anti-cancer properties and could reduce the risk of prostate cancer.

After a healthy breakfast, I had another high protein lunch of char siu, siu yoke and curry noodles with the hubs at Happy Garden.

One of the best siu yoke in the Klang Valley can be found at this kopitiam. Sorry I forgot to take note of the name of the kopitiam! This roast meat stall used to be stationed at Kedai Kopi & Makanan Mooi Mooi (corner lot) but the owner has since moved his stall to another kopitiam just next door. He is now occupying the whole kopitiam. The once dark and rundown shop is now refurbished and transformed into a brightly lit Chinese herbal wholesale business.

mooi mooi, roasted pork, siu yuk, happy garden, thai temple
Same owner (man in blue tee) in different kopitiam now.
Photo credit: Open Rice

Best in the world melt-in-the-mouth charcoal roasted siu yoke! And this is the owner’s claim to fame! No one else makes such crispy siu yoke that melts in the mouth as him.

But I can’t stomach so much fat and don’t fancy fatty food. After a few pieces of siew yoke and a few pieces of 99% lean char siu, I already felt cloy. The hubs with a bottomless pit chomped down 2 small plates of siu yoke, 1 small plate of char siu and 1 plate of rice. Patrons are free to help themselves to the gigantic pot of aromatic soup (chicken feet with radish) outside the shop.

Damage today for 2 small plates of siu yoke, 1 small plate of char siu, 1 plate of rice and takeaway char siu, siew yoke and roast chicken with 1 packet rice (enough for 2-3 pax) was RM113. Pretty reasonable eh? The bowl of curry noodles was from the kopitiam next door.

Address:
Jln Rukun 2, Taman Gembira (Happy Garden)
Old Klang Road
58200 Kuala Lumpur

No. of times viewed = 30