Fish Head Swimming with Chillies, IOI Boulevard

It's Fathers' Day and the family decided to chance it in this new restaurant in IOI Boulevard. This new restaurant is actually located in the lot where the previous restaurant was serving individual steamboats. Oh well, good riddance to steamboats :)

As in any typical Chinese restaurants, most dishes are ordered and to be eaten communal style. First up, claypot brinjal with minced meat with lotsa chillies

Second up, it's mapo tofu, which is surprisingly quite spicy compared to others out in the market.

 Then there is this frogs with dried chillies dish. Mind you that this is one of the spiciest dish I have ever eaten with frogs as the main ingredient. 

Last but not least, the main dish and highlight of the entire dinner: the fish head swimming in chillies! Behold the dish with the most chillies poured into in the world (well, I just made that up, but it has a nice ring to it).

The dish is basically is just made up with fish head, mee suah, corriader and tons of chillies. It's has an amazing taste of spiciness. 

We would recommend ordering this fish head dish to anyone, but this is something that one should at least try if eating in this restaurant. I'm sure you will reaching for more tea and tissues after eating this dish.

And yes, I forgot what is the name of the restaurant, hence the title of this post is as such :)  It's basically located in the same block of ChaTime, Geographer and the Pork Place.

Fierce Curry House, Bangsar Utama

It was a lazy Sunday afternoon and my wife and I decided to try something new for lunch. So, we decided to head over to this strangely named restaurant to try out their biryani with a twist.

Fierce Curry House is located in the Bangsar Utama, which is located near to the Bangsar LRT station. It's a small but longish shop which serves typical Indian cuisine. They have the always reliable banana leaf rice and they have their specialty of biryani rice.

So we ordered two biryanis, one chicken and the other mutton. They are served in this steel pots and the lid is covered with baked dough.

 We pry the dough apart and then you will finally see the biryani rice in it. It smells good and the chicken or mutton is cooked in the rice itself.
 

The biryani chicken cost MYR15 while the mutton one cost MYR18. Definitely not cheap but not that expensive at all. Do keep in mind that this restaurant is not air-conditioned but well ventilated (if you decide to stay for like 30 minutes).

At the same time, we also noticed many regulars in this restaurant, which indirectly says a lot of the quality of the food itself. If I'm not mistaken, they served more varieties of biryanis on Fridays (which may include fish biryani, etc).

Wife's homecooked Shepherd's Pie!

Another post on my wifey's cooking. It's still a wonder how easy my wife whipped up dishes for ourselves. I mean I personally take at least 20-30 minutes just to prepare two sandwiches and for that same amount of time, my wife can cooked the fillings and baked the entire pie!

The Food of Gwangjang Market of Seoul, South Korea

Korean pancakes at Gwangjang Market

If you want something really local and authentic when you are in Seoul, make your way to Gwangjang Market near Dongdaemun. If you go in the evening, around 6pm, you'll see many office folks after work sitting at the numerous food stalls eating, chatting and enjoying soju.

Almost all the stalls sell the same things. They usually have boiled pork, stewed pork knuckle, korean seaweed rolls, cold glass noodles and of course, sundae. Sundae (pronounced as soon-day) is a blood sausage made with pig's blood and rice. It is served cold. It tastes like blood with a little spice! The rice holds it all together but also makes it chewy and sticks to your throat when you swallow. I just managed to swallow one piece of it. Not for the faint hearted.

So for a real food adventure when you are in Seoul, don't forget to visit Gwangjang Market and try the food there. No one speaks English but you can get by with pointing and hand signs! Good luck!

The Original Korean Crispy Chicken, Dakgangjeong!

People lining up in front of what we think, is the most famous stall for Dakgangjeong in Sinpo Market, Incheon, Seoul! True to the Malaysian tradition, if a lot of people lining up, it must be good! So we also joined the queue. The reason for the queue is that the restaurant is tiny. Only about 20 people can fit inside at any one time. There were other stalls but none with any queue at all.


 









They only sell fried chicken wings here in two varieties, spicy and original. We ordered the orginal flavoured one which costs 9,000 won for a medium sized portion. There is no menu in English, so we kind of guessed which was what and what was which.

They serve the fried chicken wings slathered with sauce with some cabbage and thousand island sauce as well as some pickled radish. The sides are nothing to shout about but the fried chicken wings were heavenly! Served piping hot, still crispy and slathered in sweet/salty/flavourful sauce....How can anyone resist? If you like Four Finger Bon Chon from our past review, you'll love the original version found in Incheon, Sinpo Market!

So if you are in Seoul and have some time before your flight, take a train to DongIncheon  Station and find Sinpo Market for some sinful Dakgangjeong!

Nambawan Cafe, Sri Manja

A Thai colleague of mine used to ask me why does Malaysians go mad over pork dishes when they are overseas. She was relating an experience where her Malaysian friend would actually fly to Bangkok just to have pork burgers from McDonald's.

Well, other than the fact that most American franchise restaurants in Malaysia are halal (or at least non-pork served), burgers primarily taste better with beef. Well, that is until you taste Nambawan's pork burger.

Nambawan Cafe is situated in small and unassuming outlet in Sri Manja Square One (off Old Klang Road) and is a typical cafe that serves Western cuisines.  My wife and I usually frequents this place to get out pork burger fixes.

As usual, I will order my reliable pork burger. The patty is homemade yet it's filled with spice and damn-right juicy. You might be wondering how much will this burger cost? Well, it's MYR6.90 only! Imagine that!

As for my wife, she decided to go with that week's special of pulled pork sandwich and it only cost MYR9.90. Pulled pork sandwich is kinda rare in Malaysia, so this one of the few places you can actually get hold of one.

 

On the whole, the quality of the pork burgers is definitely much better than the ridiculously priced yet pathetic sized Ninja Joe burgers.

We would recommend this place to anyone who have pork burger cravings. It taste great and yet it's priced extremely affordable compared to roadside halal Ramly burgers (special double + additional stuffs).

Penang One Restaurant, Bandar Puteri Puchong

Here I go again, my third post for today. Must be whacked with something to be posting for the third time today. Anyway, let's move on.

Being someone who is born, bred and buttered in Klang Valley, I find it hard to comprehend the "greatness" of other states' delicacies. If you meet someone from Perak, they will almost definitely tell you that their food in their state is the best in Malaysia. Then your Malaccan friend will then say "Ain't so, Malacca's food is the best". And then your Penang friend will then stand up and said his/her state's food is the best. There will be endless debate comparing their state specialty with one another.

To solve this issue, one usually will have to visit the states to try out the food. That will be obviously time consuming. Well, there is an easier option now when it comes to Penang food with Penang One Restaurant in Bandar Puteri Puchong.

What sets this penang restaurant apart from the rest (eg: Little Penang Cafe, etc)? Well, they claimed that their food comes directly from the penang source itself on a daily basis. Yup, that's right. The food is made in Penang, packed and delivered to this restaurant every day.

For starters, my wife and I ordered the so called famous ais kacang from Swatow Lane New World Park.



Nothing fantastic with the ais kacang, so let's move on. I ordered the char kuay teow, which supposedly comes from the famous Kampung Jawa Pee Chuan’s recipe. Small and pathetic portion with three measly prawns in it.



While my wife ordered the Lebih Cecil's duck kuey teow thng (soup). The soup tasted ok, but then again, it's like any other clear-soup noodles one can get in food courts.



With those small portions, we decided to order another dish, which is the famoust lobak from Penang. Kinda forgot which part / shop is this from, but the dish is sadly disappointing. The tofu tasted different (better than the ones in Klang Valley lobak), but everything else pales in comparison.



On the whole, I would not recommend this place to anyone, but if you ever need to settle the debate with your Penang, Perak and Malaccan friends, here is a good place to start.