Food Adventures January to July 2017 - February

Prior to the two month sojourn around Wales, France and Sicily across August through to mid October, I had been a bit taken up with a project that took me away from the food and wine writing (and the songwriting and recording) but I then got a bit of a breather to try and reflect over where the Lengui and I had eaten over the previous couple of months (well, seven actually). So I figured rather than try to document them individually, better to just load them all into a single narrative and see how it looked. So this is a full-ish listing of where, when, and with whom we ate and drank over this period. Some are barely one liners, others have a bit more detail. Whatever, it made for a more than usually long read so it got broken down into months for ease of, er, digestion. Not sure if it will prove useful, but when taken in total it does represent quite a litany of gluttony. Phoooooooo....

Feb 1st Marco Polo Loh Sang with the House of Pork

This is a group who loves to eat the Pork in all its forms and glory. A great need was felt to ring in the Year of the Rooster with the Siew Yoke and Suckling Pig. And other porky delights. Chinese restaurants around New Year time traditionally see the quality dip due to staff going back to home towns. Didn't see it here. Whatever, the quality of the company and the booze will always compensate.

Inside Bonfire

Feb 2nd Soleil with UK Foodie Friends
Posted separately - click here to see>>

Feb 9th Bonfire Opening

The Chef daughter of one of Lenglui's Mah Johngg kaki opened this place. Is a kind of Australian theme with big meats and yabbie bugs and grills to the fore. Good tucker. The mashed potato gratin was magnificent. They charge corkage. Service and glassware is good. Can't remember being stunned by the food, but was not underwhelmed either. Good for families - Starling Mall seems to draw a younger crowd anyway. Given its outskirts location, it has taken off very well; the times we have been there it has been buzzing (see below). Worth a visit, not sure I would return - prefer to go to more porky places. 

(NB another sibling operates the Red Bean Bag in Publika whilst another does the Yellow Brick Road in Damansara. The food genes are clearly strong in this family).

Bonfire from outside - quite a pleasant stroll

Rustic Bread and Salad

Photos of the Barramundi Snapper and the remains of the roasts - lamb, steak and chicken, all of which were well tasty. Can't format the captions for some reason...

The Baron's Barolo...

and my Bordeaux

Feb 11th - The Kiwi's Birthday
Got instructed to be at some out of the way place in Taipan USJ to celebrate the Kiwi's Beatle Birthday ("When I'm 64") and quite a repast it would prove to be. Seems he is a regular here and chef and team went out of their way to prepare some excellent continental style dishes. Can't remember much about it, except we went back to his place for more booze and party. Seem to remember getting hypnotised byTibetan Throat Singing. Or was it snoring? Very nasal. Have to dig out the name of the restaurant.

Well tasty stewy meaty...  something

Prawns in Black Rice - well yum

Roll of Honour

Left: Doc Wine with the Wine Daddy     Right: Doc Wine and his Squeeze

Feb 15th Tang Room - Chinese restaurant Starling Mall with the Birthday gang

Came here on a recommendation that the food was very good. Well, and maybe - didn't do it for me. Forgettable and bland. We got a room to ourselves but it was still massive noisy from a party doing the Yam Seng all night in the main room. Fair glassware, no corkage, forgettable food. I also lost my car park ticket which didn't help the mood; the presence of the wineless Comedian also didn't help. Perhaps I should give it another shot. Found a half decent CdP at RM104 from the wine store downstairs next to the very well stocked and airy Village Grocer Supermarket which proved somewhat light yet sleek. Also the Oyster Bay at RM78 which we socked away for our Marco evenings - belter with the Four Seasons starters. Toilet was outside and a hike along the Mall to the end. 

Entrance - pretty grand, no?

The Four - or perhaps Five - Seasons starter

Soon Hock Fish - must have been okay

Looks like a Pork rib - looks good, yes?

Steamed buns dessert...

which are also clearly wearable :)

Feb 16th Kame Sushi Atria with IWFS

The new second outlet buried deep somewhere in Petaling Jaya, 30 of us enjoyed fizz and excellent wines with chef's Omakase. Can't remember much about the food. Some felt a bit disappointed at the sizes of some of the dishes. I also felt hungry at the end of it all. I seem to recall someone opened a bottle of gold flake sake which was apparently a pure rarity. Someone else opened more champagne. Pretty boozy night. 

Very tight space for the troops, felt massively cramped. Toilet was outside and around the corner, had to fight to get both out and back into the restaurant and the seat. Lots of laughter, not sure would return in such a big group. 

Menu

Appetizer - Sugar Tomato (Fruits Tomato from Japan)

Sashimi - Oyster Sashimi with salt and Sudachi (Japanese Lime), Hirame (Flounder) Sashimi with Ponzu Vinegar

Grilled Dish - Grilled Sawara (Spanish Mackarel) with Special Sauce

Simmered Dish - Simmered Radish with grilled Monkfish Liver

Sushi (8 pcs & Half Roll) - Tuna Belly, Yellow Tail, Sweet Shrimp, Squid, Salmon Roe, Ginger Flower, Eggplant, Turnip, Tuna Roll

Miso Soup

Fruits from Japan

Lenglui x 3 at Kame Sushi

Sugar Tomato

Luretta Fizz to start - tasty and good value

Oyster Sashimi - yum

Sashimi with Ponzu vinegar 

Grilled Sawara - Spanish Mackerel

Wine from Japan - crisp and tasty

Hello Chef Kame!

At the bar

Simmered Radish and Monkfish Liver

Waiting for Sushi

Coming, coming!!

Et voilas!!

Feb 18th Marco Pig Nick with Gan family

Ah, the Marco Pig Nick…  whenever Lenglui tells friends about this, they all want to come and try. So naturally we have to be there with them. The usual menu, the usual mumbles of "ho seck" as the Pig Soup gets slurped, lots of "cheers" to fine champagne and Cloudy Bay SB. Some half decent wines on show tonight, can't remember what they were. Lot of talk about what to see in India given an upcoming visit there by myself and lenglui. The advice was to fly everywhere. Which in retrospect was good. The India roads would prove mental.

Feb 23rd Checkers Boys Night

I have been coming here for over twenty years. Owner and chef Mr Tan started out mastering the art of pizzas and quickly moved to pork. His pork ribs are magnificent and still the standard - juicy, tender, and big. His accompanying mustard salsa is heaven. On this night we shared starters and ribs and a knuckle or three with big ass Reds and a couple of standard start-the-night NZ SBs. Boys Nights tend to be…  boyish, I suppose. Quite civilised, little swearing, mostly swapping news about IMDB and Pink Diamonds. Or is it Sapphires? 

Feb 25th Chambers Steak KL Hilton
Chambers has proven consistent in its quality and cooking of decent prime steak. We figured that we would not get any good meat in India so figured to satisfy the tastebuds ahead. We decided to try the Porterhouse to share and brought an Alion 2011 for the occasion. Should have stuck with the Ribeye - the T-Bone felt a bit firm on the night. The Alion 2011 was delightful, all silk and power. Lovely. 

Some of the Cakes available at KL Hilton - amazing detail and colours

Lenglui in RockChick pose

The T-Bone - good but not quite great

Feb 26th to March 2nd - IWFS in India

This was a six day event which probably needs more than a few lines. Did New Delhi (four nights), Agra (two nights), and Jaipur (two nights). Very intensive. And intense. Traffic was madness. Spent half the trip on a bus or in a car. Some great hotels and restaurants and food and wine pairings. And the Taj Mahal seared the memory and the soul. But such a mass of seething humanity, and most of it insanely poor. Never again. Senses feel they have been assaulted enough for one lifetime. 

Favourite Wine and Food places in Kuala Lumpur

20th August 2015

Got an email from an overseas IWFS member in Tokyo asking for advice on where to eat in Kuala Lumpur (NB I am IWFS KL Secretary). I wrote back listing my favourites off the top of the head - places I would recommend to the general visitor to be able to reasonably go find on their own. And thought my reply might make a useful post. Anyone got any favourite places to add?

Dear 

I received your email and am happy to give some suggestions for food and wine in Kuala Lumpur.

However, there are so many styles of cuisine here in Malaysia that it is difficult to give general advice. 

Maybe I can point you to my blog "Fine Food and Wine in Kuala Lumpur" which reports on restaurants I have visited personally and had a great time (or not!!)

The address is 

http://klfoodandwine.blogspot.com/

For fine food and wine, my initial suggestions would be Sage (The Gardens, Mid Valley) and Cilantro (Micasa, off Jalan Tun Razak). The food is consistently excellent, the wine lists are pretty good and both open for lunch (though phone first to check). Slightly further afield is Soleil where the fish courses are excellent. The DC Restaurant is also worth searching out, though a bit difficult to get to from City Centre. 

I also recommend the newly reopened Stoked with its cast iron grill - excellent beef steak and pork ribs with some interesting Japanese tweaks by the chef. And very good selections of wine. A bit outside the city but a good destination. 

These are all clearly Western cuisine places so the wines available tend to be more extensive. With Eastern cuisine (Chinese, Indian, Malay) eateries the wine lists are not so good. The upside is that they often do not charge corkage so you can BYO. They also do not have decent glasses.  Best for Chinese cuisine - Overseas Restaurant (Jalan Imbi), Marco Polo Restaurant (Jalan Raja Laut), Noble House (Imbi), Noble Mansion (Jaya 33).

I must say that I am not a great fan of Malay cuisine. Overpoweringly spicy for my palate. It also doesn't really pair well with wine. The best is Bijan in the Jalan Ceylon area, got a reasonable wine list though this area gets a bit shady after dark. Indian cuisine, we had a great event at the Delhi Royale sometime ago. There is also a very good steakhouse on the same block called Las Vacas. Both are reported on in the Blog. Thinking about it, there is also a Malay cuisine restaurant behind this block called Songket which was quite good for food but had horrendous corkage charges for BYO wine. And their wine list was not so very good. Haven't been back there for over a year.

For Japanese cuisine...  not sure I should say anything here...  it will not match anywhere near the quality of what I guess you might expect. I have visited Tsukiji market and the sashimi was amazing. My favourites in Kuala Lumpur are Kami Sushi (Sri Hartamas for Sashimi - bit outside KL) and Kamimura (The Weld, Jalan Raja Chulan for pork). Some of the hotels offer Japanese cuisine - all are pretty much of the same standard. 

Best regards

Brian McIntyre

Hon Secretary IWFS Kuala Lumpur

Kame Sushi - still got class

We found ourselves in Sri Hartamas one lunchtime during the week and Lenglui had the brilliant idea of going to Kame Sushi. We hadn't been since it had moved into new premises (still on the same block but more in the middle and up one floor). We'd also never tried their lunch menu.

Kame Sushi became one of our default Japanese cuisine destinations. Their Omakase menu and their sashimi remain the stuff of foodie legend. Big Tony used to be regular there, though he hasn't mentioned it in recent times. We had many great nights in the old premises with friends, wine and sake. A lot of them with our Dr Gan who rated Kame Sushi among his favourites. He was a regular there for both lunch and dinner, and if he was regular it would have to have been good. 

The new layout is similar to the previous with a food bar and wines and spirits on display. There are a couple of private rooms but the main is now an open area with tables for between four and six. They had a range of set lunches available in addition to the a la carte. Lenglui had the Yakizakana set and I opted for the Katsudon set, each with a mug of Green Tea. The Katsudon set was delightful - full lunch with Mizo soup, egg custard and salad and a charming orange slice to finish off. The crispy batter on the Pork cutlet was excellent and the onion omelette on the rice nicely light and fluffy. Lenglui said her fish was a bit rich and fishy, but that was because it was probably mackerel. Dark skinned thing it was and grilled to crunchy crispness.

The total came in at RM58.30 after Service charge and GST, which did not feel too bad for a very decent lunch in pleasant surroundings. There is also reasonably plentiful parking, which is unusual given that it is normally madness trying to find a parking space in this area. Would definitely revisit for lunch and will have to go back to see if the Omakase is as brilliant as it used to be. 

Kame Sushi Japanese Restaurant

No 10-1 Jalan 31/70A, 

Desa Sri Hartamas, 

50480 Kuala Lumpur

03-28587739

Iketeru KL Hilton - disappointing, lousy car park experience.

Iketeru is a favourite destination of ours. We like the modern lighting and decor, and its lots of little alcoves for private dining and a usually excellent quality of menu. Steak on previous occasions had been wonderful. Usually.

We like to sit at the teppankayi counter and watch the chefs work their magic. They were a bit quiet today - in retrospect, should maybe have taken this as an ominous portent. Not busy can often mean the place is out of favour. And so it proved, with the lunch being a bit short on standard on this occasion. We ordered the set Sashimi plus Teppanyaki Beef and Special Tempura Prawn lunches. 

My salad came out dripping with cloyingly sweet thousand island or something, though the miso was hot and saltily invigorating. Maybe that was the plan - give sweet followed by salty. Sashimi was three chunks of salmon, and two of the whitefish and octopus leg respectively. No tuna. Hmmmm…  We tend to expect some tuna in sashimi servings. First time we'd ever had sashimi sans tuna. Hmmm....  

The tempura prawn in special soy sauce  - whilst the texture of the prawn was terrific, the batter was squishy and…  just bleughh. There was little crunch, and mostly egg and flour on the tongue. It was like sucking on KFC batter that had been dipped in hot water -  all limp and squidgy. Tastewise was interesting enough, with egg and salt on the tongue, but the texture was hardly tempura. The egg custard was light and clean. 

I tried the beef. It was okay, but seemed to miss the standard of previous visits. It was cold when it came out and colder when I tried it. Meat quality was fine enough, maybe that little bit of care and love in the preparation seemed to be missing. 

Bit of a shock when the Green Tea came out at RM9 per person - I seem to recall it used to be gratis. 

Service was sufficiently friendly and unobtrusive, though on this showing there's way better Japanese to be had elsewhere n the city, most notably at Kame Sushi in Sri Hartamas. If we are paying Hilton prices, we can surely expect Hilton standard. Didn't seem to hit it on this occasion.

Yet again the Hilton/Meridien car park failed, with the machine eating my ticket and failing to let us out at the barrier. We picked a time when our car parking attendants went off for a pee break. This is about the fourth time in a row that this car park has given me a problem.  Probably the central reason I will not return to Iketeru for a while. Maybe the hotel renovation currently underway will do something about what is possibly some of the worst hotel parking experience in the city.