Steamboat Buffet @ Seoul Garden

Haikal recommended we go to this place in One Utama for our post exam makan session. And so we did. Taking advantage of my soon to be expired student ID, we went for the lunch buffet session priced at RM22 ++ for students and RM35 ++ for non-student. Not bad eh..

so its buffet style with the usual suspects of sausages and vegetables, however what makes this place lovable is their marinated chicken and beef slices.....
Chicken wise, there are choices of char siew, szechuan, bulgogi and other stuff while beef has a choice of bulgogi and non-marinated. There's also some seafood and stuff, but I was more interested in the meat hehe.
the pan is readily greased so you can just fry your stuff on it. And oh, the soup in the middle, you can choose from a variety, my choice of the day is ginseng chicken soup, naish....
..... toss the meat in and you fry it...you fry it....

the good thing about this place is, when your pan gets black and carbon-y, the staffs are more than ready to change it for you upon request.

I would love to just chuck the meat into my mouth and munch, but as Korean as it gets, you can go their way and wrap it up with lettuce...

I am no expert with Korean food, but wrapping the meat together with few strands of kimchi and Korean chilli sauce taste good.
at the end of it, something really nice is by grilling eggplant on the pan, eggplant itself is kinda tasteless, but after grilling those wonderful meat, use the eggplant to soak up their juices and mmm.... mmmmm...........
after all that meaty affair, balance out with some salad, the salad bar have a few options from fresh greens to potato salad.

All in all, its a satisfying meal. Seoul Garden although provides buffet, don't expect the wide spread such as from Hoi Tong, however it is a good place together with friends and enjoy whilst shopping. And the best thing is its air-conditioned, no more smoky smelly self after steamboat buffet feasting, good enough to get me back for a second round.

refer to their website for their promotions.

Cakes @ Alexis

It pays to be mommy's little (but oversized) girl:~

It begin with "mommy, can we go try the cake at Alexis?" and there we went one fine Saturday.

Alexis has a reputation for their really nice cakes, and some say their curry noodles (or was is assam laksa?)...anyway, we were there for the cake and coffee.

and what is a cake and coffee session without the coffee rite? I find that coffee is best long black without milk or sugar. Some like both in, some like plain sugar, I like without both mmmm.......

and this my friend, is that highly popular Tiramisu. I had to take a bite before putting down my fork to take a picture. What distinguishes this from other Tiramisu around is the crunchy, nutty, and delicious almond topping (caramelized). However, besides the topping I have to say I had better Tiramisu cake other places before.

My choice of cake however will be this:

Chocolate Cinnamon Cake! They warm up the cake and serve it up with a blob of vanilla Ice-cream and chocolate sauce. The cake is velvety soft and dissolves smoothly in my mouth and not at all flour-ish. The cinnamon + chocolate is ultimately good chemistry that makes my taste buds really happy.

The cakes here are a bit more costly compared to my normal fix, will consider coming back when I have more cash or someone else treats me hehe~

I have to credit the ambiance of the place though. The brown and white settings with lower voltage lighting sets a good mood for coffee and chat. Some more its just a stone throw away from Bangsar Village, perfect for makan after shopping (ignore me if you must, I'm daydreaming of becoming a rich tai-tai haha)

p/s:Its more of a matter of personal taste that I prefer the Chocolate Cinnamon over the Tiramisu.

From China with Love

Pokai-ed recently, so can't go out and sample those wonderful food with big price tags, instead I am gonna write about some cheap stuff I munch on as a poor student living in the hostel.

I recently found out that there are a couple of Chinese students who brought in instant food to be sold in the hostel and up to their room I went. I craved for their instant noodles which are not widely found in Malaysia, trust me, Master Kang makes Maggi taste kinda lame in comparison. Well, look what I got.....

The purple packet was priced at RM1.70 while the green and red packet priced at RM1.50. Ok la consider the size of the content and the long journey from the Mainland to Malaysia....
the purple packet is instant potato noodle, something like out 'tang-hun' or 'tung-fan'...there like those you put into the soup one ar...look like semi-transparent meehoon one..... Anyway, my choice was the szechuan hot and spicy flavour. If you wanna have a dose of Szechuan peppercorn minus the extreme numbness aftermath, should give this a try.

The red packet tasted decent but was nothing much to tell about. I preferred the green packet. Both are beef flavour but the green one is spicier and adds more oomph to the tastebuds. Trust me, its nicer than our Maggi, Cintan etc


and oh...how can I forget

Lao Gan Ma Chilli beans @ Rm5.50 per bottle

I can't find this anywhere in Malaysia so imagine my delight when I got to know they sold it too... basically its like 'tau chu' but prepared with chillies. Its a local specialty from Gui Zhou (贵州）. I like adding this little delight to my noodles to add some power to the taste. If anyone sees this anywhere in Malaysia please let me know ya, I simply adore it.

I recently saw Master Kang noodles in some supermarkets but the varieties are very few, hope the importer can bring in more flavours. Its cheaper than those Korean Kimchi noodles and have more flavours to choose from, simply heavenly for instant noodle junkies like me hehe

Too bad all these are not Halal.

Je N'aime Pas

I never thought this day will come but it did....I dislike McDonalds.....I bet people who knows me well would say...KC don't like McD? S'il vous plait...must be some kind of joke!!!

Admitting-ly I have always like McD, its not only the value meal....its more like reminiscence of my childhood, I practically grew up loving Mc D, but now..I had to do it......I'm writing a blog post saying me no likey......

this is dedicated to whoever that may be concerned, and hopefully some day the good people of Golden Arches will hear this....

It happened on the Friday just before Ramadhan....

here goes....


Dear McDonalds management,

I am one of your most loyal McD fan of all time, so this is not a letter from a hater, but from a loyal customer.

I always had confident in the quality management as well the the service provided by McDonald restaurant, but this fateful day, I want to lodge a complain against both of McD's most prided aspects.

Its about this branch I went to at Sri Serdang, near UPM. It was lunch time on a Friday and the whole restaurant was packed, the service was slow, too slow. The line was long and all hungry people, unfortunately, the 3 cashiers at the counter was taking their own sweet time serving the customers, they were chatting and laughing away which I find really set backed their time to serve up the food, it took them several minutes just to get the drinks and the french fries was even slower. They moved slowly and full of 'grace' despite the line was getting longer with more people coming into the restaurant. Not that I want to be nasty and strip them of their freedom of speech, but joking during lunch rush is certainly not the way to go.

Moving on to the food. I had so many Big Macs in my life that although I am no guru, I certainly can tell a bad one apart from a decent one. The one I had here was bad. Just take a look at the burger....

I am not a cooking maestro, but I am pretty sure the bun is not suppose to look like this.....and the burger should not be less than par to the quality of decent McDonalds burger. Let me explain further : The bun was very dry and a bit hard, the beef patties were also a bit tough, dry (not juicy)and almost tasteless, all in all, I needed a lot of soft drink just to swallow the burger.

and another thing is that the tables were not cleaned, this was what I had to clean myself and wipe the table before I can sit down and eat. When I asked around for opinions from friends later, they all agreed that this outlet's service is not as good as the one at Bangi near PKNS.

I had visited so many McDonald's and I can say that by far, this is one of the worst I have encountered. I feel some slight improvement should be done. Thank you very much.

Bazaar Ramadhan @ Sri Serdang

Ramadhan...a month where Muslims all over the world cleans their souls and renew their faith.. for them, this is the holy month of fasting before celebrating Aidilfitri.... for KC...this is the month of Bazaar Ramadhan makan!!! Woohoo!!!!

Those Bazaars at PJ are huge, but not too far away...in the land of Kajang/Serdang/Bangi... poor student KC got no time (and petrol) to travel to PJ, and luckily, there is one right here at Sri Serdang (in front of the worst McDonalds I ever had).

at 5pm the place is already teaming with people from all walks of life, Muslim and non-Muslim, looking for a good bite to buy...

this Bazaar Ramadhan here ain't too shabby despite the smaller scale compared to those you can find at TTDI and PJ....they basically have all the staples to make your mouth water...

and so, one fine day, 3 friends braved the crowd in search of dinner.....
kuih is a must there, and from the looks of this, ain't bad looking......

fried cempedak was Chee Lup's crave of the day, looked quite appetizing here, but alas, cold d...

I found what I wanted: putu piring...sweet, nice and nostalgic(reminds me of the days when mom and dad use to bring me to pasar malam when I was young)

Zoey and me had nasi kerabu with daging salai, the meat was tad too tough for out poor teeth and required a looooong chew...but the rice was nice.

The bazaar here have less choices compared to elsewhere, but good enough for KC who lurrrves traditional malay food.

Hiatus

Sorry sorry, was on a diet and so was my purse. Not much makan makan around recently. Will update soon.

Jin Shan Cheng

Got an sms from gorgeous Simone for dinner the other day. Thrilled. The night's agenda was steamboat, she scouted for a place and landed at KY's blog and came up with the suggestions to go to this restaurant since the pix in KY's blog looked so yummy.

So where is it? I always had a hard time reading maps, I know u can read la ok, but for people who cannot, I understand your feelings, and so I try to make it sound simple, opposite of Sunway Pyramid got shop shop, shop shop there got drool worthy cars with the name of Mazda. The restaurant is on the first floor above Mazda showroom, Mazda showroom is located beside the big white building named Kolej Safa, on the same row with Mc D.

I always luuuurved szechuan style of cooking ever since the arrival of Libby, a student from China with the flair for cooking, at the hostel. The main ingredients were chilli, szechuan pepper corn and a healthy dose of chen-chu (literal translation is aged vinegar)

condiments of sauce to go with the steamboat, a steamboat will not be complete without the sauces. There is the peanut paste, chilli, fu-yu(fermented tofu) and one more which I cannot identify. Anyway, you just take all and mix ut up in the dipping sauce bowl la.

One thing I am not too happy is the peanut paste is kinda sweet( I think its peanut butter la), Libby exposed me to the original non-sweetened peanut paste that is meant for steamboat purposes and it was waaaaay more suitable, but since the peanut paste cannot be found in Malaysia, have to make do with the peanut butter for now.

our soup! Middle is mala while the outer ring is .......I forgot the name la, but its chicken broth. naish leh, me likey

we had scallops, chicken franks, vegetables and tofu( this is actually a drier version of tofu that will absorb the soup..taste gooood), and oh we had the thingy that looks like dried wantan skin but its made from soy, will find out what is it called la, anyway, its highly recommended as it will not go soggy and will retain the firm to the teeth texture even after a good boiling and rolling in the soup.

ah! The mala merinated beef slices, really love it!

stir fry cabbage szechuan style. This is good although I somewhat feel that they toned down on the spicy-ness to suit the general public, but its good.

The bill came up to around RM80 for 2 person, yes a bit pricey compared to your buffet steamboat offers in Sunway area since this place is a la carte, however, for the quality I am getting, I definitely will return even if that means suicide for my student budget.