Mikel a.k.a Splashmilk was in Malacca and we went out for a sight seeing walkabout. For a detailed story, do read Mikel’s Hey Ho Melaka!, Hey Ho Melaka : Food You! and Hey Ho Melaka : Walls of Art Crime.
Good Morning Vietnam is the latest outlet among the hundreds or possibly thousands of restaurants in Malacca. Located at the less well known Plaza Mahkota (The area where Nadeje Patisserie is.), it is aimed to serve authentic Vietnamese food to the locals at an affordable price.
However, it is not the first of its kind as previously, there was too a Vietnamese restaurant in Melaka Raya two years back but eventually went “missing”. I still remember my previous boss told me that the owner asked us to do a food review on them in order to give them some publicity and save their business. Well, I did try their food but figured it wasn’t worth mentioning. You can still read the post dated May 2006.
No air condition, much to my disappointment. Some wooden tables and stools, some pictures on the green coloured wall and that’s pretty about it, the interior design. Tight on budget, perhaps.
Pelf Yeen ordered the lemonade while I ordered Red Dragon, ice blended dragon fruit. Pretty nice and smooth, as there were more fruits (real fruits, not the artificial flavouring kind) than ice / water. Probably a little bit of milk might give the drink an even smoother texture and aftertaste.
I ordered beef stew with white rice, which came with three slices of cucumbers and tomatoes each, a piece of lettuce, fried egg and a bowl of beef stew. The decoration items used is pretty much the Chinese style. Chinese restaurants love to decorate their dishes with cucumbers, tomatoes and lettuces, usually a few slices here and there. While I am fine with the fried egg, wouldn’t a sunny side up be nicer?
I didn’t dig out those beef chunks and place them nicely on the plate for photos. The beef was tender enough and full of juice and tomato sauced based soup / gravy. I am not sure how stew supposed to taste like, but I am on the fence for this one as I didn’t like the way too tomato-ish sauce and soup.
Mei Mei ordered the lemongrass chicken with rice set. From the looks of it, I reckoned the chicken was going to be really dry, which turned out to be true.
I ordered their three-in-one dish, consisted of deep fried and wet spring roll each and a few pieces of lemongrass chicken. I like the deep fried one, as the wet one tasted like grass because of the “greens” used in side, as you can see in the cross sectional picture. The chickens, as said in the previous paragraph, were very dry. Two kinds of sauce were served together to go along with the spring rolls. One tasted like plum sauce mixed with tomato while the other one, I couldn’t really guess it.
I have lowered down my expectations when I visited this restaurant. It wasn’t that impressive or that disappointing, but the question of whether am I going to revisit the restaurant, its a little difficult to decide for now. I might not go there for the food, but a couple of drinks should be okay. Oh, and they should really increase the items on their menu by a few folds, very limited choices, I would say.
This happened less than 100m away from my house.
I don’t know how it happened, but my best guess is that the car, driven by an international student, was speeding along the main road before turning into the corner. Entering a narrow junction at high speed is definitely not a wise thing to do. Probably the tires didn’t have enough grip and the car started to slide, knocking down a slab of concrete and water pipe before falling into the monsoon drain.
He might need to put a cup of water inside the car if he wants to train his drifting skills. LOL.
And guess what, my submission won me RM50 on Saturday’s The Star Thumbnails.
Do you know its an achievement to get Carol Tee a.k.a Ellone to treat me (or you) to a decent meal? It took me some betting, persuading, teasing and of course, cheating to get my free meal. However, it was almost more than a year later when she finally treated me.
Sushi Zanmai, highly recommended by Ellone for its relatively cheap sushis and bento sets in her post. Since she would be footing the bill, I went easy on her and suggested this restaurant instead of our pre-agreed Star Hill’s Jogoya.
It’s located somewhere in The Gardens. Yes, it was my first visit to The Gardens, a brief one albeit. I remembered I walked across Little Penang Cafe, the long hallway, upped the escalator and turned right, passing by an Indian restaurant called Cinnamon or something like that. Heh!
Conveyor belt, checked! Chefs making sushi right in front of you, checked! The waiters / waitresses say something in Japanese (Welcome!) whenever a customer walks in, checked! Wasabi, checked! Unagi, checked! Refillable green tea, checked!
Refillable green tea. A little bland though.
My tuna sushi. Well, tasted normal but it was fresh. Too bad they don’t serve my favourite egg mayonnaise sushi. I also took the shrimp sushi because it looked really tempting and delicious. My intuition was right as it was really tasted.
In the middle of the rolled fragrant rice, there’s fresh and juicy prawn in the middle. On the outer layer of the sushi, there’s tiny shredded pieces of unknown stuffs. I suspect that it could be the same ingredient used in the curry chicken rice bibimbab in Sushi Groove.
Carol had noodles with chicken chop and some greens. I don’t know how it tasted, but it ain’t looked appetizing to me.
Carol’s boy friend ordered I-don’t-know-what but it looked colourful.
We shared a plate of salmon sashimi and guo za. The salmon slices were thick, freshed and absolutely delicious after dipping it slightly with the wasabi and soy sauce. The guo za weren’t impressive if you asked me. There were no sliced ginger and vinegar to go along with it. Maybe they did give vinegar, but it probably tasted like soy sauce and I couldn’t differentiate it. The skin was a little too thick to my liking and the fillings weren’t juicy / tasted dry. It was nicely pan fried though.
It won’t be a complete and fulfilling sushi session if there’s no unagi. For that, I ordered their unagi set. For RM25+, I got myself a lot of unagis which made me really happy and grinned from ear to ear. There’s nine pieces of them, nine! Nine!
Unlike most Japanese restaurant, their unagis weren’t as sweet as others, in fact, I tasted a little saltiness in it. Saltiness would go well with white rice compared to sweetness and Sunshi Zanmai’s unagi just hit the right spot.
I wanted to order another set but I would feel bad because Carol would be footing the bill. Too bad I couldn’t do macro and this was the best I could do with my lens. Just look at the white succulent meat coated with thick sweet sauce. Heavenly!
The bill came to RM100+, if I remember correctly. Cheap, but the problem is whether I am willing to drive to Mid Valley after enduring the traffic jam and trouble of finding a parking space. The trouble of switching LRT and KTM stations isn’t very appealing either. I would really love to go back there, but the trouble is how to get there with ease and in peace.
After one month, all 16 bloggers (except Jolene) gathered at Izzi K.L. again for the closing ceremony of the Samsung - Mobile World phone program. How time flies when you are having good times with the “free” phone. Everyone was early and punctual, but the event was late itself. It started with the obligatory speeches by the editor of Mobile World, Kash and also the representative from Samsung Mobile, Sam with the prize giving followed after.
As expected, I didn’t win, but I received a consolation prize for my our hard works. A Samsung Bluetooth Headset WEP200. Honestly, I don’t talk much on the phone and the headset isn’t that useful to me. I do have an idea who to give it to though.
Lydia Teh and phone lover Ng Jun Yan both walked away with the phones for the best posts. Jun Yan wrote freaking 29 posts in a span of 30 days to deserve himself the free phone. Vincent Chow bagged the phone as the site with most traffic (up to 2000 visitors per day), beating Muzaffar Shah. I was surprised, really. Ellie Chee won the phone under the category of most people the phone was shown to, with a figure of 190 people.
Long story cut short, we were then treated to a buffet and it was then, the bloggers cam-whoring session started. Credits go to the respective camera owners.
Of course, there are more pictures and details, which you can hop over to David Cheong’s, John Ling and Ellie Chee’s.
That aside, while I always see my own name in the papers, this is probably my first time seeing my own name in the latest issue (May) of Mobile World magazine as a blogger.
Again, I extend my sincere gratitude and thanks to the people in front and behind this Samsung Mobile - Mobile World phone program for giving me the opportunity and exposure. To the bloggers who participated, it is my pleasure to get to know you all and hopefully, we shall meet again.
Last but not least, one for the album.
The Samsung SGH-i550 series :
The Kick Off
The Outlook
The Specifications & Symbian Series 60
The 3.0 Mega Pixel Camera
The Summary