We gathered once again.

Since I was in KL and we have yet to really celebrate Ah Yong’s birthday, Ah Kit and I decided to treat Ah Yong to a scrumptious meal. After some discussions, we decided to dine at Serdang Little Kitchen Restaurant (沙登小厨美食馆) again for its relatively cheap price.

I have blogged about this restaurant before, you can click here to read about it.

There weren’t many customers around when we arrived around 10pm. We proceeded to sit ourselves at a table near a television since we had to wait for Ah Kit to finish his classes at MMU Cyberjaya.

Ah Kit finally reached the restaurant at 10.30pm and Ah Yong was literally starved to death as he didn’t have dinner earlier. Although I had my dinner around 6pm at Pasta Zanmai, I couldn’t help it but felt hungry for I knew that we were going to have a very good meal in a short while.

First up was the free soup of the day. Since it’s free, I am not complaining. We drank this while waiting for Ah Kit.

When I walked in, I saw a clay pot curry that looked really tempting and delicious. Hence, I inquired about it and the waiter said it was clay pot curry fish head. Figuring that all of us don’t really know how to enjoy fish head, we opted for slices of fish meat.

When the dish was served, immediately, the aroma caught my attention and I took a sip of the curry. God! It was simply delicious. Judging from the colour and thickness of the curry, I reckoned it was cooked with ridiculous amount of coconut milk. Thick, aromatic and strong flavoured, definitely worth recommending. The three of us finished a bowl of rice by just mixing the curry sauce with our white rice.

Towards the end, I even suggested to the guys to order another pot but without the fish, just the vegetables alone.

We actually ordered the two flavoured pork ribs, but the waiter got the orders mixed up and we ended up with a plate of pork ribs cooked with fermented bean paste. It was nothing close to the awesome two flavoured pork ribs which I had during my previous visit. It was overcooked, hence, the stiffness and rubbery texture of the pork ribs. It was okay, but I would recommend the other pork ribs, which tasted much better.

Calamaris cooked in butter sauce wasn’t as good as I expected, considering their deep fried calamaris tasted really good. It was not entirely bad, but compare to the deep fried version, it lost out, by a pretty huge margin. However, the squids were still tender and juicy, but lacked the butter flavour.

Their deep fried seafood tofu, well, tasted average. We ordered this because we didn’t want to order vegetables. Ha! We wanted a slightly more balanced diet, instead of an all-meat meal.

Steamed prawns, probably the most expensive dish among all, was to show our respect for our brother, Ah Yong. Heh! The prawns, thank God, were really fresh and juicy. Opting for the steam version was indeed a wise choice, as we could savour the natural sweetness of the prawns without too much seasonings. Although the size of the prawns were on the smaller side, it wasn’t too bad as each of us had about three or four prawns each. There were a layer of steamed eggs at the bottom of the prawns as well.

Pardon the lousy picture, the dish was quite a mess to begin with, with all the coriander leaves and ginger slices on top.

Overall, it wasn’t a disappointing meal although there were two dishes were a slight disappointment. The bill came up to RM96, which I think it was still reasonable as we had seafood and all meat meal. Besides, we had a total of seven bowls of rice, if not mistaken.

Before we left, we had papayas and watermelons for dessert, which, I think was on the house.

We definitely had a good time eating dinner again.

While walking to our car, Ah Kit asked,

“Why do we always have to eat such big and heavy meal each time we meet up?”
“为什么我们每次四个在一起就一定要大吃大喝啊？”

I gave him my sneakiest and biggest grin ever.

Tai Boon a.k.a Ta Wen, a blog reader of mine, invited me for a meal before I came to KL.

After some planning, I found myself making my way to 1U using public transport. Honestly, it was really tiring compared to driving there, but the recent petrol hike made me never want to drive to KL anymore.

The taxi touts at Kelana Jaya LRT station offered me a ride for RM15 to 1U. I SMS-ed Tien Soon and he tipped me. I walked over to the other side of the road and managed to get to 1U for only RM6.

Pasta Zanmai, located in between 1U’s old and new wing and right next to Carl’s Junior, is quite easy to miss for its misleading shop out front. From the outside, it looks like a Japanese grocery / food shop from the outside, and the entrance to the restaurant is just a narrow lane next to it.

The interior isn’t that huge and has about 15+ tables. Considering the size and amount of tables, it is pretty cramped and can be noisy when it is full house. The “cubicles” are really tight and cramp, which I later decided to switch to another table for more comfort. The kitchen is just at the back of the restaurant, with glass panels separating the two sections. You can take a closer look at how the chefs prepare your dish, if you want to.

The menus are pretty straight forward, the dishes (yellow), beverages and desserts (red).

Of course, I ordered the officially cheapest drink in all Japanese restaurant, refillable iced green tea!

Screw the names of the dishes. I barely remember them and the fact that I don’t know Japanese isn’t helping either. I ordered a half boiled egg, that somewhat caught my interest when I looked at the menu. I wonder what I was thinking, half boil eggs?!

It was soaked in Japanese soy sauce, thank God, it wasn’t the super salty kind of soy sauce. I got to say, they really do know the perfect timing for cooking half boil eggs. The egg whites were intact and, like a piece of paper, it wrapped around the still liquid egg yolk.

Ta Wen ordered the deep fried soft shell crabs, which was really crunchy with the right taste. There were two soft shell crabs, chopped into half each. Although there weren’t much meat in it, the dish was still good. It’s soft shell crabs, what were you expecting?

The waiter recommended us the deep fried tofu, which was half soaked in Japanese soy sauce again. I got to say, the tofus were really awesome. Lightly pan fried on the outside to give tofu a golden coloured skin and its crisp texture, on the inside was pure white, soft, smooth and delicate tofu(?). On the top were dressings like fish roes, seaweeds, spring onions and I-don’t-know-what.

Our main course came with a bowl of heavily seasoned with sesame oil salad and miso soup.

Ta Wen had the chicken in teriyaki sauce with pasta. I got to say, it looked really delicious, especially with the half boiled egg on top and one has to mix it up before eating.

I ordered the prawns and squids pasta, which tasted a little weird in the beginning. After a few mouthfuls, it got better and I was happily eating my noodles away. A few prawns and squids, tossed with some cabbages, carrots and seasonings, it was good to go. It has this weird taste which I hope they could really make do without it, but I can’t identify what taste it is.

For desserts, I ordered their ice cream combo set, which has a scoop of chocolate ice cream topped with two pieces of crunchy biscuits, green tea ice cream with red beans and black sesame ice cream with whipped cream on top.

The chocolate ice cream was awesome, seriously. I am not a chocolate lover and always choose vanilla over chocolate at any given time. I never like the fake chocolate after taste lingering in my mouth whenever I eat those cheap chocolate ice cream. However, this particular chocolate ice cream totally blew me away. Its even nicer to eat with the crunchy biscuits.

Not knowing what to expect from green tea ice cream, together with the red bean paste, it was pretty decent.

Last on the tray was the black sesame ice cream. It was really smooth and creamy, the after taste lingered inside my mouth for a few more seconds before vanishing itself. Definitely one of the best black sesame ice cream I have ever tasted so far.

Ta Wen footed the RM115 bill (Thank you!), which is definitely on the expensive side. However, the portion isn’t anywhere small to begin with, hence, it does somewhat justify the hefty price tag. Each main course will cost you around RM22 to RM28 while the side dishes range from RM3 to RM15, depending on what you order. The desserts are priced between RM6 to RM18, if I remember correctly.

Will I return? Yes.

The black squid ink noodles look really really interesting.

We had our first gathering at Shogun Japanese buffet restaurant. Honestly, it wasn’t my suggestion. In fact, I strongly disagreed after reading the many reviews and feedback from various blogs which wrote how they sucked.

I suggested Lemon Grass cafe at Shangri La, KL initially but Raymond said everyone was having a tight budget and said Shogun Japanese buffet restaurant was the best choice as it was cheap.

J : “Why would I want to pay for the food that I already know it is going to suck?”
Raymond : “You should find out yourself rather than reading what other people has to say.”
J : “No. It is against my will to go Shogun.”

However, with many of us budgeting (Not me, them!), we had no choice but went ahead.

It sure looks like a nice place to dine in, with all the warm lighting and atmosphere. Tables are placed with enough space between each other and to bump into the guest’s chair of the opposite table is not quite likely to happen. The food tables / sections are conveniently placed right in the middle / center of the L-shaped restaurant and everyone has similar distance to the tables.

Plain old tasteless green tea was served upon seated.

Not long after you sit down, they will serve you a plate of cheese baked giant (maybe not so fresh) oyster. Each patron is entitled to one only. To me, it didn’t taste that nice as the cheese and mayonnaise totally overpowered the taste of fresh oysters.

As for the rest of the food, they tasted just average and nothing to shout about. Even the unagis didn’t look that tempting to an unagi lover like me. Their sushi was worse than Sushi King’s, totally not fresh and cold. There were only a handful of dishes that I managed to identify that tasted good.

Overall, it was a disappointing one and I don’t think I will visit them again.

Raymond : “Man… The food really sucks.”
Jason : “Didn’t I tell you so?”

I am not a cafe lover because I don’t have much faith in their food quality. Most of the time, cafes here are mostly smoke filled and serve lame ass food that do not deserved to be blogged about.

However, someone tipped me off about a new cafe in Cheng recently and he assured me that the food there has a certain standard. Moreover, its new and has received positive feedback from the others.

No harm giving it a try. Again, the scapegoats were Sleepy Hao, Akiraceo Jian and Sleepy Hao’s sister, Jia Rou.

Finding the cafe is relatively easy as it is the commercial area right after Cowboy Town if you are coming from Batu Berendam direction and behind Mobil if you are coming from the Alor Gajah-Melaka-Jasin Highway.

With the brightly lit orange signboard, you shouldn’t miss it especially during night time. The cafe is called Dynasty Ice N’ Snack Cafe and judging from its new outlook and interior, it was opened for business less than two or three weeks ago. There were quite a lot of customers throughout our 60 minutes ordeal there.

As written on the menu, the cafe wants to give its patrons’ a home feeling. Hence, the rather simple seating arrangement and not too yellowish lighting. The whole restaurant is brightly lit (Damn nice for photography, if you ask me.) and best of all, it is fully air conditioned. However, there’s no door at the front to trap all the cold air inside. It’s like an open air air conditioned room, a huge wastage of energy and electricity. First and foremost, the owner needs to install a glass panel / door to save his electricity bill.

A big no-no is sticking yellow stickers across your menu item that you have planned to serve but decided to pull it off the menu after your opening. While I am fine with two or three, 10 or 20 yellow stickers across the menu is definitely a sight I don’t want to see when I patronize a restaurant. The management might as well reprint the menu and make it add-on-able at a later stage. The whole menu was literally plastered with yellow stickers and I actually forgot to take a picture of it.

They have the usual stuffs, ice blended, ABC, bubble tea and the normal stuffs you find in any other cafes. Hao and Jian both ordered the Blue Fairy, soda mixed with colouring, I supposed. Ah Rou ordered a variation of Blue Fairy, comes with a scoop of vanilla flavoured ice cream.

As for me, I ordered this really weird combination drink, mocha at the bottom with coke on the top. Stir them together and you get the mocha-ed coke, which didn’t taste as good as I thought. It was ok only lah! The fact that the drink wasn’t cold enough didn’t help at all. I am not going to order this the next time, for sure.

First up was Ah Rou’s herbal mee sua, which smelled surprisingly nice. The aroma was a good start. The various mushrooms, herbal ingredients and other ingredients made the whole pot looked really tempting and delicious. Instead of yee mee, they used a thinner version of the same kind, almost like bee hoons.

I didn’t manage to try it as it wasn’t my order. However, I took a sip of the soup and it was slightly disappointing as the taste wasn’t strong enough to make it a truly and double boiled herbal soup. It tasted ok, but lacked the ummppphhhh that I was looking for in herbal soup. Well, it is pretty easy to overcome this problem. Double the ingredients and boil it longer so that the ingredients are able to simmer and release their taste and flavour.

Jian ordered their special udon noodles. I don’t know about Jian, but I absolutely love the noodles. They were cooked just the way how I like them. Not too wet till it is overflowing the plate yet not too dry till as if I am eating a piece of plain white bread. A little bit of black fungus, a few prawns, some mushrooms and the right seasoning to dish out this noodle dish. However, I reckon it would taste even better when its hot or right from the wok. By the time we finished our “ritual”, the plate of noodles have cooled down. I am so gonna order this for my next visit.

Hao ordered the “treasure box” or more commonly known as the chicken curry in a bun dish. It was served with a layer of egg on it ala nasi goreng pattaya style. I didn’t try the bread but I did try the chicken curry. It was too dry, definitely not suitable to be eaten with bread. Moreover, it was powder-ish, probably too much curry powder or too little water. Lots of improvement needed if they want this dish to be their specialty. For now, its below average. It was really small too!

I ordered their Thai style mango chicken chop, which was another specialty of theirs, according to the source I read from. Served with a handful of frieds, spoonful of coleslaw and a few chunks of fruits with (Duh!) deep fried chicken chop. You have the option to choose whether to deep fry or pan fry your white meat though and I opted for the former, of course. The skin was really crunchy and delicious; most importantly, it wasn’t as oily as I expected. Probably, not oily at all. Two thumbs up for the chicken chop! The coleslaw passed and the honey dew cubes were just nice to wash off the sourness at a later time.

The problem with this dish is the fries used. I absolutely hate such al cheapo fries. It is thin, it doesn’t have the texture and most importantly, it tastes like craps especially after it is cooled down. They could have change the fries to those bigger and fatter fries instead and that is going to add a few points to the dish.

The amount of mangoes on top was too little for my liking. After all, I ordered Thai-style mango chicken chop and that few strands of tasteless mangoes weren’t justifying the name of the dish. Probably, Thai style chicken chop would be more suitable.

Lastly, instead of pouring the sweet and sour sauce on top of the chicken chop before serving, they could have served it in a small bowl and let the customers pour it by themselves. Not only the patron is able to control how much sauce he or she wants, the crispiness of the chop won’t be soaked away and then lose its crunchy texture after some time. Moreover, they sort of poured too much sauce into my chicken chop and even my honey dew tasted sweet and sour.

We also ordered their pan fried dumplings which tasted surprisingly yummy for Malacca standard. There were lots of juices the moment I tore the skin apart with my teeth and the gravy was gushing down my throat in no time. Heh! A little exaggerating, I know, but I totally didn’t expect it to be that juicy. However, the amount of meat inside was too little. Put more, can ah?

As for the “sunflower”, it was nothing special to me. The boss took the time to explain to us why it was special. After biting it, it was just another deep fried kind of thingy.

The bill came up to roughly about RM10 per head. It was definitely cheaper than what I had expected initially and / or compared to other cafes that I have patronized who charged RM4.90 for a glasss of honey green tea. That said, RM0.50 for a glass of Diamond RO water? Hmm…

Will I return? Definitely.

However, there’s one problem. The distance from Bukit Beruang to Cheng Baru is not anywhere near and with the current petrol price, it is not a very good idea to go there that often, considering Cheng Baru has nothing to offer in terms of entertainment after the meal.

Unlike town, which I think is more or less the same distance, I still have places to roam around after my meal. That being said, if I am on my way back to Tampin using the Alor Gajah-Melaka-Jasin road or have something going on around Cheng or for those who stays nearby, it’s definitely worth visiting.

The boss asked for my contact and said he was looking forward to read my review. Hopefully, after reading, he would consider my suggestions / comments and make some adjustments. It should be a pretty good cafe if things go well for them. It was definitely satisfying compare to how shitty I always felt whenever I walked out a cafe.

Oh, did I mention they have free wi-fi?

Dynasty Ice N’ Snacks
No. 2A, Jalan CB1,
Taman Cheng Bestari,
75250 Melaka.

06-3373371
http://icensnacks.com.my

Sleepy Hao, Akiraceo Jian and I headed to town for a more decent (Anything better than Sushi King or maybe Sibaraku is considered decent.) Japanese food. Actually, I have nothing to blog anymore, so I dragged these two scapegoats along so that I have more pictures to be used in my post.

I read about this particular restaurant from Yung.’s blog and decided to give it a try. Who knows, I might have another place to have my all time favourite unagis whenever I feel like I want to.

Wa Zen 和膳 Japanese Restaurant, located not too far from Portuguese Hotel, operates quietly in Melaka Raya. It’s relatively easy to find and parking is ample. However, do take note the lane opposite the shop is drawn with yellow lines, so, try not to park there during the day time.

There aren’t many tables in the restaurants. A glance at it, there could be less than 10 tables, with separated cubicles on the left and a private room at the back. Warm lighting and fully air conditioned.

My complain is that, they actually allow their patrons to smoke inside the air conditioned restaurants. Not very wise, I would say. Ample space between each tables and still comfortable to sit in. I think the restaurant is quite popular in town, as we had to wait for a short while before being seated as all tables were occupied. There were a lot of Japanese customers having dinner there too, to my surprise.

Then, I noticed this cat again. Its in every Japanese restaurant, I believe. I seen it here, Sibaraku and also Sushi King. Meow~

Upon seated, hot towels are served to all patrons. However, with three photographers around, hot towels ended up being cold by the time we use it. As usual, pre-packed wooden chopsticks and chilled green tea.

While waiting for our food to arrive, I played with the stuffs available on the table. The Japanese soy sauce, chilies flakes and tooth picks.

For starters, Hao and I had the fresh salmon handroll and soft shell crabs handroll. Taste wise, it was edible but definitely lost out in terms of taste. The seaweed used to wrap around the ingredients were not easy to tear off, making it quite a little troublesome to eat and with all the egg roes falling off. I wonder the seaweed got “stiffed” because of our photo taking time. The waiter did remind us to eat them quickly.

We ordered the sets, which come with a bowl of white rice, salads, steamed eggs, two slices of watermelons and whatever you ordered main dish. It was really disappointing to see a small pool of water after I finished the bowl of salads, which could only mean they didn’t drain the lettuce properly before serving. The steamed egg contained too much water and has lost its texture. A failed cawanmushi.

Hao ordered tori rose katsu set (deep fried pork chop) while Jian ordered teriyaki chicken rice set. I don’t know how it tasted, so let it be.

As for me, definitely and nothing else but unagis. Yummy! I was telling May Gin this early evening that I was having cravings for unagis.

The unagis were much drier compare to many other unagis that I have tried in other Japanese restaurants. However, the taste was there albeit not that strong. The delicate white meat was cooked to perfection, retaining its firm texture and yet soft and smooth enough to glide down my throat. Again, some sweet sauce onto the white rice would be nice, for its too dry, the whole set that is.

In Malacca, there are only a few Japanese restaurants, with Sushi King dominating the market. However, with Wa Zen around, the locals have another options. I would definitely come back again, especially when I feel like having a more proper Japanese food rather than the sucky but still edible Sushi King. There’s another Japanese restaurant that is about to open soon in Dataran Pahlawan, but that will be another post.

Wa Zen Japanese Restaurant
38, Jalan Melaka Raya 15,
Taman Melaka Raya, 75000 Melaka.

06-2823882