It’s them again!

At night, to celebrate the arrival of Ah Yong Lee Hwee’s new Proton Saga (Actually, it sounded more like because Ah Yong wanted to eat shabu-shabu.), Ah Yong suggested we head down to Puchong for shabu-shabu.

With no disagreement from anyone of us, we found ourselves standing in front of Japanese style steamboat, Shabu-Shabu restaurant barely 30 minutes later. Its Chinese name is a rather weird / odd one, 强强滚日式火锅. It’s at Bandar Puteri Puchong, just behind Giant and not too far from Papa Kopitiam.

Upon entering, there’s a menu with illustrations of various food served. The price range for a bowl of ingredients / items are priced between RM1 and RM4. They are categorized and separated by different coloured bowls, exactly like the pricing mechanism used in Sushi King and many other Japanese restaurants. At the end of the meal, they will collect the bowls and calculate the total price of your meal.

Of course, if you are a big eater or can eat more than 26 plates, then opt for the buffet. It is about RM26 per pax and shouldn’t be any problem for most people to “eat back” their money spent. After paying, the waiter will lead your to your seats.

The restaurant has two floors and each floor can easily accommodate more than 250 people. It is brightly lit and the whole place is very clean for a restaurant of its kind.

The conveyor belt is built as an “U”-shape across the room, with the waiters / waitresses standing inside the enclosed area to serve you and reload the conveyor belt every now and then. However, due to its design, one has to walk a big round just to go to the toilet, which is at the far end of the room.

It is very similar to any other Japanese sushi restaurant. One empty line goes into the kitchen, the other lines comes out filled.

You don’t have to guess what is served on the conveyor belt as there are wooden cube blocks that display the name (in English and Chinese languages) and pictures of the ingredients. If you see something that you want to eat, just grab it from the conveyor belt and you are good to go.

Upon seated, you will notice an empty hole in front of you, which the waiter will then placed a steel pot in it and pour soup into it. Switch on the power with the control panel under the table and your own personal steamboat pot is ready to cook some food.

They will also hand you two bowls of sauces. One is the spring onions, fried garlic mixed with special soy sauce sauce and the other is chili sauce, which tasted slightly spicier than I thought.

For drinks, you got to help yourself by filling your cups up at the designated self-help stations. Only two chilled drinks are served, ice blended grape and ice blended orange juice. They also serve hot plain water and hot green tea. However, there are no ice cubes and therefore, you are stuck with the ice blended beverages.

Honestly, it is really stupid to offer ice blended because ice blended can’t quench your thirst but merely cool your mouth down. You will find yourself sipping really hard on the ice to “drink”.

Oh, did I mention that you need to refill your soup on your own too? Everything, the utensils, soups, sauces and drinks are all available in the self-help station.

Time to eat.

Meanwhile, snap a random pictures of the buggers while eating.

Then, continue to snap and eat.

After some time, get them to pose for you.

The restaurant is famous for its thinly sliced pork meat, which to me, is totally nothing to shout about. It wasn’t seasoned; it wasn’t marinated; it certainly didn’t taste any special, to me. Just thinly sliced pork meat, that’s about it. Even my mum could do that at home, probably thinner and taste better too! So much about the hu-ha of thinly sliced pork meat.

We spent almost two hours in the restaurant, helping ourselves with the endless supply of food. Overall, the food was quite okay, decent amount of varieties and taste wise, it was mediocre.

However, as I ate, I discovered a few things.

1) Since you have your own pot, literally speaking, you are actually eating steamboat alone throughout the night. Loneliness creeps in after a while. I felt kinda empty even though my three buddies were sitting just next to me.

2) Steamboat is supposed to be a group activity, where everybody waits for the soup to boil, throws in all the ingredients to cook, eats, helping others to fill up their bowls with food you don’t want to eat and etc., but this particular type of steamboat doesn’t give me that feeling at all.

3) Because you are eating alone, you are the one taking the ingredients all by yourself. After a while, you will find yourself taking the same old stuffs again and again and again. It happened to me and I ended up eating more fish balls in one night compared to the past six months. If its the normal steamboat, my bowl will be filled up with unwanted food because the guys always put stuffs that I don’t want to eat yet I have to eat because I have to finish the food in my bowl.

4) The four-in-a-line / row seating arrangement isn’t very convenient for chit chatting throughout the dinner.

5) I don’t really enjoy steamboat buffet, honestly and instinctively.

It was decent, but I won’t go back again, unless I don’t have other choice or the majority wants to dine in similar concept restaurants. I was satiated but I didn’t feel good or really enjoyed the dinner.

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?”

Sim Koa Yen is not just a durian orchard farm located somewhere near Durian Tunggal. It is a durian orchard that uses minimal pesticides, only organic fertilizers and was awarded SALM (Farm Accreditation Scheme of Malaysia). Those are not the important facts, the important thing is that they serve durian buffet for only RM35 per adult, RM18 per child below age 12 and F.O.C for child below age 5.

Unlike D’ Paradise that served low quality durians or none at all (Read Jesslyn’s first hand experience of D’ Paradise by clicking here.), Sim Koa Yen up a notch by serving high grade durians such as “Red Prawn”, D24, “Jiabili”, “Cibei”, “Raja Kunyit” and etc.

They had such good reputations that Singaporeans would organize tours to pay the farm a visit. He even had customers from Taiwan too!

Finding the “entrance” was easy, but from the main road to the orchard, the 2.5km route took us almost 30 minutes, passing by rubber plantations, dragon fruit plantations, vast fields, lakes and chicken farm.

Finally, we saw some really big durians, waiting for the “ripe” time to drop. At the “station”, piles of durians were gathered at one corner, which were to be served later at a private function. Come to think of it, it could probably be my first visit to a durian orchard. Heh!

Instead of using chopping knife to open the durians, the owner has created a specially crafted “device” to pry those durians by just pressing down the handle. Seriously, opening a durian is as easy as ABC and probably takes less than 30 seconds to fully open it.

Since it was a buffet, we were served with a huge varieties of durians. From the dry to wet type, sweet to bitterish type, branded species to kampung species, you name it, they serve it. Considering that I didn’t manage to eat a single pulp of durian last year, I whacked as many as I could. My favourite got to be “Raja Kunyit”, sweet and creamy. My mum would probably prefer “Horlor”, wet and slightly bitter kind though.

Seriously, I never eat so much durians at one go in my life. I was there from 12.30pm until 3pm, all I ever did throughout my time there was, eat, eat, and eat. In fact, by the time I left the orchard, I already felt the heat inside me and my throat was acting funny.

Some artistic shot. :D

If you are a durian lover, like me, you should give it a try. One needs to make appointment before paying visit as they need to collect the durians before that.

Sim Koa Yen
MC-2-34 & MC-2-35,
Jalan SB Utama, Taman Seri Bayan,
76100 Durian Tunggal,
Alor Gajah, Melaka.

RM35 per adult.
RM18 per child (below age 12).
F.O.C per child (below age 5).

012-6816895 / 012-6786895 / 06-5532500 / 06-5532600 (Reservation is a MUST!)