After my first visit to Dynasty Ice N’ Snacks, I knew I might pay them another visit, just didn’t know when. By chance, I wanted to go Cheng to collect something from a friend and without hesitation, I picked this cafe for my dinner place.

As promised, the cafe introduces new dishes and beverages every month and I was delighted to see more varieties this time. There were about 20 different food and drinks introduced within the span of two months. Probably the less popular items during the previous month are removed and replaced with new ones, and the cycle repeats itself till the menu is filled with good stuffs.

After some pondering, we ordered our stuffs and it didn’t take long for the food to be served. First up was the fish balls and spring rolls varieties, or more widely known as “Wu Xiang 五香”.

This dish definitely didn’t pass my standard. Not only the very diluted sweet sauce tasted weird, the fish balls didn’t have any texture or springiness in it. It was like eating mashed potatoes, soft and mushy. The crackers weren’t as bad as the fish balls though.

The Xia Men Spring Rolls 厦门春卷…

Was absolutely finger licking good. Crunchy on the outside, soft and meaty on the inside. It was like a fusion of nuggets and meatballs. Yes, meatballs covered with batter and then deep fried. It cannot be anymore awesome than that. This is going to be my must-order-item if I dine here in the future.

Another note though, chilies sauce goes better with this finger food than the sweet and sour sauce they provided. Isaac, do you sell ready made ones so that I can deep fry them myself? Ha!

Jian had the lemon grass chicken with rice set meal, that came with a free drink with every order.

The sauce used to marinate the chicken tasted really or closely resembled or perhaps was the same sauce used to marinate satays. I told Jian that they should have grilled the chicken on a BBQ pit instead of pan fried it to give the chicken a satay- taste and feel. Not too bad, as I managed to taste a bit by sneaking up on Jian’s plate.

I went for something normal, seafood fried rice, which turned out really delicious after all. There were quite a reasonable amount of meat, squids, a few tiny prawns. It was served with a small plate of coleslaw and sambal. The rice were fluffy and didn’t stick together into a lump. Prawns were really small though, an upgrade to a slightly bigger prawn with a cut down of the number of prawns in a plate would be better.

The owner, Isaac, was kind enough to let me sample another in house specialty of theirs free of charge, the Sze Chuan Hot & Spicy Soup 四川麻辣汤.

Issac : “The soup is really hot and we have toned it down to suit Malaysians’ taste buds. If you can take spicy food, I can cook the original version of it.”

Jason : “How spicy can it be, right? Give us the original one.”

Considering that I came from a family who eats chilies almost on daily basis, how spicy can outside food be, right?

How wrong I was and I went o.0””’ when I saw the pot of soup being served on our table.

A close up.

Yes, those red tiny dots were cili padis. Shit loads of them. Moreover, the amount of chili oil on top of the soup was “remarkable”.

Jian and I were literally sweating off while drinking the soup and finishing the fish fillets and potatoes in it. The soup was boiled using fish fillets, potatoes, cabbages, Japanese cucumbers, herbs and spices imported from Sze Chuan and other ingredients. Knowing that if I drink too much, I would definitely be having diarrhea the next day. I stopped drinking, fearing that it would affect my events tomorrow.

Honestly, it was horrifying. Haha! Yet, it was quite an experience to be able to taste the true Sze Chuan Hot & Spicy soup. It was numb-fying and definitely lived up to its name.

Last but not least, it was my chilled double boiled white fungus with red dates and lychees.

Instead of just putting ice into a bowl or chilling it before serving, Isaac went the extra mile by buying a bigger half-bowl to make ice around the tub containing the dessert. Here’s a close up picture for better description. The layer around the container wasn’t just water but ice.

The icy cold dessert was just nice to wash down the numb and spicy feeling that lingered on my tongue and lips. Just the right sweetness, coupled with generous amount of white fungus, red dates and two lychees (from those canned lychees), the price of RM3.50 was definitely justifiable.

The bill came up to RM26.15, including 5% service tax. Do take note that the Sze Chuan Hot & Spicy soup was on the house. Again, reasonably priced and I am definitely coming back for more. If you are a Malaccan and looking for good food, this is one of eateries that you can consider, albeit the distance.

Jian and I headed to town for Amber Chia’s Mahkota Fashion Runway and before heading back to Bukit Beruang, we decided to have something else for dinner. Jian suggested East Garden at Melaka Raya and since I couldn’t come up with anything else, I took his suggestion.

It sure looks like any other cafe in town. The good thing is that it doesn’t smell smokey inside the cafe. On one corner, there’s a work station, which I am not too sure whether one can use it to surf the internet or not. There’s free wifi and newspapers / magazines placed around for diners to surf or read while waiting or having their meal.

Two page menu for food and drinks. Nothing special, nothing significant, nothing different.

Jian ordered a glass of Tiramisu (Yeah, tiramisu has became a drink. WTF!) while I had plain water.

Bored while waiting for our food, I snapped around.

The waiter recommended their fried chicken chop, with different sauce to go along with it. I had one with thousand islands sauce while Jian had his with sweet and sour sauce with sesame seeds. It is served with barely a spoonful of coleslaw, handful of fries and some lettuces, cucumbers and tomatoes for garnishing. Well, its tasted not too bad, but it’s plain normal at the same time.

I had warm longan with white fungus for dessert. It tasted pretty decent, with generous amount of longan inside.

The bill came up to roughly RM25 for the both of us. It wasn’t as expensive as I expected and for the price I am paying, I am not going to be very picky with the taste.

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

I am so lazy to write a separate blog post for this eatery, hence, I shall just post as it is, a raw (yet to be edited) copy of my food-related news story. After running / driving around Malacca town for five events in two days continuously, and trying to rush all the stories at one go, this is what I have written or able to vomit out. I foresee my editor will be asking me to rewrite the story.

My verdict?

The lamb shank he served me the other day was a little over cooked and difficult to chew. You should request / remind him when you order the dish to avoid my incident. While the price are still somewhat reasonable for Malacca’s standard, I don’t see the reason for tourists to dine in a hotel’s cafe when they are spoilt with and have so many options of local street stalls.

Meeting Place 123 is the newly established restaurant by Emperor Hotel, providing the locals and foreign tourists a new casual dining place to have their favourite street food, authentic Nyonya dishes and also the western chops and grills.

“We may serve a huge variety of food, but what makes us stand out is our unbeatable price.

“The café is run by the F&B department of the hotel, but the price is definitely street price,” said Meeting Place 123’s manager, Peter Ang.

On the menu are delicacies and desserts from local Mamak, Chinese, Malay, Peranakan, Nyonya, American and even Italians.

Standing out from the rest are none other than the restaurant’s signature dishes, the lamb Shank ‘Harissa’.

With more than 10 kinds of herbs and spices used to marinate the lamb shank overnight, rest assured that the meat has fully absorbed the unique taste of herbs like thymes, rosemary, basil, cinnamon, star anise, mustard, fennel and cumin.

The slight saltiness in it, combined with the tender and juicy mutton, will excite your taste bud and appetite easily. It does not end there; there is a hint of spiciness and numbness left around your tongue after that.

“I created the sauce myself after many trials and combinations of the herbs and spices,” said the main chef, Ignatius De Silva who has more than 26 years of cooking experience.

Cajun chicken is also another specialty, where chicken breast meat is seasoned with Cajun spices and seared to perfection.

For the health consious or dieting individuals, you can try the Perch Fish Mirelle, where fish fillet are deep fried and then served with tomato coulis and bearnaise sauce.

“We also have otak-otak, top hat, spaghetti olio, fried rice, char kuey toew, nyonya laksa, lemon grass squids, chicken pong teh, Chuan An fish, asam prawns and even roti canai,” added Ignatius.

Apart from serving delicious food, Meeting Place 123 also serves as a place for English Premier League fans to gather and watch their games on the huge projector television.

“Weekends are EPL Nighs and there are special promotion for the beers and tidbits for football fans,” added Ang.

Apart from beers, they also serve a variety of imported house wines, mocktails and cocktails, all personally prepared by Ang himself.

He also added that there are different promotions for different days of the week, such as ladies’ night, travel trade night, bankers’ night and chilled out nights.

Meeting Place 123
The Emperor Hotel Malacca
123, Jalan Munshi Abdullah,
75100, Melaka.

06-2840777

Bad, right?

While I have personally visited Asian Havana Cafe twice (first and second), it was my third visit that I came in the name of work and that means free food.

As I have written about them before and feeling lazy (again), I shall just post a raw (unedited) copy of my write up on Asian Havana Cafe. It’s tiring and brain exhausting to write the same topic / material twice with two different style and yet have the same points, you know?

While other cafes are die trying to woo tourists and locals with authentic Nyonya, Portuguese and Hainanese food, Calvin Loke dares to be different by introducing authentic western and fusion dishes to the local food scene through Asian Havana Café.

“The western foods here have been localized to suit the taste buds of Malaysians and have lost the basic elements like fibers, proteins, vitamins, carbohydrates and minerals.

“I not only retain the basic elements, I also emphasize on the foods’ presentations, textures and retaining the true essence of western food. In fact, I have improvised it and created a whole new fusion menu,” said Loke who started the restaurant in 2004 after returning from the states.

Capital of Cuba, Havana, is very similar to Malacca when it comes to the historical values, colonization history, cultures and peoples.

It was from there where Loke got his idea of naming his restaurant, Asian Havana Café, intending to recreate an Asian version of the Havana in Malaysia.

“Everything is made using the freshest ingredients and from scratch, with no artificial flavouring and preservatives used,” added Loke.

One could expect a huge variety and extensive menu of food and beverages, serving a wide array of local, western and fusion main courses, cakes and desserts, coffee and other beverages.

Best sellers and top favourites among the customers are Havana chicken cordon bleu, seafood baked carbonara, pan fried miso fillet, saba teriyaki, pad Thai Noodles and Thai pineapple fried rice.

Seafood baked carbonara is highly recommended to those who like strong and milky sauce to go along with their spaghetti.

Unlike most carbonara, mozzarella cheese are melted evenly on top of the noodles and seafood like mussels, prawns, clams, fish fillets, bamboo clams and slices of Australian giant squids.

“The combination of cheese and carbonara is the best, complementing each other and bringing out the full flavor of both ingredients, creamy and cheesy simultaneously,” said Loke.

To avoid the customers complaining that the chicken breast meat used in the Havana chicken cordon blue are too dry, Loke added layers of ham and mozzarella cheese in it before rolling them together to keep the meat moist and juicy. The meat is then wrapped with bread crumbs and deep fried.

You get two different textures combined into one, absolute crunchiness on the outside, soft, creamy and succulent meat on the inside.

Served together with spaghetti noodles and homemade Napolitana sauce as the base sauce, the sweet yet with a tiny bit of sourness sauce does a great job in opening up your appetite.

“We got ourselves a Thai chef to teach us the original and better way to cook Thai style pineapple fried rice and the key to a good plate of pineapple fried rice lies within the amount of turmeric powder used,” pointed out Loke.

Just the right amount of turmeric powder is used to bring out yet not overpower the taste of the fragrant rice and mixed seafood inside the dish. Raisins, sultanas and spring onions are used to garnish and add more colours to the fried rice.

Another specialty of Asian Havana Café is the flourless cheese cakes, mainly the white chocolate, dark chocolate with orange, Baileys’ Irish cream and the almond and orange cheese cake are a must try for diners to complete a wholesome meal.

“Only a flourless cheese cake is able to produce a pure, soft, moist and non sticky cake texture. It should melt in your mouth,” said Loke.

There are different promotions throughout the week, with coffee lovers’ day taking the lead on Monday, “Ho Cake Ah” on Tuesday, Queens’ day on Wednesday, sport days on Thursday, chill out Friday, “Yummm Sengggg!” on Saturday and hot plate Sunday.

On Fridays and Saturdays, diners can even order freshly made and rolled sushis starting from 7pm till 11pm.

Asian Havana Café
No. 2 & 4, Jalan Melaka Raya 26,
Taman Melaka Raya,
75000 Melaka.

06-2827117

Flaunt your student card and you are entitled to 10% discount, that was what I remembered during my last visit. Heh!