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.

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.

Simon once told me about a famous Chinese restaurant in Serdang that serves some fried fish dish, which was eventually featured in The Star not too long after that.

According to the address, my friends and I ended up at this restaurant called Ya Lie, according to han yu pin yin that is. I wasn’t sure whether it was this restaurant featured by The Star and the one Simon referring to, but we decided to give it a try as there were quite a crowd at that moment.

Again, it’s another makeshift restaurant. Honestly, there are many houses in this new village that were converted into restaurants, shop lots, food courts and etc. You can see restaurants practically every where and at every corner inside this super packed new village.

There were also three cooks, just liked the Serdang Little Kitchen Restaurant that I blogged about few days back and the food was served in no time. I don’t know what 菜胆 is called in English, but it tasted average. We eat healthily, hence, the greens, not some stupid rip-you-off bean sprouts.

We ordered half herbal chicken, which tasted rather bland. The soup wasn’t boiled long enough to let the herbs release their flavour and the chicken wasn’t soft enough.

Deep fried calamaris with salted egg. What’s with salted egg? I just ate salted egg with bitter gourd the other day. Salted egg with Gardenia bread, anyone? It’s not pure salted egg anyway, as there were chunks of onions, gingers and spring onions, a mixture of everything. The calamaris weren’t crunchy either. Not that bad, but I might or might not order it again, depends.

Deep fried seafood tau fu. Didn’t I tell you that homemade seafood tau fu is so overrated these days that every single restaurant calls them his / her specialty when I suspect it all comes from the same supplier. Someone should start investigating the origin of the so called homemade seafood tau fu and bust it for once and for all. Average, for me.

Their specialty, stuffed ma yau ala yong tau fu style. Well, they took out all the meat from the fish, minced and turned them into fish paste, before stuffing it back to the fish to deep fry. Well, it tasted pretty much like those fish paste in yong tau fu. However, it has a firmer texture and more bouncy. Nice and definitely delicious.

The bill came to RM84 and all of us got a shock of our life. However, after getting into the car and talking about it, we came to a conclusion that it was within the reasonable range as we had half a chicken, sotongs and a fish. Overall, we had a pretty decent and fulfilling meal.

I joined Ah Kit and his house mates for dinner during one of the evenings when I was bunking at his place. They brought me to this makeshift-from-a-house restaurant smacked right in the middle of Seri Kembangan Chinese New Village. The restaurant’s name is 沙登小厨美食馆 which loosely translated into Serdang’s Little Kitchen Restaurant.

It used to be a house, but has been turned into a restaurant, with plenty of tables and guests. Judging from the number of guests, I was pretty sure that either the taste was above average or the price was very cheap. There was a constant flow of customers in the shop.

We placed our orders and with three chefs working in the kitchen, it wasn’t too long when our dishes were being served. In fact, it was very fast compared to the number of customers they had at that moment.

Stir fried salted eggs with bitter gourd. It wasn’t very salty as they used just the right amount of salted eggs. The bitter gourds weren’t bitter at all as the egg yolks wrapped around the slices of bitter gourds like a piece of cloth. The dish was dry, hence, the slight crunchiness on the vegetable. Nice, in fact, it’s my first time eating bitter gourd this way. Unique, indeed.

They also ordered their tau fu which tasted rather average. You know, those seafood tau fu that they claimed to be their specialty dish but you get to eat them at any other Chinese restaurant.

Their deep fried calamari was absolutely fantastic, finger licking and crunchy-licious. It was really crunchy and appetizing. It has to do with the batter they used, as it was light and not too flourish. It was so crunchy that I thought I was eating some crackers / snacks and not squids. Heh!

Our last dish was the pork ribs in two flavours, the sweet and sour and mayonnaises. Not something to shout about yet something not to miss out, as it tasted quite nice. Normal for the dish, but nice for the taste. The colours of the garnishings (the “smelly” leaves and fried garlics) did complement each other; red and green, white and brown.

Best of all, there was a bowl of free soup for every table. Although not some fancy soup, but its free and nobody’s complaining.

The bill came up to RM48 for a table of four. That’s a freaking RM12 for a decent dinner, with meats, vegetables and tau fu. I don’t think you can get this price anywhere in KL. Not only the food was good, the price was cheap, no wonder there were so many people flocking to their restaurants throughout the night.

Honestly, I am going back there again and I am going to order a lot more dishes since the price is just way too cheap to be ignored. Worth a visit? Definitely.

Tiuniasing, you can try this restaurant, really!