Denzuko and friends were in town. As usual, being the *coughs* unofficial *coughs* tour guide for most bloggers out there, I brought them around. It was pretty much the same but this time, I decided to board the Menara Taming Sari.

Well, thanks to our beloved Malacca chief minister who wanted to make Malacca into another Kuala Lumpur by “replicating” Mid Valley Megamall with Dataran Pahlawan Melaka Megamall, Eye on Malaysia with Eye on Malacca, we now have our own version of KL Tower, the Menara Taming Sari. Soon, we might even have our own version of KLCC.

It’s first proposed location was a stone throw away from the Malacca Clock Tower, which later resulted into the findings of the remaining or part of the A Famosa Fort / Porta De Santiago. It was then moved to the current location, which is next to Dataran Pahlawan Melaka Megamall.

Standing tall at 110m, you are going to have a bird eye’s view of Bandar Hilir, Malacca Old Town and Plaza Mahkota.

There are 66 seats inside the “container” (What’s the proper word for it?) and is fully air conditioned. Lets hope they will service the air conditioners from time to time, else its going to be really stuffy inside. It is powered by some big ass machines and motors that don’t look cool or high tech at all.

One minute to go up, another five minutes to spin at the top and another one minute to descend. How much are you going to pay for that boring seven minutes ride? RM10 if you have your MyKad with you. If you don’t, it’s freaking RM20! What a ripoff!

The view? Totally bleargh.

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.

It was a not too hot afternoon when Yih Tian called and asked to meet up for a cup of coffee as she needed my help to fix her notebook. After our cup of coffee at Old Taste Kopitiam, we headed out to Plaza Mahkota and ended up at Ming Sate Hut for some pork satay. Pork satay is very common in Malacca and you just need to drive around to look for it. Currently, there are more than four places that serve pork satay and Ming Sate Hut is just one of them.

Ming Sate hut is just few doors before Nadeje Patisserie.

There were no customers when we first seated, however, after few minutes, there were more and more customers coming in. I think it has something to do with me, really! It happened many times already. Heh! Anyway, nothing fancy about the shop and everything is down right simple.

While I am fine with paying RM1.00 for a plate of ketupats, I don’t really agree with the idea of paying RM0.50 for the cucumbers and onions, which are supposed to be given for free. This gesture makes them look bad and very profit minded, in my opinion.

One thing I find weird about the peanut sauce in Malacca is that they like to put pineapple inside to make the sauce tastes sour. I don’t really like it as I always think that I am eating some left overnight and spoiled peanut sauce instead of the aromatic, oily and a wee bit of spicy peanut sauce. It’s an acquired taste.

Then, you wait… And wait… And wait.

Finally, here comes the satays.

While I have eaten better ones, these aren’t that bad actually. Nicely marinated, tender and succulent. It has this charcoal burnt texture on it, rough on the tongue but delicious. A thin layer of natural pork fat is sandwiched between two pieces of meat. Hence, for the girls, you might want to take the time to take it off before you gobble it down.

Not too bad, but there are better ones out there. I heard the one at Jalan Kuli and Ranger College are quite good too.

It was Yih Tian’s birthday and the girls (Yih Tian, Pei San, Suet Lei and Sha Ly) called for a lunch gathering to celebrate her birthday on a lovely Sunday afternoon.

They chose Wok & Pan Restaurant, which is just opposite Nadeje Patisserie at Plaza Mahkota. It’s at the corner lot and painted in bright orange.

The shop is rather small and obviously, they tried to pack in as many tables as possible. Hence, the restaurant is rather cramped and the not-really-working air conditioners aren’t really helping at all. Moreover, the tables are really small especially when the tables are all occupied, fulled with dishes and drinks. It isn’t a really comfortable place if you want to have a nice meal and chit chat after that.

The chef used to work in one of the hotels in Malacca before he resigned and started this restaurant. You basically can get everything from pastas to steaks or Nyonya foods to Chinese cuisines in their menu. However, taste wise isn’t really that great. The steaks’ price aren’t as expensive as Rock & Roll Blues Cafe, but its still on the high side, roughly RM20+.

Anyway, we placed our orders not long after being seated. The girls also took the time to pass Yih Tian her birthday present, a necklace from VOIR. It’s a black coloured dragonfly pendant.

Food was served rather quickly, I would say. We ordered lamb shanks, rib eye steak, pork chop, chicken chop and salmon fish chop, all in different gravies. Craps! I took everyone’s dishes except my rib eye steaks. I am getting really forgetful these days. Sighs.

That aside, we also ordered two bowls of mushroom soup and garlic bread. The mushroom soup tasted really nice and it’s really thick too. Most likely it’s home cooked too. However, the garlic bread sucked totally. There’s no garlic taste in it and the breads weren’t crunchy at all.

First up was the deep fried chicken chop with secret Hainanese sauce. A lot of flour has been used to coat the chicken before being deep fried. Hence, the chicken may looked big but actually it wasn’t. The sauce tasted something like sweet and sour sauce and certainly, there’s no secret in it. Suet Lei said a restaurant back in Tampin could cook better chicken chop than that.

The salmon was quite fresh and didn’t has the over powering fishy smell. It was grilled till it’s slightly burnt on the outside, sealing the freshness and juiciness of the white meat. The sauce was creamy and tasted fairly good. I can’t recall what sauce was it but not bad.

I certainly didn’t like the lamb shank at all. The sauce was awful and the meat wasn’t tender as it should be. I don’t recommend this dish at all. Enough said.

Then, it was the pork chop with sauce made from herbs and spices. The herbal sauce tasted not bad and I quite like it. However, the pork was over cooked and rather difficult to chew. More over, part of the meat were pork ribs and that certainly not helping.

For my rib eye steak, it wasn’t as good as the one I had at Rock & Roll Blues Cafe. The rib eye wasn’t really rib eyes although it looked like one. The meat was sort of chunky, rough and patty like whereas it should be firm. However, the red wine sauce was good though.

Another two things that I really don’t like were their coleslaws and fries that came along with our chops and steaks. The coleslaws tasted like craps and has big chunks of cabbage instead of finely chopped ones. On top of that, the amount of mayonnaise in it was really pathetic. As for the fries, it was those cheap tiny fries that you can buy at any regular supermarkets. These fries don’t taste good at all and I am expecting freshly cut and own made fries.

The bill came up to RM108. Not too bad for the food, but the food could have been very much better because the chef used to work in a hotel.

We then walked over to Nadeje Patisserie to have some cakes and drinks.

Note : Please read “The Downfall of Nadeje Patisserie” before you proceed to avoid any disappointment.

About 5 months ago, I blogged about Nadeje Patisserie; a cake shop that sells only one type of cake, Mille Crepe. It started out with 1 shop lot, with nothing much to offer except Mille Crepe. In fact, it didn’t have tables and chairs for you to dine in.

5 months later, it is now a cafe that operates on 2 shop lots. Woods are used in its interior design to give the cafe a classic yet classy look. Paintings collected by Nozomi (The owner of Nadeje Patisserie.) while she was traveling around the world are hung on the wall. Teapots, glasses and wines of her collection are put on display at the cabinet. Other than sofas at one corner, tatami are used as the “cushion” for the chairs.

Beverages like apple tea, strawberry tea, berry berry tea, matcha milk, ginger ale, strawberry milkshake, paper dripped coffee and etc. are there for you to chose from. What makes them so special is that their drinks are all home made, no artificial flavouring and made from fresh ingredients. The tea leaves are imported from Japan as well. The pastes and tea leaves are prepared by Nozomi herself.

When I opened those containers, immediately, the smell is fragrant, strong and refreshing. Take the mango paste, when you smell it, immediately you will know it is made from 100% mango, with no extra water to dilute it. At least 2 weeks are required to prepare the pastes or tea leaves. The first picture is ginger ale, star fruit and mango.

Apart from the original flavoured and cheese flavoured Mille Crepe, Amos (chief chef) has introduced 3 new cakes - green tea flavoured Mille Crepe, chocola-chocolat and fruit tart cake. I have yet to try the green tea flavoured Mille Crepe, but according to one of my friends, he said it tasted equally good as well.

Chocola-Chocolat is, well, chocolate cake. However, it has 2 layers. The bottom layer is made using bitter chocolate while the upper layer is made from sweet chocolate. Again, I have yet to try it out. As for its fruit tart cake, its a fruit tart in cake form. However, the custard and almond pudding are the things that you should really take note of when you bite it.

On weekends, there are special items on the menu. For last Sunday, it was Creme Brulee, ice cream with a slice of Mille Crepe. Creme Brulee is something like pudding, but has slightly different texture but a totally different taste. It is caramelized custard, originated from France. The top part is slightly burnt to give it the cripsy texture and also to let out its aroma. The ice cream is home made ice cream, very rich in flavour. Who needs Baskin Robin, Haagen Daz or Lecka-Lecka (Malacca doesn’t have Haagen Daz and Lecka-Lecka.) when we have Nadeje’s special home made ice cream?

Another specialty of theirs is the bagel. Bagel is a type of bread, obviously. Before the dough is fully raised by the yeast, it is dropped into a pot of boiling water to stop the yeast from raising the dough anymore. This way, the outer surface of the bread would be cripsy yet on the inside, it would be soft and fluffy, chewy too.

You have japanese curry, potato croquette, tuna and few more for you to choose to go with the bagel, served with 2 side dishes, stir fried potatoes and home made coleslaw / salad. The coleslaw / salad is not the one you get from KFC or any other fast food outlet, it tasted different, in terms of taste and texture.

If you want to have a complete meal (lunch or dinner), this is not the place as they don’t have much to offer in terms of food. However, if you want to find a very comfortable and cooling place to sit down, chill out, listen to some jazz music, have a slice of cake and chit chat with your friends, this is the place to be. Apart from their cakes, their bagel is just perfect during tea time. However, the bagel might be a complete meal for the girls, but definitely not for a guy, especially people like me.

However, the price for a round of tea / snack isn’t cheap at all. Their special beverages (Other than canned drinks, ‘ordinary’ coffee and tea.) will set you around RM7 to RM9. The bagel set will set you around RM14.50 to RM16.50. A slice of cake will cost you around RM6.50 to RM7. Hence, your tea will most likely cost you around RM20 to RM25. Even the cheapest set is priced RM11. Not cheap, I would say.

Unless someone special, friends, friends not from Malacca are in town, I don’t think I want to have my tea with my friends here. At least, not until they have a full menu that consists of food, not only cakes and breads.

Miscellaneous pictures that I took while I was in the cafe.

-coughs coughs-

Amos Chong, chief chef of Nadeje Patisserie.

Michelle, fresh graduate from MMU, one of the waitresses. The power of 12X optical zoom. -wink-

Bagel set with Japanese curry.

A bottle of chilled wine? Soda? Moet (meas champagne) was written on the bucket though.

Some decoration item on the tables.