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.

For reasons that I don’t know of, I was the only blogger who was invited by a PR agency (on behalf of California Pizza Kitchen) to attend a food tasting solely for the medias. Yes, you read it alright, the only blogger among a pool of KL media, magazine writers, journalists and photographers.

In KL itself, there are tonnes of hardcore food bloggers who have probably twice or even ten times more of my traffic, yet I was the only invited blogger. Weird huh? Anyway, I am not complaining, just that it would definitely satisfy my curiosity if I know the reason why I was invited. Again, I took the public transport and it was surely tiring even at non-peak hours.

After checking out the location on the information panel, I made my way to California Pizza Kitchen. I think it was two floors above Burger King and KFC, a floor above Dome and Chinoz in the Park, I think. Haha!

It’s the open kitchen concept again, kitchen on the left side while dining area is just on the other side. On the far right are full length glass panels that exhibit views of the KLCC park and fountains, while allowing natural sunlight to brighten up half the dining area at the same time. Dining area is huge, probably able to accommodate more than 150 diners at the same time, with a private room / section at the far end, which was “our place” for the day.

For your information, Nee has paid this American franchise a visit almost a year ago. That day, it was my turn.

California Pizza Kitchen has recently changed their menu and introduced new flavours for their salads, pastas, pizzas and desserts. Hence, the medias were invited for a food tasting session. Me? I am just a blogger, and bloggers don’t belong to the media category.

Seeing that all the mainstream media and magazines were there to write the same thing, I decided to take the less formal a.k.a the blogger approach to write my dining experience in California Pizza Kitchen. I was invited as a blogger, not as a journalist, remember?

First up was the Mediterranean Salad (RM22).

A chilled salad of cucumbers, red onions, fresh tomatoes and Greek olives tossed with crisp Romaine leaves and lemon-herb vinaigrette, served on a bed of hummus. Topped with Feta cheese, sun-dried tomatoes and homemade Tzatziki sauce and served with pita bread.

Add grilled rosemary chicken breast @ RM10 / sauteed salmon @ RM14.50 / grilled shrimp @ RM14.

I am a carnivore and eating salad is a really dreadful thing to me. It tasted pretty decent, but the feeling of eating grass kept on popping up and it was a few spoons later, I decided to skip this particular dish.

Second was the Miso Salad (RM22).

Shredded Napa cabbage with fresh avocado, julienne cucumbers, daikon, edamame, carrots, red cabbage, green onions, cilantro, crispy rice noodles and crispy wontons tossed in a Miso dressing. Served with chilled grilled chicken.

Add grilled shrimp @ RM14.

Now, this is a salad dish that I wouldn’t mind eating again. It was really crunchy due to the rice noodles, wontons, cabbage, cucumbers and other stuffs inside. It was more of like eating snacks than salads. The slices of chilled grilled chicken definitely boosts the dish’s value since it is also priced at RM22, same as the Mediterranean Salad without the chicken meat. Value and taste wise, Miso Salad definitely wins hands down!

California Pizza Kitchen doesn’t serve only pizzas, but also some noodles and spaghetti dishes. The three newly introduced specialties were the Pan Sauteed Salmon, Chicken Marsala and Chicken Piccata.

Pan Sauteed Salmon (RM32) definitely went well for my taste buds. I am not the kind of person who loves sourness in my food, hence, the sourness in the lemon-caper sauce wasn’t exactly my liking. However, if I were to take away the sourness from the spaghetti, I would definitely be whacking them like a hungry man who has starved for a day. I definitely love the lightly seasoned and pan sauteed Atlantic salmon, which was quite a big chunk to begin with.

Atlantic salmon lightly seasoned and pan sauteed. Accompanied with fresh grilled asparagus and spaghetti in a creamy lemon-caper sauce. Served blackened upon request.

The second speciality dish was the Chicken Marsala (RM30).

Thinly pounded chicken breast sauteed with fresh mushrooms and grilled asparagus in a marsala wine sauce. Served with linguini pasta.

This tasted better than I expected, although the marsala sauce part wasn’t my idea of marsala. The almost tasteless chicken fillet sort of became “alive” after I mixed it with the marsala sauce and linguini pasta and walloped it down my throat. If and only it has some spiciness in it, that would be really nice. The asparagus sort of lost its texture after being tossed together but the mushrooms made up for it.

While the Chicken Piccata (RM30) was not made towards to my liking due to the sourness in the lemon-caper (Duh!) sauce, a few mouthful of the noodles didn’t taste as bad as I initially expected. If you are one who can take sourness, this is a much better option for you compare to Chicken Marsala.

Thinly pounded chicken breast sauteed in a creamy lemon-caper sauce. Served with spaghetti pasta.

Every year, California Pizza Kitchen renews their menu with new flavours. This year, they have introduced three new pizzas, the Italian Tomato & Basil, The Works and Sicillian.

Italian Tomato & Basil (RM26) may sound really simple and nothing to shout about, as it only uses four main ingredients, Italian tomatoes, basil, Mozzarella cheese and Parmesan cheese, coupled with their own made tomato sauce. However, the taste definitely said the opposite thing. The slight and natural sourness of the Italian tomatoes, coupled with fresh basil and sinfully delicious Parmesan cheese, you get a saliva inducing and appetite opening pizzas.

Imported Italian tomatoes, Mozzarella cheese and our tomato sauce, topped with fresh basil and Parmesan cheese.

The lower right pizza inside the picture above is the Sicillian (RM32) pizza.

A spicy marinara sauce with sweet Italian beef and chicken sausage, spicy turkey salami, julienne beef salami, Fortina, Mozarella and Parmesan cheese. Topped with fresh oregano and basil.

Judging from the description above, that’s sure heck lots of ingredients used as the toppings for the pizza. No wonder it tasted so nice and I couldn’t help it but to eat not one, not two but three slices. By the time I finished taking my pictures, the pizzas served has already cooled down yet it still tasted really good. Imagine when it is served right after coming out from the oven, oh la la!

On the other hand, The Works (RM34) is a combination of the more common ingredients used in pizzas, such as the sweet Italian chicken and beef sausage, beef pepperoni, sauteed mushrooms, Mozzarella cheese, mild onions, green peppers, black olives and own made tomato sauce.

I wouldn’t say its super delicious or its really bad. Its somewhat in between of its counterparts. Definitely the ideal choice of pizza for those who prefer to go safe instead of being adventurous with the uncommon flavours.

Those were the main courses served that afternoon. Now, its time for desserts.

Red Velvet Cake (RM20)

Three layers of moist red velvet cake frosted with vanilla bean, cream cheese and white chocolate curls. Served on vanilla bean sauce.

It is a little bit sweet for my liking and the sweetness would definitely stop you from finishing the whole slice of cake. However, with the vanilla bean sauce and vanilla bean frost, the taste was definitely top notch.

Red velvet cake was the only new dessert by California Pizza Kitchen, but the guys served us with Chocolate Souffle RM25.50 and Tiramisu (RM25.50) as well.

A simple dessert like chocolate souffle will definitely not go wrong if one wants to be safe and order something bound to taste good. The brownies were definitely soft and moist, with strong flavour of chocolates in it. Together with the icy cold vanilla ice cream, you get the hot and cold feel inside your mouth, which is not a really good thing for your teeth but it is worth the risk.

The Tiramisu contained too much of rum, overpowering the coffee and cocoa flavours. The rum is supposed to be a passive ingredient, to bring out the taste of coffee and cocoa but not the other way round. While they got the texture just right, firm enough to stand on its own yet soft enough to immediately melt inside your mouth, the taste has to be improved.

Overall, it was a really satisfying food tasting session, definitely worth my trouble waking up early, taking the LRTs and coming up all the way to KL.
Will I return? Definitely.

California Pizza Kitchen
Lot No. 140, Level 1,
Suria KLCC,
Kuala Lumpur City Center,
50088 Kuala Lumpur.

Tel : (03) 23820512
Fax : (03) 23820516
Email : cpkoffice@po.jaring.my

P/S : Many thanks to Kelly Thean of Integrated Public Relations who invited me to the media food tasting and California Pizza Kitchen restaurant manager, Ronny Izwan, who hosted the lunch.

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.

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?”

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