Grella's, new western food joint at SS19

Grella's tagline is 'Lambs, Burgers and Chics', which means their food choices are kind of limited to those, but that's not necessarily a bad thing as what they do serve is quite good. From what I can tell, it's a local business and not a franchise, so I think they deserve a bit more support as the food is worth trying.




I went with a friend and I tried the lambchop while she had a beef burger. No complaints whatsoever, as the lamb and beef burger patties were well flavoured and juicy as they should be. We shared a brownie with ice cream for desert, which tasted a bit harder than I think it should be, I guess coz' it's the frozen type brownie and not freshly made. As the place is still new, the owners are open to comments about their food, and the guy I talked to at least was friendly.
Price of lambchop and burger was around RM16 to RM18, and brownie around RM7, if I remember right.
Check out their FB page here!

Grella's, new western food joint at SS19

Makan-makan at Moe de Cafe

Gosh, I'm posting so much about food, this could almost be a food blog. And I wonder why I'm putting on weight. Duh.

So in my last post I wanted to talk about my visit to Moe De Cafe at Sunway Giza with some buddies. And I also mentioned that this cafe is having a Month of Maids theme where all the waitresses wear maid costumes. Well, I kidded you not, here's the pic to prove it!

They come in cute fluffy slippers too! The girl in pink was our waitress, and she wasn't too happy about me taking a pic of her (I guess they must get a lot of people taking pics of them. Heh!). But she was still nice about it.

The cafe sells quite a lot of food, both local and western, at pretty reasonable prices. I ordered a bowl of ramen noodles with seafood, which came at RM12.90 for a big bowl, and it tasted pretty good. Came with some nice big juicy prawns, a mussel, and some squid.


Damien, ie. the Damester, ordered a plate of cheese baked rice with beef, which was also pretty good, and looks like so.

Sonia and Meag Yean order cheese baked rice with chicken wings, which looks like the above except there are chicken wings and not beef. Go figure. The one with beef cost RM13.90, while the one with chicken was only RM12.90. Not too bad for cheese baked rice. Another buddy, Chee Yim, ordered a bento box. Which looked like this.

I'm not a big fan of bento boxes, but this looked pretty ok. I didn't manage to get her opinion of it though. I also ordered some fried soft-shelled crabs as a snack. These cost RM10.90 and tasted quite yummy.

Drinks were pretty good as well. The cafe is having a promotion where all drinks are 50% off for the whole month, so a drink like the following red bean yam drink which usually costs RM6 (or something like that) came at half price).


I ordered a cool looking blue ocean, which comes with vanilla ice cream.
The Damester ordered something else at first, but was told it wasn't available so he ordered the same thing as me. Then the naughty guy started playing with his food.

We both liked our blue ocean!

Oh yeah, they had a cute ash tray in the shape of a robot kitty cat. That was cute too. :)

So I have no gripes about the food or service, however, some things I and my buddies didn't like was that the menu font was red against a black background, and the lighting at the place was dim, which made the menu so difficult to read. At least it had pictures. Another gripe is that most of the drinks listed in the menu were not available at least 3 or 4 pages worth of drinks! Like WAT duh.... And apparently certain drinks become unavailable after 9pm . According to the waitress this is because the drinks run out at the time, but we suspect it's more likely coz' they want to sell beer after 9pm.

Another weird thing is that the first table we sat at, the seats were too low and too cushy that we sank into the seats, and we knew this would be it too uncomfortable to eat. So we moved to another table with hard chairs, and this was fine. They seriously need to look into changing those green seats.

But otherwise, I thought the place was ok. Maybe the food was not spectacular, but good enough for the price. Hope I get more chances to try the other restaurants at Sunway Giza... all in due time, com-padres !

Makan-makan at Moe de Cafe

Pizza that looks like ice cream???

That's pretty much how I would describe Cone Pizza, which is being sold at this cozy little shop of the same name which I went to visit at Kota Damansara. Basically, as the name suggests, the main food served are pizzas, but not traditional flat and round pizzas, but pizzas in the shape of a cone! The crust is hard, and the cone is filled with the pizza toppings. So it's tastes pretty much like a normal pizza, but you eat it like an ice cream. Nifty concept, eh?

So the one I tried was the Hot & Spicy Chicken pizza, which on the website looks like this:


But in real life, it comes out looking like this:
The top layer is cheese, and the juicy fillings are all underneath, as shown below once the cheezy top layer went into my tummy.

As small as it looks, one cone pizza is actually quite filling. So if you have a couple of friends along, like I did, all you need is to order one cone, and maybe share a pasta if you have a big-ish appetite, plus a drink, and you're good to go. My two buddies and I order a couple more plates of pasta (one was kid's size). The pasta was not particularly special, although pretty good as well. Unfortunately I didn't bother to take photos coz' I was too amused with the cone pizza. One of these babies cost about RM9 to RM11, depending on what you order. Pasta also costs just a little more, again depending on what you order, so the prices are pretty reasonable. All in all, between the 3 of us, we paid about RM17 each for two cone pizzas, one regular pasta, one kid's size pasta, 3 drinks and a bowl of mushroom soup.

Check out the website for more yummy offerings. Definitely an interesting new thing to try. ;)

Pizza that looks like ice cream???

Ninjas need burgers too, HAI!

I've just been out and about reading other people's blogs. And reading other people's blogs have inspired me to get out these lazy fingers and start blogging again. Let's see how long this holds up, people.

Some time ago I popped by Tropicana Mall at Damansara for a dog carnival. My folks brought my pampered mutt of a shih tzu there, where she proceeded to bark at every dog that came within one meter of her. Friendly dog she is. Anyway, I'll save the pooch pics for later. I wanna ramble about a cute little food joint I visited there called Ninja Joe.

As the name does not imply, Ninja Joe sells Western food. Very limited choices of western food. Specifically pork burgers (they don't call them ham burgers here in Malaysia although technically it's the same thing ...actually it's the first time I've seen any burgers with any pork/ham in Malaysia! There's a reason for that which doesn't take much to figure out). They also sell french fries, lemonade or green tea, as well as 'shurikens' (pork fried with potatoes). And the number of pork burgers you get depends on the number of ninjas you bring along. If you are solo ninja, you buy one burger. If you are two ninjas, you get two burgers. If you are big boss, you get big burger. Observe the menu as follows.



There is also a nice ninja lady serving at the counter. Well, just a lady in a kimodo. That doesn't really count as a ninja, but at least it's Japanese-y.


Not sure what was up with the transformers pic on the wall though.

Maybe ninjas learned how to transform! :D


And here was what I ordered. A humble pork burger, lemonade and french fries.

If you're thinking that burger looks kinda small, you are CORRECT. It was dang small for RM5.50. Although I would say the pork patty was nice. But not nice enough for RM5.50. The french fries did not taste particularly special, like something you can buy at the supermarket and fry yourself at home. And the lemonade, well it was different from what other fast food joints had to offer, so that's ok.

So all in all, the food was not that great although the concept is interesting. Like what do ninjas have to do with burgers and fries? Why, absolutely nothing! That's why it's COOL.

My friend Walter was also ranting about Ninja Joe on his Gmail Buzz, so here was our buzzy conversation:


Walter - Complaining

I have a complain to make. There was this really horrible place I went last week (or so) and I was suppose to give it a review.

But..

I can't remember where it is or what happened..

Ugh..

That being said, Ninja Joe sucks. Only the patty tastes decent. Everything else is horrible (especially the shop, it looks so nice from outside).

Yes, this post is for not posting for so long. HahA!

Carol - I just went to Ninja Joe last Sunday at Tropicana Mall. Burger is small and pretty pricey, just the meat is nice, that's about it.

Walter - Hey! I have exactly the same thoughts!!

But worse. The kitchen is extremely disgusting and the person serving seems to have some sort of horrible mood yesterday

Carol - I didn't see the kitchen. How did you manage to see the kitchen?

I haven't tried to shurikens though. Are they any good?

Walter - No idea. I only had a big boss and lemonade and fries. The fries = yuck.

Carol - the fries were normal lah. I wouldn't say yuck.

Walter - well it was yuck for me. It was dry.

Carol -

tastes like something you could buy off the supermarket and fry yourself, that's all.

wouldn't mind trying the shurikens next time.

Therefore it has been doubly confirmed that the food is not that great. But I have no comment on the shurikens coz' I haven't tried them.

You have been warned, ninja-san!

Ninjas need burgers too, HAI!

The Amazing Ipoh Trip - Part 3 (FOOD Glorious Food!)

Sorry for the delay on Part 3 of the amazing Ipoh trip. I just got back from an 8-day trip in Indonesia and Bangkok for work again, where as usual I suffer severe internet deprivation (I’m seriously wondering if I should invest in a Blackberry now…). Although I did get to spend the weekend in Bangkok and visit a couple of places, as well as come down with another bout of food poisoning where I threw up in somewhere in Chatuchak market. Hmmm, wonderful way to start a post about food, eh? But I’ll save that wonderful experience for another post.

So the one thing famous about Ipoh which every true blue Malaysian Chinese should know is the food. Not, to be discriminatory or anything, it’s just that the only thing my family ever does eat in Ipoh is the Chinese food and far as I know or care, there’s no other type of food in Ipoh. :P And the first place my parents also zeroes into once we reach Ipoh is this really old school place called Restaurant Tuck Kee, along Jalan Yau Tet Shin at New Town, Ipoh. Unfortunately if you were to ask me how to get there I wouldn't have a clue coz' my dad always does all the driving around in Ipoh and I just sit in the car, usually asleep or half asleep. So if you wanna try the place, have plenty of time on your hands and feeling adventurous, you could take a road trip and drive around Ipoh town til you find it. If it makes it easier, the restaurant looks like this:

However, be warned that there is another restaurant along the same road with the same name, apparently a spin-off of this one, but since it’s not the 'original shop', we never go there. Coz' you know... if it ain't original, it ain't good, or at least that's the general consensus. Just remember the original shop is on the left of the unoriginal shop, and you should be fine.

Once here, we only order the same dishes, which are Fried Kuey Teow, Fried Mee Hoon and ‘Wa Tan Hor’ (flat rice noodles in egg soup), and sometimes bean sprouts, but we skipped that this time round.

Hmmm… Just looking at the pics makes me start hankering for this stuff. And if you’re thinking it all looks really greasy and unhealthy, well, IT IS. It’s all fried in a very un-healthy and un-halal amount of pig’s lard to make it taste like no other fried noodles I’ve ever tasted. Yum! Plus the flat rice noodles (kuey teow) are really nice and smooth, which makes it better. Not something you eat on a regular basis unless you don’t mind looking like the State Puff Marshmallow Man. Nevertheless, taste-wise, I think no other fried noodles in KL, Malaysia or the whole world can compare to this. *Drool!* And of course, my whole family loves it, so much that my brother had to give his 'I'm-so-full-of-good-but-unhealthy-food' look.

Somehow or another that also looks like a 'I-really-need-to-use-the-bathroom' look. Ah well, he enjoyed the food, that's the main thing.

Another unavoidable stop on our ‘makan’ trip is Ipoh’s famous Chee Cheong Fun, which in English would be something like flat rice noodles topped with any kind of sauce, although common sauces used are chilli sauce, soy sauce, sweet sauce or mushroom sauce. Now there are several places in Ipoh that sell really good Chee Cheong Fun, one of which is from another old school shop, quite near to Restorant Tuck Kee, sold by this Chinese lady who recognizes my family even after all these years, coz’ we used to visit her stall often. Here she is, chopping up the Chee Cheong Fun, which initially is made as sheets of flat rice, to make the shape of flat noodles (any self-respecting Chinese would know this, of course, but just in case you’re not one. :) ).

My dad also took us to this other Chee Cheong Fun shop, which is actually the owner’s house, where her noodles sell so well, we has to take orders in advance and then the person ordering can only collect it 2 or 3 hours later. Just goes to show how crazy Ipoh people are about their Chee Cheong Fun! Unfortunately I didn’t get a pic of this other place, and even worse, I forgot to take a pic of the Chee Cheong Fun itself before wolfing it down. But Ipoh Chee Cheong Fun is so famous, that pretty much anywhere you find it, I’m sure it’ll be good.

The next place we visited this trip was one we don’t really consider compulsory but of course the food is still good – meatball and fishball noodles. We actually ate this right after we had our Chee Cheong Fun for breakfast (just so we could get a taste of everything!). So here’s the dingy looking shop where we ate:

Another important thing is Ipoh is... never doubt the dingy looking shops. They usually sell the best food. Perhaps not the cleanest, but the best. And here are the owners of the meatball noodle stall doing their thing.

We came a bit late, so the amount of meatballs and fishballs left wasn’t much, but thankfully there was still enough for us.

The meatballs and fishballs are all homemade, so they have a bit of a weird shape as opposed to processed ones, but of course they taste much better than processed ones.

Another place we went to, but again I committed the cardinal sin of forgetting to photograph the food, is this rather famous chicken rice shop called Lou Wong Beansprout and Chicken, which is also just down the street from Restaurant Tuck Kee (everything’s located so conveniently close to each other, you could have a whole day ‘makan trip’ right there in that small part of new Ipoh town. :) ). The shop not only serves chicken rice, but also pork balls, beansprouts and noodles (and God knows some other stuff we didn’t order). And as you would expect, everything there tastes awesome too. As with most chicken rice shops, you can choose between roasted chicken and white chicken… we went for the latter and the white chicken was juicy and tender. The pork balls came in a pretty generous helping, and since I’m totally in love with pork balls, I wasted no time in wolfing that down too. Man, I can’t believe I forgot to take photos!

So after enjoying enough of good Ipoh to last us… a while, my family decided on our last day there that we ought to give our tummies a break and eat something healthy for a change. So while hanging out at Jusco Ipoh, my dad bought some ‘jambu merah’ and ‘lo hong ka’ drinks. Unfortunately I don’t know what the English name for ‘jambu merah’, but the ones we bought tasted kinda like apples, but softer, and were juicy and sweet (even the fruits in Ipoh taste wonderful!)… and they looked like this.

‘Lo Hong Ka’ is a Chinese name for Aloe Vera drink (or at least, that’s my deduction coz’ that’s what it read on the bottle label). I don’t usually drink this kind of traditional stuff, but was pleasantly surprised to find the drink was naturally sweet and refreshing.

And with that, we ended our amazing Ipoh trip, enjoying some healthy food on the drive back home to Subang. I made myself go on a oil-free diet for a few days after that, but it was well worth it.
You 'Lo Hong Ka' makers owe me for free advertising!

The Amazing Ipoh Trip - Part 3 (FOOD Glorious Food!)

My tummy went on strike in Medan

Woohoo, I'm back after another 5 day stint in Indonesia for work. Didn't have to endure any dangdut videos, and the guesthouse provided by the client for me and my Indonesian colleagues was lovely and had a huge tv with all the same channels as Astro and more. So while I was internet-deprived the whole time, as least the tv helped keep me sane.

I usually pride myself on being easily adaptable to other countries. Most other countries I've been too, the worse problem I usually have adapting to the new place is coming down with a bout of sneezing... and since most other countries I go to have better air than Malaysia, even that is rare! And this isn't even my first trip to Indon... but for some reason this time round, my body developed an unusual sign of rejecting this place and wanting to be home.

On the second day I was there, something about the food I ate didn't quite agree with me coz' I came down with a bout of food poisoning and woke up in the middle of the night to puke (made it in time to the toilet!). That was not cool. After that, the rest of the time there, I had no appetite for the food, even though the food served at the guesthouse was actually pretty good... rice with Indonesian dishes that are not too different from normal Malay cooking. But then again, back home I don't really fancy Malay cooking either, so that was probably another thing that made me put off. During breakfast time, the food looked really good, but was also really oily (fried rice, fried chicken, fried eggs!) and I'm used to eating only fruits or bread for breakfast... so on the last few days, I ate really little of it and thought the the oily-ness of it all was putting me off. The dishes served during lunch and dinner, however, were oily AND spicy, and the spicyness was putting me off too, even though normally at home I have no problem with spicy food. I ended up eating much less than I usually do at home coz' my tummy just kept feeling weird and didn't want to take in the food.

Very strangely though, on the last day I still had no appetite... until I got in the plane heading for KL... then it was like something triggered in me. I got SO hungry and was hankering for a bowl of noodles. I was even willing to pay a ridiculous price of RM7 for the Maggi hot bowl they serve on the flight... and when the air stewardesses serving the food were so slow coming to my row, all I could think was "C'moooon....moveitmoveitmoveitmoveit!!!!". By the time they came, the flight was almost about to land (it was only an hour flight) so they didn't want to give me the hot bowl as they were afraid I wouldn't have time to finish it, and since I REALLLY wanted noodles, I opted to wait. Which was even more torturous. I was almost ready to hijack the plane and make the pilot land right in front of a noodle shop. After I landed, I found out my dad would be late to pick me up, which was a relief to me coz' it meant I had time to eat at the airport. I ended up eating Ipor Hor Fun at Old Town White Coffee... which mostly consisted of lots of noodles in soup, a few lousy pieces of chicken, a couple of prawns and that was it. A typical ripoff Malaysian meal... but at that point it was like heaven. Aaaaah....

Since then, even though I've been having a bout of diarrhea and running to the loo once every hour or so (which means I actually did have food poisoning and am purging myself now), I'm happily eating my normal Malaysian oily and spicy food with a healthy appetite. So I figure, it wasn't the oilyness or the spicyness of Indo food. It's just that for some reason, my body decided it didn't want Indo food. In confirmation of my theory, as soon as I got back home after eating my ripoff but heavenly airport meal, I opened up a box given to me by my client, which was a souvenir from them.... and found a big pandan cake and some other Indonesian cakes inside. It looked yummy... but the smell of it immediately made me feel like throwing up again. Hmm... very strange.

Well, not sure why my tummy decided to go on strike in Indonesia. The place does have it's fair share of good food... like the super extremely spicy Mi Acheh we had at an outdoor stall which I twittered about.... it was basically instant noodles made it this super spicy red soup. It was so spicy, it did something along the lines of making smoke come out of my ears, tears well up in my eyes, and snot drool out my nose. Every bite had to be taken slowly, and finishing the bowl was a test in endurance all by itself.... but I did it! Unfortunately I didn't get a photo of that masochistic meal, but I did get a photo of another common Indon food, 'bakso', which means 'meatball' in Indonesian.


That's a bowl of bakso noodles they served which costed only Rp7000, which comes up to less than RM2. And you can count NINE freakin' meatballs in there. Two of them are extra large! Good grief. In Malaysia, if you ask for a bowl of meatball noodles, you'd be lucky to get more than 4 meatballs... and it would come up RM4 or so. *Sigh*

Well, I hope next time I go back to Indon, my tummy will function normally so I can actually enjoy their food. ;)

My tummy went on strike in Medan

The deterioration of a fast food giant

Picture this:

You go to a well-established fast-food restaurant for a meal, where the prices of most meals have increased by 20-25% over the past few months. The restaurant has also just recently taken some of your favourite food items off the menu, and when you order something that should already be ready made, especially since it's dinner time and it's a FAST FOOD joint, you are asked to wait for it coz' it's not yet prepared (you also noticed that there is nothing much else on the racks ready for serving either). In addition to that, you find that the time taken for the people at the counter to serve everyone in line is significantly slower than it used to be. And when they do serve you the burger you ordered, right after you pick it up, all the shredded lettuce spills out back into the container.

Actually, I'm sure most of you don't have to picture it coz' you've probably experienced this yourself at this very well-established fast-food restaurant. Can you guess which one I'm talking about?
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
La dee da dee da...
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.Yes, my friends, I'm talking about non other than everyone's supposed favourite fast food joint... McDonald's!

C'mon dude, the price of a so-called Value Meal is now an average of RM10 (except if you go during lunch time, which is when the prices are lowered... but I don't how long this promotion will last). They took out my favourite Chicken Foldover from the menu, so now the only thing I really like there is the Spicy Chicken McDeluxe, French Fries and the Chocolate Sundae, which are all overpriced. And the last time I went there, the service was slow, it was dinner time but there was almost nothing on the racks to serve customers, and the burger I got was quite a mess.

Therefore, as of today Carol officially declares that McDonald's sucks, and if it were not for their Spicy Chicken McDeluxe lunch time offer, French Fries and Chocolate Sundaes, I would only eat there if I were dragged kicking and screaming.

Do you agree or not agree? I made a poll on the right just for fun (these Blogger gadgets are pretty cool!). Poll ends on 16th of May 09!

The deterioration of a fast food giant