Food reviews

Life Cafe review

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life cafe

Life Cafe is a little quaint place hidden along a narrow street. The
place exudes a charming old ambience, with its wooden chairs and
constructs, the sliding doors, and the intentional ancient decorations.

life interior

The interior is air conditioned, with minimal incandescent lighting.
There’s a narrow brick walled enclave to the side and normal sitting
arrangements on the other side. The place makes you feel like you’ve
stepped into some old-fashioned place out of time.

life tatami

There’s also a private dining area at the back, which is walled off
from the main area. This tatami style section is raised, with a short
table and mats, cushions and futons for sitting. Basically, you sit on
the floor and the table clearance doesn’t leave much room for your
legs, but it’s comfy.

life pie

The waitress recommended a range of pies that were freshly baked.
She assured us that it was good, and my coworker, who’s been here
before, agreed. We went for the chicken pie.

life chicken pie

It’s good, the pastry is crispy and the meat filling is just nice.

life coffee ice cream

I was recommended their Life Ice Cream Coffee. It’s coffee, with a scoop of vanilla ice cream to replace the ice cubes.

life herb egg

I ordered a boiled herbal egg for starters. It’s served whole and un-cracked, in a saucer of soy sauce.

life herbal egg

The herbal egg tasted of herbs, and is colored green, even the yolk. It was alright to me.

life lamb rice

I went for the Life Mutton Spiced Rice for the main. The mutton is nice and tender, great dish.

life lamb noodles

My coworker had Life Mutton Spiced Noodles. It tasted about the same
but the noodles are infused with something I can’t put my finger on.
It’s good.

life croc soup

Life Cafe also has an unusual specialty – Crocodile meat soup with
red dates and ginseng. It’s RM 12 for a bowl, which we shared, and the
soup is boiled to perfection, with the ginseng flavor shining through
brightly.

life croc meat

The crocodile meat was good too. The boiling process made it tender
and it tasted strange, but nice. Kuching has a crocodile farm which
rears crocodiles and sells the meat to various food establishments here
and I believe it’s exported as well.

Life Cafe is a good place to have a quiet lunch – grab the tatami
style seats at the back if they’re not taken. It’s the best spot in the
place. 🙂

La Bodega, Bangsar

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la bodega

La Bodega in Bangsar is supposedly the first authentic Spanish tapas
bar in Malaysia. I went there on my final night in KL to celebrate my
RRMA win. The ambience in Bangsar was as lively as usual, despite it
being a Sunday night.

la_bodega_bistro.jpg

La Bodega tapas y vinos is a bistro restaurant that serves their flagship tapas as well as other Spanish cuisine.

la bodega bar

The interior is nicely designed, with bar style seating arrangements around the bar, and tables on the side.

la bodega wall

The walls of La Bodega are covered with B&W pictures, showing
life, as it were. I liked it a lot. There’s also something very
interesting, if you look up…

la bodega wine top

The top of La Bodega in Bangsar is custom fitted with a wine rack!
There are literally bottles of wine hanging on top of you. Nice!

la bodega order

We placed our orders and I got a bottle of champagne to celebrate,
but they were out, and the attendant recommended Torres Grand Coronas
Cabernet Sauvignon, which was okay with me, coz I like red wine.

la bodega food

We ordered from the hot tapas and raciones menu as well as from the
paella menu. The photo above shows the various tapas that we ordered.
It all tasted good, the sauces were soaked up well by the bread.

la bodega tapas 1

Pollo al ajillo (Chicken sauteed in olive oil, garlic and parsley)

la bodega tapas 2

Chuletas de cordero a la parrilla (Grilled lamb cutlets gratinated with garlic mayonnaise)

la bodega tapas 3

Albondigas “Saint Climent” (Lamb meatballs in a rich brandy sauce)

la bodega paella

This is the main meal – Paella Valenciana mixta. It’s prawns,
chicken, mussels and clams cooked in a paella with saffron, peppers,
peas and rice.

la bodega paella flash

Here’s a photo of it with flash. This dish requires a minimum of two
people and a 30 minute wait, but that wasn’t a problem with us as we
all had this for the main.

paella mixed

This is what it looks like after it’s mixed. It’s counted per
person, at RM 18, so if there’s four in your group, the dish is RM 72.

paella mixed flash

Here’s a clearer photo, with flash. It’s surprisingly filling and they were generous with the ingredients. It tasted wonderful.

la bodega group

This is a group shot of us at La Bodega in Bangsar. L-R: Alice,
Richard, Louisa, Huai Bin (me). The bill came up to about RM 300, but
it’s worth it. Good food, highly recommended!

SMK Sacred Heart school canteen

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smk sh

I thought I’ll do a food review on a school canteen for a change. I reckon it’ll be funny, but it was anything but…

smk sh cafeteria

SMK Sacred Heart has a full fledged (!) old skool coffee shop
operation going on in the canteen. I’ve never seen the likes of it
before. Why, in my previous high school, we only had RM 0.50 fried
noodles, precooked and stuff like that to choose from. This “canteen”
has a full ordering service.

smk_sh_mess.jpg

The ambience was nothing to speak of…standard mess style dining
area. The ordering area is like a coffee shop though. Jesus, kids
nowadays. Why, I could regale you with tales of the time when I was
young; when I had to walk bare foot through a jungle trail to get to
school, but that’s digressing. 😉

smk sh food

This is my order – Coca Ice and Iban Mee. “Coca Ice” turns out to be very dilute Milo but at RM 1.20, you get what you pay for.

smk sh iban mee

The Iban Mee was surprisingly good at RM 2. It’s a spicy fried
noodle dish, with a healthy (generous, really) sprinkling of fried
onions on top.

smk sh girls

I was surprised to find a couple of girls in there, since Sacred
Heart is an all boys school (except for Form Six, but they looked too
young for that). I talked to them and got them to pose for a photo and
they told me they are from Sacred Heart, but Jesus (no pun intended),
don’t they look rather young for 18?

Bubble Tea Zone

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bubble tea zone

Bubble Tea Zone is the newly opened outlet in Wisma Sanyan, Sibu. I
was intrigued by their unusual menu and popped in to check the place
out.

btz stairs

The interior is novel in the sense that it has a small staircase by the side that leads to…

btz upper nook

…a little nook upstairs for more privacy.

btz view

The little level up top also has a great view of the main road down the tallest building in Sibu.

btz staff friendly

The proprietor and staff is a friendly bunch of people. It’s all female owned and operated from what I gather.

btz_sausage_range.jpg

The place serves snacks in addition to their wide variety of bubble
tea. They have a great range of Taiwan sausages for RM 2.30 each.

btz snow bubble

I had the Blueberry Snow Bubble, which is bubble tea with sago pearls, ice blended with ice cream.

btz mixed slush

This is the Mixed Fruit Ice Cream Slush. It’s a refreshing blend of
ice cream and fruits and I loved the way the soft serve ice cream is
blended with ice, which sounds like it would taste bad, but instead
synergizes to form a wonderful texture.

btz taiwan sausages

I also ordered two different versions of Taiwan sausages – the Steak Sausage and the Lemon Sausage.

btz taiwan close

It tasted divine – hot from the grill, with a unique flavor. Highly recommended.

Jojo Cafe

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jojo cafe

I went out for dinner with a bunch of people from different age
groups yesterday night at Jojo Cafe. I guess the best word for it
is…networking, cliche as that may sound. It was enlightening; got to
meet people from different fields e.g. management, design, publishing,
education etc. and exchange business cards.

jojo dinner network

I’ll like to give the person who first thought of the concept of
business cards a big hearty slap on the back, coz I won’t remember
names and numbers the next day otherwise. 😉 Anyway, back to the food,
Jojo Cafe is located at 3rd Mile, Kuching and serves really good curry
chicken (or so I hear).

jojo curry chicken

This is their curry chicken – the meat was tender, and the curry was
tasty. There’s nothing wrong with it, except for one thing…it doesn’t
have the spicy curry oomph that I like. It’s a good curry dish for
people who don’t take spicy food though.

jojo kailan

Here’s the kailan (a type of vegetable, stating the obvious ;))
cooked with salted fish. Now this dish is good, and hearing me say that
a vegetable dish is good means it’s really good, coz I’m not a big fan
of vegetables at all. The veggies was fresh and crunchy, and still
retains the original moisture and taste without any salted fish
contamination (unless you eat that of course).

jojo mutton soup

Next up is the mutton soup. It’s cooked with a variety of spices,
red dates, mushrooms, and all sorts of stuff. It’s basically mutton
soup, Chinese style.

jojo mutton soup bowl

I didn’t find anything noteworthy about the mutton, but the soup was well broiled and tasted great!

jojo tofu egg

This is tofu cooked with egg and vegetables, lying on top of a
lettuce bed. I can’t comment about tofu, coz long time readers would
know that I don’t like tofu. Well, I don’t like the edible kind of tofu
anyway, but the other kind of tofu… 😉

jojo mango fish

Now this is the main dish – mango fish! The fish was smothered with
a delightful mixture of unripe mangos, peanuts, raw onions, shallots,
and spring onions. It creates a wonderful fusion of colors, flavors and
different textures, and the fish was fresh to boot. This is easily the
best dish of them all – highly recommended!

jojo left behind

After eating all that, should you feel the call of nature,
management reminds you not to leave the left side of your ass behind
(though how that is possible eludes me).

Ice Shop Asia

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ice shop asia

Ice Shop Asia is the once great empire that has seen its famous
plastic cup and straw mammoth logo emblazoned all across town. Outlets
after outlets were built, expanding like the rise of Rome, swathing a
path of destruction over premium retail space like the Nazi blitzkrieg,
and taking over the outlets like…er, the British Empire.

ice shop asia dark

Alas, the glory days of Ice Shop Asia is now over, and like the rise
and fall of civilizations, Ice Shop Asia now maintains a single
battered looking outpost in the town of Kuching, the once proud metal
cup dented and fighting off rust. The single lonely remaining outlet is
the pioneering one, and there wasn’t any electricity when we were
there…

ice shop asia girl

However, there was an aesthetically pleasing young female behind the
counter, so we decided to get a drink despite the dim interior. 😉 I
ordered a passion fruit snow shake and a chocolate ice shake with
pearls. A snow shake is ice blended and does not come with pearls while
an ice shake is basically bubble tea made with ice cream instead of
syrup with optional pearl balls.

ice shop asia ice

The ice is shoveled into their standard plastic heat sealed cups…

ice shop asia ice cream
…and added with ice cream for an ice shake

ice shop asia syrup
…or added with syrup/flavoring for a snow shake/bubble tea

ice shop asia machine

Unfortunately, the device that does the ice crushing was not in
operation due to the power failure and neither was their patented,
really interesting heat sealing device (shown above). That thing
automatically heat seals the top of your plastic cup with a poke able
plastic cover, so you have to poke through it with a straw. I had so
much fun with it last time. I didn’t get the chance to do that though,
coz the machine requires electricity to operate.

ice shop asia drinks

Thus, here’s the naked (hey, didn’t came with the heat sealed
plastic cover) Ice Shop Asia drinks – the chocolate ice shake with
pearl balls is on the left and the passion fruit snow shake is on the
right.

The girl apologized for the unfortunate circumstances and I didn’t
mention anything about not being able to poke things through thin,
flimsy other things. 😉

This post is so loaded with double entendres and innuendo…

Seafood at Buntal Kuching

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buntal lim hock ann

Buntal is a fishing village about 35 minutes drive away from
Kuching. Buntal Seafood Village is a very popular place for seafood, as
it is located right on the beach and the produce is about as fresh as
it gets – straight from the sea. Lim Hock Ann Seafood is the longest
standing and most popular one in Buntal.

buntal fresh seafood

There’s a lot of fresh seafood; fish, crabs, prawns, lobsters,
oysters etc. Basically, if you can get it from the sea, they have it.
Lim Hock Ann is also popular due to it’s unique seating arrangements –
they actually have a platform suspended over the sea, with waves
lapping at the bottom while you eat!

buntal platform

Unfortunately, it was raining yesterday, so the platform was closed.
I was surprised to find a mini entourage of people waiting for me when
I came back from Sibu. I had called a friend to pick me up but when I
exited the arrivals hall, I was accosted by my friends who came in
several cars to whisk me off to Buntal. Jesus…

buntal dinner

Anyway, this is what the suspended platform looks like from one of
the photos in the popular Lim Hock Ann seafood center in Buntal:

buntal old

This outlet has been here since forever, or so it seems. It still
retains its old skool wood structures that I remember seeing when I was
still young.

buntal wood counter

Anyway, here’s what we ordered:

buntal kailan
Baby kailan
It’s a type of vegetable, very nice.

buntal butter prawns
Butter prawns
It came out very crisp and tasted divine. The granules are caramelized butter, it’s heavenly, I tell you.

buntal oyster pancake
O Chien
This is oyster pancake. I like Lim Hock Ann’s implementation of this
popular must-have seafood dish. It’s moist and there are generous
amounts of oysters scattered all around the pancake instead of just a
couple in the middle.

buntal crabs
Crabs cooked with egg and chilli

Here’s a video tour of Lim Hock Ann in Buntal:

buntal seafood

Download: Buntal Seafood [sixthseal.com]

buntal snap

I had a snapping good time, pardon the pun.

Bombastic Cafe

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bombastic cafe

Bombastic Cafe is the…er, bombastically named cafe where one of my
coworker’s girlfriend works. It turns out that one of my friends has
also worked there before. I went there for dinner with a couple of
friends to check it out, coz I heard they have really interesting
drinks.

bombastic interior

The interior of the cafe is nicely decorated, with very trippy
visuals adorning the walls. It got me wondering whether the mushrooms
in the rice I ate for lunch were the magical kind. 😉 The proprietor is
a nice guy too, talked to him and introduced myself, for no particular
reason, just coz I felt like doing it.

bombastic rome holiday

This is what I ordered – Rome Holiday. It’s a yam based drink with
pearl balls (is that what you call those? Taro.) which is ice blended.
Very nice. My friends had the other interestingly named drinks like
Gone With the Wind and Winter Sonata.

the bomba spagetti

I had two main courses – I wanted to try both of their flagship
mains. This is The Bomba Spaghetti. I like the dusting of parsley on
the side, it makes it look nice. The sauce was meaty and tastes great,
and one of my friends who ate some from mine concurred. She had a mixed
plate of some sort, which I forgot the name of, but it was nice too.

the bomba chicken

This is the second main I had – The Bomba Chicken. It doesn’t look
like chicken, it looks a little like lamb, but it tasted like chicken.
It was breaded and deep fried and complemented with a great sauce,
fries, coleslaw and other veggies. I found it delicious. I finished
both plates and then some, but that’s normal for me, I usually eat
double portions.

I would heartily recommend their flagship dishes, it’s really good.

Bombastic. Simply fantastic. 😉

Chong Chon Biscuit Maker

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chong chon biscuit maker

Chong Chon Biscuit Maker is nestled right in the middle of old
Kuching town and has been producing quality pastries for quite a while.
There is generally no one at the front of the shop in the morning, and
you have to shout a bit to get the proprietors from the back.

chong chon pastries

These are the common offerings that they have – pastries of Chinese
origin of all sorts, they’re famous for their sio pau (the ones with
flaky pastry). One little known delicacy they offer is Century Pie.
This is not normally available, you have to order it in the morning and
pick it up in the afternoon.

chong chon industry

The afternoon is when the shop goes into full industry mode. Here’s
a shot of the proprietor posing for the camera while in the midst of
making pies. I picked up the two century pies I ordered in the morning
and also had an egg tart while I was at it. There’s no seating in here,
it’s a bakery, but coffee shops are abundant nearby where you can sit
and consume the pastries.

chong chon egg tart

This is the Chong Chon version of an egg tart. It’s slightly baked
and the best way I can describe it is as a cross between a regular egg
tart and a Portuguese egg tart.

chong chon egg tart whoa

They’re very generous with the egg filling too, as you can see above.

century pie

Now, this is the real gem the shop produces – an acquired taste, the
century pie is made with century egg. It’s wrapped in paper, old skool
and they don’t advertise this product much. Century eggs are those eggs
that are glossy black, with a murky black egg yolk. The eggs are made
by packing it with all sorts of dirt and earth and fermenting it, so to
speak, for a while.

century pie inside

This is what the inside of the century pie looks like. It has meat,
veggies, gravy and other stuff in addition to the century egg.

century pie century egg

Here’s a closer look at the best part of the century pie – the century egg! 🙂

Adem Finest Cuisine

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adem.jpg

Adem Finest Cuisine is the latest Vietnamese restaurant to hit Sibu
and I’ve heard nothing but good things about them. I went there for
lunch today to check them out.

adem interior

The seating arrangements are divided into two areas – the inside
(shown above) which offers a pub like ambience and the al fresco area
outside (shown below).

adem al fresco

I chose the latter coz it was a bright and cheery sunny day and also
because I found the water lilies they had growing in the trough lining
the al fresco area intriguing and very peaceful.

adem water lilies

I saw that the umbrella covers were all showing Trung Nguyen Coffee,
and the waitress confirmed that it’s their specialty Vietnamese coffee
so I had that.

adem vietnamese coffee

It came in the form of some metal contraption on top of a cup and saucer.

adem coffee lift

Noticing the befuddled look on my face, the waitress kindly
explained the system…basically, it’s a coffee filter, and you open
the lid when the water has seeped through and put it upside down on the
table.

adem coffee side

The other two contraptions is then lifted and put on top of the said
upside down lid “to avoid the coffee from spilling” or something.

adem coffee strong good

The resulting coffee was fragrant, with a nice robust aroma. It was strong and good, just the way I like it.

adem trung nguyen

There’s coffee service in the form of milk, ice cubes and sugar, but I espoused that in favour of the dark, rich coffee.

adem garlic toast

It also comes with complementary garlic bread toast, and man…I
can’t describe the feeling of chewing on a bit of garlic toast and
taking a sip of hot coffee to chase it down. It’s divine!

adem vietnamese omelette

As for the food, I ordered “Vietnamese Omelette” to start things off…

adem omelette

…it was just egg and sausages, nothing to write home about.

adem beef pho

I also ordered their famous Vietnamese beef noodles, shown here in all its glory – hot, steaming pho!

adem pho condiments

The pho came with three condiments – lime, chilli sauce, and sea salt.

adem vietnamese noodles

The pho was absolutely fabulous…it’s the understated but rich
type, with nearly clear stock, but it was well made and the natural
flavours of the ingredients fused together to provide a superlatively
wonderful meal. 😉

Seriously though, their pho is good…go and try it!

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