The calm before the storm
Something wicked this way comes…
Piccolo Mondo review
Piccolo Mondo is the quasi Italian restaurant
located at Mid Valley Megamall. It has seating on the outside and the
inside but its all the same due to the location inside a mall. The
tables and chairs outside is a better option if you like to people
watch, since you can see a significant portion of the mall and its
temporary inhabitants going about like ants in an anthill.
This is from my last KL trip – I forgot that there was another food post until I saw it today.
Piccolo Mondo is more renowned for its pizza, lasagna and tiramisu
but we didn’t feel like pizza and the tiramisu wasn’t ready (we went
early), so we chose to have some drinks first while we decided on what
to eat.
F.B.I. (Full Blooded Italian) @ RM 17.50
A typical Italian’s Mafia drink, consisting of Gelato ice cream, a shot of espresso, Bailey’s and Kahlua blended to perfection.
This drink is really good – it has the consistency of a thick
milkshake and you can taste the liquor AND the coffee. It’s a very nice
drink after walking around a mall. I’m not a big fan of malls, I just
went coz my gf wanted to buy something.
Sicily Strawberries @ RM 12
Fresh strawberries blended to perfection with coconut, orange,
pineapple juice frapped with crushed ice and finished with a hint of
Grenadine.
This concoction is a non-alcoholic thirst quencher that my gf
ordered. I’ll tell you something, Piccolo Mondo really does have good
drinks. The fruits are generous and the whole drink just tastes good
and is thirst quenching to boot. What more can you ask for? 😉
Calamari Diavola @ RM 20
I wanted to see how the calamari over here fares. This dish is
lightly breaded calamari served with a wedge of lemon and dip. It
didn’t taste all that good, if you want me to be honest.
Il Pollo Alla Valdostana @ RM 30
Pan-fried chicken breast and chicken ham, gratinated with cheese.
This dish of chicken breast and ham cooked inside some sort of thin
pancake is dismal, at best. Chicken breast is the part of a chicken I
dislike the most but that doesn’t account for the bland taste. The
vegetables were overcooked and the mashed potatoes makes KFC’s mashed
potatoes look like haute cuisine…
I can’t really say anything nice about Piccolo Mondo’s food. The
lasagna and pizza, which are their specialties, would have been a
better choice. The tiramisu, which was what I really wanted, was still
not done by the time I finished my meal, so I didn’t manage to sample
that as well.
However, there’s one thing that redeemed Piccolo Mondo…the drinks.
Piccolo Mondo serves really good drinks, both alcoholic and
non-alcoholic blends, and they do it well.
Go there for the drinks, if not for the food.
The bone that gave me a boner
I found a nice, juicy bone today…
…and as I sat in the car park, eating it;
It gave me a boner.
Veli Important Person
Translation:
Letak kereta means car park.
Awam means public.
VIP means people with vasoactive intestinal polypeptide.
I guess this is where I turn left. 😉
Red bill from Telekom – RM 962.23
I received a red colored bill from our beloved national
telecommunications provider…it’s usually white. “Uh oh, this can’t be
good,” I thought. Red isn’t a good color, it’s usually reserved for
outstanding debts.
Sure enough, it came from the Credit Management Unit of Telekom Malaysia…
In a strange semantics error, it states politely that my Internet
and phone server has been pulled (which I already know) and that I have
an outstanding debt of RM 962.23, but yet still refers to me as “Our
valued customer”. Strange, I thought it was well over 1k last time I
got a bill. 😉
The other letter I got was postmarked from Alor Setar and contains
no return address. I shook it vigorously, fearing anthrax, but it
sounded like a harmless booklet. 😉
It’s an unsolicited mail from some Buddhist organization and contains a yellow book which I couldn’t read…
…but when I flipped casually through the pages, I saw that it’s
apparently advertising some service which allows you to strike 4D
(lottery). Well, slap me on my ass and call me Sally, if it’s so easy
and you have my address, then why don’t you help me pay my bills while
you’re at it? 😉
Westwood Continental Cuisine
This is Westwood Continental Cuisine at Jalan
Westwood. It’s a popular place for continental cuisine since the food
is good and the prices are reasonable. I’ve been here several times
before and while their steaks are alright, it’s not the best in town. I
went with a couple of friends again last night for dinner.
The place is usually packed at night. This is the interior of
Westwood Continental Cuisine. They have al fresco (heh) seating
arrangements outside as well, and on cool nights, that is much
preferable to sitting inside even though the interior is
air-conditioned. The lighting is warm and its central location is part
of its popularity as well as the good food and reasonable prices.
Westwood Continental Cuisine has been operational for quite a while.
I had Ribena 7-Up, which is my “usual” drink over there. It’s an
interesting concoction of concentrated Ribena (blackberry juice
concentrate) topped up with…er, 7-Up. The two goes really well – the
Ribena concentrate sits at the bottom while the carbonated 7-Up slowly
fizzes away to automatically combine the two. The drink is quite
volatile for some reason, you have to be careful not to agitate it too
much or bubbly purple foam will threaten to overfloweth on you.
My friends all went there for Fish and Chips. It’s a generous
portion of batter fried Dory fish served with French fries, Westwood’s
special tangy tartare sauce and salad. It’s RM 9 for a serving, and
that’s a very good price considering the portion. This dish is very
popular due to its price and filling portions.
I went for the Westwood Mixed Grill (lamb, beef, pork) at RM 15.50.
I had it done medium and the dish did not disappoint. The beef is done
well, as is the pork, but the two is outshined by the delicious lamb.
The lamb meat is infused with the gamey flavor that I love and the
juice just bursts out of the grilled lamb meat – it retains all of its
moisture! Divine…
Westwood Continental Cuisine serves a limited range of menu items,
but they know what they do best and all of the menu items are good. The
place also has excellent service, better than most of the eating
establishments in Kuching. Highly recommended for dinner before a big
night out.
Shanghai cured meat and floss snacks
These are individually wrapped niu rou kang from Shanghai,
China. It literally translates to “beef meat dried”. This are the cured
meat slices you see during certain festivities in the Chinese calendar.
The meat is carefully wrapped and lined in a tray, which is then
wrapped again and sealed. Nice presentation, classic style of premium
Asian snacks. Daniel
[blogspot.com], your mom gave this to me when I was at your house
yesterday. Send her my regards and tell her it tastes great! 🙂
The interesting bit about this pork meat and floss is the way they
fuse them both together. Cured meat is something like beef jerky, only
more tender and still retaining the taste of an animal. Floss is
reprocessed meat, usually pork, and is turned into dried pieces
of…well, floss that everyone eats for fun. It used to be all the rage
to put floss on top of buns and then heating it.
This is a close look at this Shanghai snack. Its cured meat slices
fused with liberal amounts of meat floss. I’ve never seen the likes of
it – this one produces an interesting synergy of flavors.
Arnott’s Kahlua Slice chocolate biscuits
This is the chocolate biscuits that caused a bit of controversy when
it came out. Arnott’s came out with a line of liquor biscuits, the most
popular one being the Kahlua Slice. I just found it
today and realized from the various artefacts that my sister came back
from Christchurch, NZ for a holiday. I just missed her by a couple of
days, she was only here for a while, it’s hard to get leaves in her
line of work (she’s a doctor attached to a hospital).
Well, she brought back these Arnott’s Kahlua Slice chocolate
biscuits made with pure coffee liquor that I’ve heard so much about.
It’s available in New Zealand, though these are made in Australia. The
package blurb goes “Why is your Kahlua Slice moment so special? It’s
because at Arnott’s we make our own real chocolate. We source the
finest cocoa ingredients from around the world and blend with natural
milk products from Australian pastures.”
It looks like a standard Arnott’s product…
…but it really tastes like Kahlua! Arnotts licenced the coffee
liqueur Kahlua to make Kahlua Slice. It’s great! The synergy of flavors
goes very well – this product just might be the one to ursurp Tim Tams
as the Arnott’s golden goose.
Gotta run, got a plane to catch…
I’ll be going back to Sibu in a couple of hours. It’s work related,
the flight leaves at 5:30 pm and I have three site surveys to do in
Sibu. First one is tomorrow morning at 8 am, that’s the reason behind
the last minute change in departure. I’ll be flying back to Kuching
again on Sunday night, last flight. I have a net connection in Sibu,
but I doubt I’ll be doing much updating until tomorrow since
it’s…Sedating Sibu, after all. 😉
Starbucks Coffee Jelly Frappuccino
One of Starbucks Summer Fun beverage items is the much lauded Starbucks Coffee Jelly Frappuccino. This is the outlet in 1 Utama.
Here’s what the literature says – Coffee Jelly Frappuccino Blended
Coffee “Take a sip of the world’s finest coffee, complemented by tasty
pieces of coffee jelly”.
I ordered one and it didn’t disappoint. The coffee jelly is amazing,
it’s firm but yet, oh so pliable jelly, made of real coffee. It’s
divine!
It looks like cincau with caffeine. It tastes like a Frappuccino
with coffee jelly. It’s amazing. This is the last KL post. Phew, I’ve
cleared the backlog. 😉
