Old Siam Kopitiam | One Utama (Updated 28/5/2015)

I discovered another new restaurant in One Utama recently. This place is called Old Siam Kopitiam, a small cafe that served Thai cuisine. It is located at ground floor, just opposite a Penang cuisine restaurant. This is a strictly non-halal outlet, most of the dishes come with pork.

If you are looking for quick lunches, I would recommend you here. They served quick meals like rice and noodles.

Although this small cafe is not eye catching when you walk pass it but the seats always filled up with customers. The decoration in the cafe is simple with wooden tables and chairs and some old photos on the wall.

 Thai Jasmine Tea- RM2.90 (left)

Thai Iced Tea-RM6.90 (right)

Khao Kruk Kapi-RM 12.90

This is a Thai Belacan rice served with their sweet pork and condiments. I like the way they cook the sweet pork, however it would be better if there is a little bit more of gravy as when it is all mix together the rice seem a bit dry. Overall was good! They really know how to make our day happy serving us a love shape rice with a happy face on Friday!

Mod Thod Kaatiem Prik Thai-RM10.90

The dish served with deep fried pork with garlic, thai fragrant rice, some salad and a fried egg. Although the dish look simple, but the deep fried pork does change our perception, especially when you eat with the sambal (chilli). Simple and nice!

Phad Kaapao Kai- RM10.90

I ordered the stir fried chicken with Thai basil served with Thai fragrant rice and a fried egg. The chicken was cooked with basil leaves with lots of chilli padi (red and green), so the spicy level is no joke. I still love it although it make me sweat and tongue burning while eating.

I love the most about this place is the bill, free from govt. tax and service tax. The bill now come will a 5% service charge and 6% gst. Food is good and price is reasonable for a Thai food, definitely coming back for more!

Obahmi -The Vietnamese Sandwich | Uptown Damansara

Another new shop in Uptown Damansara which started their business few months ago. A shop selling nothing but authentic Vietnamese sandwich only. I heard of Vietnamese cuisine but for baguette it is my first time. Never seen this kind of shop here in KL, I guess this was the first Vietnamese Baguette in town.

Menu is shown on the big board at the entrance. The variety is not many but it is enough to give you a headache in choosing if you are new to the place. Ordering is make from the counter, once you ordered and paid, they will give you a number.

The open concept kitchen is where you can see how they prepare the sandwiches and drinks. All clean and tidy! Each ingredients are labelled at the kitchen table as well for your understanding of the ingredients. 

All baguettes are freshly made daily. There is another corner of the shop where they placed all freshly made baguettes.

O BBQ-RM 8.20

Fresh baguette served with BBQ pork, sunny side up egg, homemade mayonnaise, pickled carrots and onions, and chilli sauce. I am not a coriander person although it smell better with it, I decided to remove it and it still taste splendid. The first time trying for me, I give it a thumb up. I love their crunchy baguette, never too hard to chew! The ingredients inside just blend very well with the baguette. I ordered Vietnamese Ice Lemon Tea with additional RM2.50 if you order their baguette. The ice lemon tea taste very refreshing but mild taste.

O' School RM 8.20

The original Vietnamese baguette served with pate, homemade mayonnaise, hams, pickled raddish and carrots, chilli, corriander and lemon grass chicken. My friend ordered this but seem like the taste was too mild for her. Overall was good on the baguette, it just the sauce wasn't enough in the bun itself. She ordered Vietnamese Ice Coffee, however it wasn't the prefect one for her.

I love their crunchy baguette, definitely coming back to try on their "size does matter" O.M.G and spring rolls. Give it a try, I bet you will love it like me!

O banh mi

No. 33 Jalan SS21/56b, 

Damansara Utama, PJ

Tue-Fri: 8am-8.30pm, Sat-Sun: 10am-9pm

Mon: Closed

Phone 03-7732 8540

Email obanhmishop@gmail.com

FB: https://www.facebook.com/OBMshop

Doraemon Secret Gadgets Expo is here in Malaysia!

Doraemon's fans out there, "100 Doraemon Secret Gadgets" Expo will be here in Kuala Lumpur on Dec 13. The exhibition will last for 100 days until 22nd of March 2014. 

It is estimated to take up 50,000 m2 of spaces for this Doraemon Expo. In the exhibition, it will showcases birth of Doraemon, 100 types of Doraemon with his well-known secret gadgets, Nobita and Shizuka's wedding, Doraemon's cafe and many more. Don't miss the chance to meet the cute lil' blue cat! Mark your calendar!

Date: 13 Dec 2013-22 March 2014

Venue: Viva Home, Kuala Lumpur

Entrance Ticket Fee: RM 25 (Adult), RM 15 (Children)

Xiao Bar Wang Taiwanese Street Snacks | One Utama

Accidentally discovered this place when I was looking for food in One Utama. This is a franchise shop started by an artist named Jeff Wang (famous in Singapore's movie). It is basically a shop serving authentic Taiwanese street food. For more info about the background, view here.

It is a small shop located at the lower ground floor near to all the food stalls. What attracted me was their big pictures of Taiwan food in front of the shop. Those pictures just stuck into your mind and immediately you imaging what to have next just by looking at their board.

The range of choices are limited, however it do covers the famous Taiwanese delicacies like the fried chicken, mee sua and braised pork rice. I love about Taiwan food is that they always come in set meal which ease the process of choosing ala carte.

Set Meal C: Braised Pork Rice with drink-RM 9.90

The braised pork taste so dry as if it has been laying there for hours. Although the portion of braised pork is more than the rice portion, it just doesn't add value to the taste. I could said the worst braised pork rice I ever had so far.

Set Meal D: Bento rice with drink- RM12.90

For bento rice set, you are allow to choose between chicken, fish and pork for the meal and we chose pork. The fried pork was hard to chew, I guess the pork meat was not tenderise before it is cook. Moreover, the rice was hard and it make it so hard to go through the throat.

Mix Crispy Chicken and Fish-RM8.90

We gave another try on their crispy chicken and fish and it just disappointment so badly again. The crispy word just doesn't tie with their deliverable. Moreover, it was too salty until we gave up finishing it.

I really wish this was a good place for me to have Taiwanese snacks as they promoted in their videos. However, I don't see it worth coming back again with that kind of quality and taste.

Mcdonald's Hello Kitty Fairy Tales is here!

Second batch of Hello Kitty plush toy from McDonald's will be out soon. This time, McDonald's is bringing you Hello Kitty Fairy Tales with 5 different types of plush toys- The Ugly Duckling, The Frog Prince, Wizard Of Oz, Little Red Riding Hood, and The Singing Bone. This batch of hello kitty is similar to the batch launched previously in Singapore which make Singaporean gone crazy about it. 

McDonald’s Hello Kitty Fairy Tales will be available for purchase from November 7th onwards till December 5th at RM9.95 each with any McValue Meal. Date release for each plush toy is as per below.

PhotoSource: Malaccan.net

This was the previous batch released in Malaysia around April and May 2013.

China Trip-Day 6: Shanghai

Last day in Shanghai before we take off, we went on more relaxed trip. Since our flight is around midnight, we checked out from the hotel and left our bags in the hotel's reception area. Many hotels do provide some sort of a luggage storage service, you just need to ask them about it.

We left the hotel and took metro line 7 to Jing'an Temple Station, leaving from exit 1 to the temple directly. However, we didn't find the temple to be attractive and decided to save the entrance fee of RMB 30. We just took some photos outside of the Jing'an Temple. 

Next, we took the metro line 7 to the famous Jade Buddha Temple which is located at Changshou Road Station. You need to take exit 5 and head east along xinhui road then turn right on Jiangning road and walk to the temple at the crossroad. It is quite confusing because the temple is no where near the metro station, you need walk another 5-10 mins to the temple. Luckily we have our Nokia map to show us the location. I would suggest that you refer to maps when navigating to this temple.

Along the temple, there are a lot of beggars standing around and asking for money, just beware and be careful of your belongings. One advantage of being Chinese I think, is that the local people will mistake you for one of them, therefore during the whole trip we didn't come across anyone trying to sell some "expensive tea leaves" to us. As we didn't have this experience, it would be best if you Google around and read some personal experiences of other tourists.

Entrance fee to Jade Buddha temple is RMB 20

Inside the temple, they have separated the Jade Buddha in a special room where we can only see from far. Again, there is always a price to pay to visit the Jade Buddha. We paid another extra RMB 10 to enter the chamber. Nothing in China is free, so just bring more money when you are there. All entrance fees for both local and foreigners are the same, quite tough for locals to survive in China. 

Then, we make a trip to Qipu Lu which also well known as the Cheap Street for shopping. We took Metro line 10 to Tiantong station which will direct you to the basement of one of the malls. You may take metro line 8 to Qufu Station but you need to walk another 10-15 mins to Qipu Lu, thus I found metro line 10 is easier to reach. Basically, it is like Sungai Wang in KL but much much more gigantic, there are 3-4 malls altogether within the area.

I found this Kungfu Chinese fast food chain while walking behind the mall. Since it is lunch time, we went to have our lunch there. There are around 500 outlets in China which is quite easy to find this fast food chain. The tagline for this restaurant is steam is still the best to eat healthy.  Here is their website http://www.zkungfu.com/. Therefore, you can see most of their meals are steamed dishes, including their steam rice.

Brinjal Set with Pork rib soup -RMB 19.50

The brinjal tastes great, one of the must try for brinjal lovers. As you can see the portion of the rice is also huge, and so it really was a satisfying meal.

Soy sauce pork rib set with black chicken soup-RMB 28.50

I just love this set with my favourite black chicken soup. The pork rib taste good, just a bit oily on the gravy, but it was fine. I guess this was the best meal I had in China so far.

After that, we went and did some window shopping in the malls. Unfortunately I couldn't find something that suits me, maybe its my taste, but luck just wasn't on my side that day.

We took metro line 10 to east nanjing road to have a walk. Actually you can walk from the east to west of nanjing road by foot although you may see there are two stations for nanjing road in the metro map. It is just a straight road connecting east and west. The whole nanjing road is so happening in day and night. We reached there around late afternoon, here is a shopping heaven with more than 10 shopping malls along the road.

You could spend the whole day here, visiting each of the malls and boutiques all the way from east to west. We walked until the sky is dark, the view in night is so different with lighting around the building. Night life in Shanghai!

We went to find this famous cheap and good Italian food in town. It is called Saizeriya Italian Restaurant, http://www.saizeriya.com.cn/cn/index/.

Bottomless Soft Drinks -RMB 10.00 per cup

Seafood Spaghetti with Tomato Sauce -RMB 13.00

As we were very hungry after all the walking, we ordered a few extra dishes just because we saw the portions were rather small. Well, maybe for my bf one dish was totally not enough, but again, its best to order one or two dishes first and add more later.

Grilled Steak with Black Pepper Sauce -RMB 30.00

Bf ordered the steak, it was chewy and maybe not up to his standards. Well, for this price, we couldn't expect TGI Fridays-like quality.

Grilled Chicken with Vegetable Salsa - RMB 14.00

This was unexpectedly nice. The chicken was crispy and juicy, while the vegetable salsa is actually garlic and butter spices which I didn't really like that much.

Spaghetti Arrabbiata with Tuna - RMB 13.00

This dish was quite spicy. But nevertheless quite normal. So in the end, depends on how you view it, the food here was actually quite worth the price. Of course we can't compare it to the likes of TGI Fridays but it does give you a satisfying meal in the end.

Here is one of the Apple Stores! Its huge, and full of people. I guess the Chinese are all crazy about i-products.

Approaching the end of the day, we spent the rest of our time in Nanjing road, which by the end of it was really close to our hotel. We collected our luggage and proceeded to our flight home. What did I think of this trip? Well, it was free and easy, we made changes to our itinerary whenever we wanted, and in the end was quite enjoying. We blended into the Chinese culture (urban culture, to be specific), but we did not feel "at home" as we thought we might be. I still feel Malaysia is my home, the place I'm most familiar with. Now back to Char Kuay Teow and Nasi Lemak!!