Additions of Nyonya Breeze Restaurant

Additions to my previous post of Nyonya Breeze. "click on Nyonya Breeze to read the previous post"

Sunday had lunch here again. This time I tried out other dishes which was good for me.

Acar Hu- The fish here is deep fried and then cooked in vinegar which has turmeric powder, ginger, garlic, chilly and sugar mixed to create a pickle like taste. It was not good for me. Did not have that strong pickle taste in it. Preferred the acar hu from Rumah Perut. "click on Perut Rumah to read the previous post"

Otak Otak- It was good and tasty. The shape it was served in got me laughing as it looked so cute on the plate.

Lor Bak- It was nice and juicy. Had a strong spice taste. Another good dish here.

Kerabu Bok Nee- It was way to spicy for me. Had to order a second drink to cool my mouth down.

Wan Tan Mee- Tai Wah Cafe

Someone introduced this place to me to try out the Wan Tan Mee. Apparently it’s popular. So last Saturday morning dragged my parents out for breakfast. Coffee shop is called Tai Wah Cafe which is along Argryll Road just beside the Caltex Petrol Station. It's a rather small place which sells only Wan Tan Mee.

When reached, the place was packed. Had to wait for awhile to get a place. Dad pre ordered first while waiting as we were a bit worried there would be no more left for us. While waiting Dad met a friend who also highly recommended this place. Friend apparently loves the Sui Kow here and always pre-books it over the phone. Amazing. But to our luck the friend bought up all the remaining stock that morning.

We all ordered the dry Wan Tan Mee type. The texture of the mee was smooth and soft. Taste wise I was a bit disappointed as it was rather sweet tasting for me. Didn’t quite like it. I still prefer the Wan Tan Mee along Terrenganu Road.

But anyways if you are crazy enough to go on a Wan Tan Mee hunt for the best Wan Tan Mee in town, do include this place in as you may like it better than I did.

Tai Wah Cafe along Argryll road

Uncle busy cooking the wan tan mee

Wan Tan Mee (RM 2.50)

Wan Tan served in a bowl of soup- soup was tasty

El Mondo Pizza- The Original Woodfire Pizza

El Monda Pizza the original woodfire pizza

This Restaurant is located at Crystal Point area just next to Eighteen Restaurant. It’s been opened for quite a while probably less than 1 year old. Business so far looks good with a moderate amount of customers everyday. Dining here, is an experience as everyone here is so friendly. You have the owner coming up to every table to chat up with the customers, mainly to get feedbacks of the food.

What is unique here is that they serve wood fired pizzas – thin crust pizza baked in a wood fire oven. Pizza crust served here has a different taste to the crust from Pizza Hut or Dominos. Funny, once I ate, was wondering why there were black spots in the crust. Thought it was some mold. When questioned, the owner informed that those black looking spots were bits of dried tomatoes in the crust. Now that’s something unique for a pizza crust - Apparently their pizza dough (flour) is imported in from Germany. I’ve tried 2 types of pizza here so far, the best I like is the Margarita Pizza. It is plain pizza with tomato base sauce and cheese topped with mini cherry tomatoes. It is very tasty if you are thinking that it sounds plain. You get to really taste the crust and ooh I love the cheese. Thumbs up for this.

Margarita Pizza

Then there is the El Mondo Special Pizza which has Beef pepperoni and prawns in it. Improvement for this is that I would prefer if it had more of the tomato base sauce in it. Kinda lacked in that sour ‘kick’ taste. But it was something good to try. For a regular size pizza it cost RM 23.90. A bit on the pricey side, for the size of the pizza, but for the environment you get, I can say it’s reasonable. An advice here, do not compare the pizza here with Pizza Hut as it is a totally different style.

El Mondo Special Pizza

Besides pizza, they also serve western and Italian cuisine. In my last visit recently, I tried out their set lunch. Set lunch comes with soup (soup of the day), main meal (3 choices), drinks (ice lemon tea, coffee or tea) and dessert. That day they served Cauliflower cream soup, 3 main dish choices as below and dessert was a slice of Tiramisu.

Cauliflower soup- this was not bad. It was thick and creamy and you could get the cauliflower taste. Soup was served with a basket of garlic bread.

Cauliflower cream soup

Garlic Bread

Main Meal Choices

1) Cheesy Fish (RM 21.90)- breaded fish stuffed with cheddar cheese and mushroom served with basil cream sauce.

2) Penne con pollo e pepperoni (RM 16.80)- Chicken meat and capsicum in tomato sauce.

3) Chicken in tomato sauce (RM 18.90)- Chicken chop style with tomato sauce gravy.

I had the Cheesy fish dish that day. Presentation of the food was good. However I would say that the portion was rather small. Even had my colleagues commenting on the size. Well for the price of RM 21.90 we all expected at least a bigger serving. Taste wise was pretty plain. Nothing wonderful or outstanding about it. But at least the fish was fresh and it did not have that fishy sea taste.

Cheesy Fish

Another colleague had the Penne pasta. I tried a bit. It was so-so only. Nothing unique about it, just plain tomato sauce tasting pasta. Pasta was rather chewy, as it was not boiled long enough. Portion was reasonable for the price of RM 16.90.

Penne con pollo e pepperoni

For dessert we were served Tiramisu. Once again the portion was so tiny. Unbelievable!! But taste wise it was good!!!

Tiramisu

For those weight watchers, El Mondo also serves salad if you are coming here for something light. I’ve tried their Chefs special salad (RM 14.90). It had slices of chicken, wild mushroom and croutons in it . Salad is then sprinkled with Parmesan cheese and served with a special salad sauce. Quite nice tasting. Then for a simple salad, there is the green salad which is rather plain tasting. Just salad leaves, capsicum, egg, tomato, olive and carrots topped with a special salad sauce.

Chefs Special Salad

Green Salad

Thats about it with my El Mondo experience. So far it's alright for me. Shall come back again to try out other dishes on the menu.

Perut Rumah, Nyonya Cuisine

A new eating place along Jalan Kelawai just slightly opposite Gurney Hotel. It is an old herritage Bangalow house which turned into a Restaurant called Perut Rumah which sells Nyonya food. When I stepped into the restaurant, I was amazed with the set up of the place. It was very cozy indeed and had an old fashioned style which somehow matched the type of cuisine they have.

A new eating place along Jalan Kelawai just slightly opposite Gurney Hotel. It is an old herritage Bangalow house which turned into a Restaurant called Perut Rumah which sells Nyonya food. When I stepped into the restaurant, I was amazed with the set up of the place. It was very cozy indeed and had an old fashioned style which somehow matched the type of cuisine they have.

They have quiet a good variety of Nyonya dishes served in their menu. My first visit here, I only managed to try out 6 dishes and 2 desserts. These were as following.

Chicken Curry Kapitan. It was average for me as it did not have a strong intensity of taste. Mamas' Restaurant (along Abu Siti Lane) served better for this dish.

Chicken Curry Kapitan

Perut Ikan (Fish stomach). It's not my kind of dish but comments from my parents were that Mama's and Nyonya Breeze (Along Abu Siti Lane) was better with this dish.

Perut Ikan

Hong Bak- Pork cooked with aromatic spices. This was good for me as it was my first time tasting such a dish. It had a sour taste to it which just added to my liking. It's sour because there's vinegar in this dish. Also it has fermented soya beans (Tau-cheong) which adds a unique taste to it. Somehow this dish reminded me of Philippines food.

Hong Bak

Kerabu Bok Nee. This was disappointing as it did not have much taste and the there was no intensity of the kerabu sourness taste. Mamas' Restaurant much much better for this.

Karabu Bok Nee

Jiu Hoo Char. Another disappointing dish as my grandma's taste even much better. Intensity of the taste was not there. Once again, Mamas' restaurant better.

Jiu Hu Char

Acar Hu- Pickled fish. This was good. Just the right sourness. The fish here is deep fried and then cooked in vinegar which has turmeric powder, ginger, garlic, chilly and sugar mixed to create a pickle like taste. Superbly good, however pretty pricey as this dish alone cost us RM 21.00. That adds up to RM 3.50 for 1 small fish.

Acar Hu

For dessert, they have a few to choose from such as, Pengat (bo bo cha cha), Gandum, Bee Koh Moi, Peanut soup, Sago and a few other more. That day unfortunately they only had Gandum and Bee Koh Moy prepared. Gandum was ok, not too sweet and the Bee Koh Moy was ok for me - I preferred Mama's Restaurant.

Bee Koh Moy

Gandum

For the amount we ate, the bill came up to RM 123.00. Pretty expensive!! They charged us for RM 1 for each serving of rice in a small bowl and RM 1 for a glass of plain water. Unbelievable!!
But anyways a new place to try out. Had quiet a crown there that day. I guess they were all trying out the new place. Would I go back here again? we'll see.....maybe for the RM1 for 1 Acar Hu......but can't say they may be good for other dishes which I've yet to try.

*** To read my previous post about Nyonya Breeze, you may click this Link: Nyonya Breeze

Happy Belated Easter

God, I am not perfect but I thank you for always leading me to be a good person. Happy Easter!

1 Day tri to Ipoh Part 5- Kuih and head back home

After the waterfall, we stopped by in another town to buy some kuihs. It was 4 something by that time and there were not many kuih stalls left. We manage to buy some kuihs which looked interesting. These were the pink and black kuihs. The pink kuih was round and flat and was sticky. Friend said it is something like the 'huat kuih' in Penang. Taste wise- it was tasteless and very chewy. It was not good for me. The black kuih which was also round and flat on a banana leaf was something like dodol. Once again it was tasteless and was not good for me either.

The only kuih I liked here was the one which was a green ball covered with flour and had peanuts in it. When you bite and chew it, it does remind you of Muar Chee. This was good. Nice, soft and bouncy..wished I could have had more.

So that is about it of our 1 day trip to Ipoh. It was a good trip and something new for the both of us here in Ipoh. Thanks to the Swift guy in Ipoh who spend his holiday taking us all around Ipoh.

The pink and black kuih and the tin of flour which contained that green ball kuih

The amount of kuih bought

Half of the green ball kuih with peanuts in it

1 Day trip to Ipoh Part 4- Papan Town

After lunch we drove to another town called Papan. First stop we stopped by at one of the Sultan of Peraks’ castle which was a ‘singgah sana’ castle. Place was closed as it was undergoing renovations. Building was nice as it had that old Malay kampung house. We only managed to take photos from a far and could not go into the building.

One our way out, our Ipoh friend told us that the houses along the roads were 100 over years old. Some lots looked run down and no one could stay it in it. Others that were still maintained were turned to shop lots and homes.

Then we headed to a waterfall stream. Journey was quite long as we drove past a secluded area covered by trees. It took us about 10 minutes just to reach the waterfall. When reached the place had a number of people having picnics. The water was rather milky that we decided not to have a leg dip.

Journey to Papan Town


Sultan Peraks' singgah sana castle

100 years old house

Journey in to find the waterfall

A herb park just next to the waterfall stream. Place is also a forest reserve

Waterfall stream- Milky water

Papan Town

A close encounter with a buffalo

1 Day trip to Ipoh Part III- Tanjung Tualang

After the castle at Batu Gajah, we headed to Tanjung Tualang town for lunch to have some River Prawns. Apparently this town is famous for it's river prawns.

Anyways on our journey there, we stopped by a tin mining place here at Tanjung Tualang, where for the first time I saw a dredging 'ship'. It was huge, almost looked like some metal creatures from space. The place now is left for tourist to go in and take a look. However since the admission fee was pretty expensive, RM 10, we all decided not to go in. Only managed to get a snap shot of the place from outside the gate.

Tin Dredge Heritage

So we continued our journey and reached our lunch destination. It was a small looking town dominated by Chinese. The place we ate was called Restaurant Kong Kee. The place looked very old and it had black and white photos on the walls which looked like the 60's era. Had pictures taken of the live river prawns and a Toman fish which was in front of the Restaurant. We ordered, two types of river prawns ;- Butter River Prawns and Steamed River Prawns. Butter River Prawns was good. It had butter, fried egg bits, dried prawns and curry leaves in it. The Steamed River Prawns was steamed with a special sauce which had a strong Chinese wine taste. Prawns looked huge, but after you remove the big head, the flesh was not much. I didn't quite enjoy this dish as it had a very strong river-water-prawny taste. Something I don't like when I have seafood.

The restaurant

One of the old black and white photos on the wall

Besides prawns we also ordered a huge fish belonging to the cat fish family. The fish was very fresh because we witnessed its final breath before it was brought to the kitchen to be slaughtered. What a pitty! The fish was steamed instead of a curry style. Once served, one must eat the fish while it's still hot. Reason is that when it's cold the fish doesn't taste good and the flesh kinda gets rubbery. Sauce wise it was good, but the fish flesh had a very strong fishy taste. The last two dishes was belachan kangkung- normal, and tofu- nice and soft texture.

Butter River Prawns

On my plate

Steamed River Prawns

The claws

Steamed Fish

Tofu

My plate

You wouldn't guess how much the bill came up to...... Freaking RM 237. We both were shocked, it was so expensive. Back in Penang RM 237 you would be able to have prawns, crabs, fish, lala and more for that price. Were they cutting our throats since we looked like outsiders? Well never again shall we step foot there agian. But I must say it was a nice experience passing by this town.

Toman fish (Snake head fish)

Live river prawn

Tanjung Tualang Town