Home Cooked Reunion Dinner food

We were both invited by a good friend over to his house in Tambun for lunch on the eve of Chinese New Year. What was special that day was that his Mom had cooked her wonderful Chinese New Year food which they normally have for their reunion dinner. Since our friend had been telling us so much about his mom's cooking, we drove all the way there for lunch beating all the traffic that was on the bridge.

We finally arrived just in time for lunch, and with our hungry growling stomach, this is what we indulged in- mom's cooking (Teochew and Hokkien Style)

First dish was the Kiam Chai Ark. This is a common and must have dish during the reunions. I must say each house that cooks this dish all taste slightly different, but all with it's own goodness. We practically nearly drained the whole pot of soup.

Kiam Chai Ark

Ju Hu Char
Instead of sotong slices which my Ahma puts, friends Mom put thinly sliced pork in it. I liked it.

Ju Hu Char

Pork Ribs
This is a family secret which is kept among the family. Pork ribs are slow cooked in this very thick gravy which has a strong taste of tau cheong. This dish was yummy-licious.

Pork Ribs

Pineapple curry
This curry only has pineapples, brinjals and long beans in it. It was good.

Pineapple curry

Bamboo shoots
This dish, we all stayed far away from. The strong smell of it gives me a shiver. I think this is an acquired taste for those who can eat and enjoy this dish. I know Ed and myself do not have it. And neither does our friend.

Bamboo shoots

Lor Bak
This was not homemade but bought from outside. Friends mom did not made her own as it required a lot of work.

Lor Bak

6 Dishes we had

We both enjoyed the food so much that we left Tambun feeling all filled up. Thanks to our Friend for inviting us over. We hope we can get more of this next year.

Canton-I, Queensbay Mall

A new found restaurant in Queensbay. It is called Canton-I. It is under the same management as Dragon-I. However it has a different menu which they serve noodles, rice, congee, dim sum and some wonderful looking deserts. You can find this restaurant just next to KFC.

Since it has opened I have been here twice. So this is what I tried so far.

Noodles with Pork

Since part of the frontage of the restaurant was an open kitchen, you could see all the barbecued meats hanging waiting to be tried, so I ordered myself wan tan noodle with 2 choices of meat.
The first plate I had it with Japanese pork ribs and roasted pork (char siu). Second plate I had it with roasted pork belly. All 3 were good, but if I would say which I liked the most it would be the char siu followed by the Japanese pork ribs.

Japanese pork ribs and roasted pork (char siu)

Roasted pork belly

Rice with goose Meat

Ed could not resist his temptation to try out the goose meat here, so he ordered himself a plate of rice. To his disappointment, it had a lot of fat that after scrapping it all off, he was left with a small amount of meat. He complained his regular duck rice shop is still da best.

Rice with goose Meat

Rice with Pork

A friend of ours ordered himself a plate of rice and 2 choices of pork meat. He ordered the chai sui and roasted pork ribs. Meat was tasty.

Char sui and roasted pork ribs

Congee

Tried out two types of congee here. First was just plain congee which we had it with yu char kuih.
I was so amazed to see how smooth the congee was. It was as if they blended the rice. The second congee we tried was with deep fried intestine. This actually my Dad tried and after eating it he said that New Lane one was much better and tastier.

Plain Congee

Some fried stuff to eat with your congee

Yu Char Kuih

Yu Char Kuih in Congee

Congee with deep fried intestine

Cheong Fun

Again, I tried out two types of chee cheong fun. First was with huge prawns and the second one was with pork. It was tasty but salty for me.

Prawn Chee Cheong Fun

Chee Cheong Fun with Pork

Wan Ton Dumplings
Soup was really salty.

Wan Ton Dumplings

Sui Mai

Since there is Dim Sum on the menu, I opted to try their sui mai. It was pretty expensive though for just 4 of those. Taste wise it was so so only.

Sui Mai

Crispy BBQ pork bun

I can't really remember the exact name of this but it was basically the BBQ pork pastry. Pastry was a puff pastry with many fine layers. It was very brittle that when you try to carry it up, the layers sort of come out individually. After battling with my fingers to perfectly take a bite, I was quite disappointed as it did not have a strong BBQ pork taste which I was expecting. My mind was set to have it tasting like Wong Kok's, but no. It was very mild in taste and had not much pork meat in it.

Crispy BBQ pork bun

Mango wrapped with a layer of glutinous rice and topped with shredded coconut.
This was under the dessert menu. Seeing the picture in the menu caught my attention to try it out. In my first attempt, this was sold out. Luckily in my second visit it was available. How did it taste, well nothing wonderful about it. It's just a slice of mango wrapped.

Mango wrapped with a layer of glutinous rice and topped with shredded coconut

After much pigging here, the bill came out to be a bomb. Well it is pretty expensive here, but comparing to Dragon-I prices, this is much affordable.

Smoky Jack Ribs and Steak House

I have been eyeing on this place ever since I saw it being renovated. Finally made a trip here today to check it out. It is a new restaurant called Smoky Jack which can be found along Upper Penang Road. It is just next to Sega Fredos. It is under the same management as Tao Sushi. What caught my eye was the sign of ribs and also the weird woody-look-like-tree-roots it had at the entrance.

Inside the Restaurant you would be amazed by the way it is designed. It is very dark and how they did it up really made it one of a kind. Today my pictures turned out lousy but this is what I manage to salvage of the inside of the restaurant.

On the left is a round container like, space ship kinda thing which you can also sit and eat.

Inside the Restaurant it pretty dark and this is how it looks like. It still has the tree roots everywhere on the wall. The chairs here, I name them cocoons as don't they just looks like cocoons. Cool eh??

The cocoon tables

You would never guess what this is.......it's actually the ceiling!! They use old wooden doors and windows to cover the ceiling. Pretty interesting.

After settling down in an oval table, I read through their menu. They had more drinks on the menu than food. They had appetizers such as calamari, duck breast, prawn cocktail, etc. Then they had Beef Ribs and Pork Ribs on the menu followed by steaks, chicken and pasta. After giving not much of a thought, I got my mind made up to try their Texas Beef Ribs.

But before the ribs came, we ordered two soups and an appetizer

Bread
We were served with some bread and we had 3 types of butter to choose from. You can have plain butter, garlic butter or the last one I think olive oil with basil.

Mushroom Soup
It was good. Even though it did not have that strong mushroom taste in it, it was creamy and tasty. Also it had a lot of onion slices in it too which made it different.

Mushroom Soup

Boston Clam Chowder
The puff pastry was really good but the soup was disappointing. It was creamy but kinda tasteless.

Boston Clam Chowder

Fried Basil Calamari
This was a disappointing appetizer. They used the normal squids to fry and it had more of the fried batter then the squid itself. Where were those huge calamari rings i want!!! Anyways the "squid" was served with some tomato salsa and tartar sauce and it absolutely had not basil taste in it.

Fried Basil Calamari

Texas Beef Ribs

The highlight of the night. Serving portion was huge. It had two ribs covered with a thick layer of meat. Ribs were grilled and coated with their special BBQ sauce. Taste wise it was alright, but meat wise, could it be because I had mine medium well, some areas of the meat were hard and dry. And I could even get some burnt taste in some areas of the meat. Since it was dark, I couldn't really tell if it was burnt in some areas. But anyways it is worth trying this beef ribs. For the amount I had, it only cost me RM 43. Much cheaper to TGIF and Chillis ribs.

Texas Beef Ribs

For dessert, the waiter brings out all 5 desserts for you to choose from. They have tiramisu, apple crumble, mango pudding, cheese cake and coconut pudding, I think. Since we were so full, we took only a Tiramisu to share. Tiramisu was soaked with a lot of liquor and it was really creamy. But halfway eating, I could get some sour gassy taste in the cake areas. Don't know if it was too much liquor or something in it was turning bad. But I ate it all up, so if I can still blog after eating it, it must have been fine.

Tiramisu

For what we ate, i find the food prices here pretty reasonable. They even have set lunch for around 20+. For the cool atmosphere you get, it is pretty worth it. It a great place to chill out, eat and gossip. I shall be back here for more of it soon.

Smoky Jack Tel: 604-2628826
Website: www.smokyjack.com (still under construction)

Kacang Tumbuk and Kacang Gula

A colleague of mine brought this to work one day for me to try. It was superbly good. Apparently her uncle (Ang Seng Heong) makes this to sell. It is kacang tumbuk and kacang gula.

Kacang tumbuk.

What was different for me was that she served this wrapped in a popiah skin. I have never eaten it this way before. It felt fun eating it this way. Anyways back to topic, the kacang tumbuk was really good. I think I have never tasted this so good before. You just got to try this.

Kacang Gula
This was also good. It had really a lot of peanuts in it which had a very nice roasted peanut taste and aroma. On one side, it was coated with sesame seeds. A must try also.


So if you are interested to order and try, do call this number 04-2820122 or 012- 4528435 to make your orders. I highly recommend this.

Each item packet is price RM 6.