Baked Crabs and Prawns

If you are finding a place to have seafood cooked in a basic way, just baked with some salt, the best place would be to come here. Sea Pearl Lagoon Cafe is what this restaurant is called. It is found inside a temple called Thai Pak Koong Temple at Tanjung Tokong. Coming from town direction, at the traffic lights just before Chinese Swimming Club turn right and drive all the way in.

This place is opened for lunch and dinner. It is just a simple coffee shop like place next to the beach- so you get to enjoy the sea breeze while eating. At night, there are number of hawker stalls here selling Laksa, Satay, Ikan Panggang, Fried Noodles and some simple vegetable dishes.

But the main attraction here for me is the crabs and prawns I had. Prawns here are fresh and reasonably big. The prawns are mixed with salt and baked till it is cooked. So the shell of the prawns usually has a lot of salt. But you can opt for less salt on the prawns if you want. We enjoyed the prawns so much that we had to order another helping as we were all not satisfied.

The crabs on the other hand...oohhh the aroma you get when it is just baked is so gOOooOOd. Just makes your craving even worst. Crabs are big and with a lot of meat. If you like crabs with eggs, they also sell it if it is during the season.

Served on all tables is a special sweet chili sauce similar to the thai chili sauce. You are suppose to dip your seafood in this sauce before eating it. But somehow I still preferred having my prawns and crabs plain. For what we ordered the bill came out to RM 103. Prawns had cost us RM 36 and the crabs cost us RM 60 (i think crabs were 1 1/2 kg)

Oh before I forget, they also serve cockle shells and la la.

Special chili sauce

Baked prawns

Shells off ready for the dip!

Ready to enter the mouth

Baked crabs

Half a crab

Biggest pile is from me!!

The damage caused, The Bill

Sesame Soy, G Hotel

This was my first time here to this place and boy did I enjoy every bit of what I ate. Food here at Sesame Soy is on a fusion side. Was reading the menu, they have quiet a number of weird combinations. Manage to write down a few.

Roasted Pork Belly +Jelly Fish +yellow mustard- RM 18
Char siew with Apple Pie - RM 18
Slow cooked pork belly with spicy dried shrimp rice - RM 19
Sambal Steak with pickle, chutney and rice - RM 25
Teriyaki red snapper with green tea noodles and daikon- RM 22

Sounds weird right??? Well if your adventurous with your food, this would be good to try out.

Well back to my visit here. There were 4 of us here and this is what we ordered

For salad choice, was a plate of Caesar Salad with Garlic Prawns -RM 16. Salad was served in a crispy bowl sheet which you can eat up (I think some wantan sheets). Salad was superbly good. Just the perfect taste of how a Caesar salad should taste like.


Then from the starters/ appetizer section we ordered Soft Shell Crab with X.O sauce- RM18. It was one whole crab deep fried and chopped to 2, served with some mango slices and salad leaves. Not forgetting surrounded by finely chopped peanuts. I could not get the X.O sauce taste but I still found this dish good. Crab was crispy on the outside and soft and juicy inside.


Another starter dish, we also tried out the Vietnamese Pork Roll+ Lemon grass & sweet chili - RM 14. The rolls were deep fried. It had glass noodles in the rolls which were mixed together with the pork cubes. Taste wise, the rolls really rocked!! Superbly good once again. Wish I had more to eat!!!

Now to the main dish, first of was the Braised Shanghainese Lamb Shank - RM 30. Lamb was served with mashed potato and some vegetables. It was alright for me. Can get other places better than here (one would be back home-Mummy's cooking). But I must say the meat was really soft, tender and juicy. But halfway eating could get that strong lamb smell and taste. So to those who cannot stand this smell, you better stay way from this dish.


Second dish was the Fried Venison Hor Fun & Crab Meat -RM 18. It was good. Meat was thinly sliced which made it nice and soft. But serving was abit small. Perhaps maybe this dish was part of the set lunch we choose, so perhaps ala carte would have been a bigger portion. Anyways good to try this.

Third dish, now this was my favourite, Oxtail with Crispy Noodles in a Northern Thai Curry -RM 24. Basically this dish had oxtail meat which was tender and soft in a Northern Thai curry which was very lemak indeed. It was served with the crispy noodle and topped with half a lime (to squeeze) and some pickled cabbage. Sounds weird but it was wonderful. Thumbs up for this dish. I highly recommend. Well the picture below, there is more noodles under the oxtail meat if you are thinking that the noodles looks so little!


As for desert, I tried out these 3 desserts below.

Gula Melaka Creme Brulee with coconut ice cream. Creme Brulee was good. Up to Italianis standard. Coconut ice cream...well the ice cream was basically vanilla flavoring but it was topped with a crispy sheet of coconut husk/pieces. Maybe that is why they called it coconut ice cream. Well that crispy coconut sheet was tasty. Those 2 long strands through are actually deep fried pasta.


Banana Flambee which were banana fritters with vanilla ice cream- RM 11. Banana Fritters were topped with a sweet and sour sauce which gave you a kick when you eat it. Goes well with the vanilla ice cream. But found the portion slightly miserable.


Irish Coffee Mousse and Rum and Raisin Ice Cream - RM9. This dish failed as the Irish coffee mousse was not good at all. It had a bit of a stale fridge taste. Did not have any Irish coffee taste. Furthermore, the supposedly rum raisin ice cream was in fact plain vanilla ice cream. Was not satisfied with this dessert dish. That black looking sheet on the ice cream is sesame seeds made into a cookie like piece.

Well for me on my first visit here, I would definitely come back here for more Sesame Soy food.

cars for a living

NST News Paper did a review title “cars for a living” and based on their cars.bike.trucks experience people, they come out some of the most economical vehicles available in the market.

- Honda City i-DSI
- Suzuki Swift
- Nissan Latio
- Renault Kangoo Diesel
- Toyota Vios
- Naza Forza
- Proton Savvy
- Perodua Viva

Cream Puff, Apple Pie and Chicken Pie

You would not have guessed where I bought these from..........

Small cute looking cream puffs that is easily popped into your mouth. It is filled with a lot of cream that you must be careful not to let it ooze out when you take your bite.

Small miniature Apple Pies that are filled with diced up apples complimented with a pinch of Cinnamon taste. The pastry even though it is not using pure butter, it is still nice and soft which melts in the mouth.

Small miniature Chicken Pie that is filled with chicken and mixed vegetables which have been cooked separately to get that creamy taste.

Well the answer to my question....Got it from a road side stall selling Nasi Lemak and kuihs. It is easy to find, this uncle sells just outside the Chew City Cafe along Sungai Kelain Road (hillside area). It is the row of houses-turned-shop where you can find the Torch pub and Baan Thai Restaurant. What a great snack to have for tea or even a finger food for parties. But do come early as it is usually finished by 1pm.

Ang Chew Mee Suah

Read somewhere about this place and also a colleague of mine was telling me about this, so on Saturday, I made my way to this place that was selling this noodle called Ang Chew Mee Suah. In english it would be called Red Wine Vermicelli. The stall is found in the coffee shop (Kedai Kopi Hock Seng) located at the corner of Kedah Road and Burma Road. Or if you are not familiar with the road names, it is just at the corner next to Little Cottage. This coffee shop last time at night it used to sell good & cheap japanese food until the cook decided to move out.

So what is so special about this noodle? Well it is actually rice vermicelli cooked in red fermented rice wine. So there is a strong rice wine taste in the red coloured soup. Chatted up with the aunty she informed that this style of noodle can be found in Sitiawan- Hock Chew style.

Each bowl served comes with a chicken drumstick which is all red. It is because they boil the chicken in the soup. So to explain how the soup taste like....imagine sweet chicken soup with wine taste. Well anyways how I found it to be? I didn't quite like it as apart from the wine taste in the soup, I found it to be very tasteless. I had to put extra soya sauce in my bowl. But for Ed and my parents, they liked it.

The Stall

Ang Chew Mee Sua

Hawker stalls outside Gama (Trang Road)

Last weekend, we made a trip to Gama to try out the hawker stalls just outside of Gama along Trang Road. The place is quite small and all the hawker food stalls were all in a row neatly lined up. There are quite a number of stalls here, however we were unlucky as only a few stalls were selling.

While walking deciding what to order, I saw this stall selling bubur kacang hijau, gandum and pulut hitam (bee kor moi) which caught my attention as I saw that they served each bowl with a spoonful of glutinous rice (pulut). Very hard to find this type of stall these days. So I ordered a bowl of Gandum and packed a bowl of bubur kacang hijau. It was very cheap, each bowl only cost RM 1. The Gandum was good. Very creamy and lemak and it was not so sweet. Loved it with the glutinous rice in it. As for the bubur kacang hijau, it was ok for me. Not much of a kacang hijau fan, but I guess it was good for others as there were a lot of people ordering this. Next trip I shall try their pulut hitam.

Gandum

Bubur Kacang Hijau

Then I ordered a bowl of Mee Jawa which was disappointing. It was not good. Ed ordered Fried Bee Tai Bak which looked good. Taste wise it was pretty alright.

Jawa Mee

Fried Bee Tai Bak

Then since we were sitting next to the Lor Bak stall we decided to order some. To our surprise, the prawn fritters were absolutely good. Very tasty and crunchy. We loved it so much that we could not resist not ordering another plate of just prawn fritters. A must try for everyone.

Lor Bak

So this is pretty much what we ate here. We hope to come back here again one day, hopefully with more stalls selling.

Ulu Legong Hot Water Spring

Last weekend, we made a trip up to a hot spring called Ulu Legong Hot Springs. Ulu Legong is about 30km drive from the North-East of Baling. Baling town lies to the south east of Kedah State. The journey took us around 1 1/2 hours from Penang. We left at around 11.30pm and reached there just before 1 am. At first I was abit worried why we were going so late. But the friends which we followed had been here before and they said that everyone comes late at night. So fine then, since there were a number of guys around, I followed along.

When we reached, the place was actually a recreation park. We had to pay for the entrance fee which was RM 3 for adults. The place is actually opened 24 hours. Now, have you ever heard of a recreation park most visited after midnight??? Well this is just the place. There were tons and tons of people here hanging around the pool, swimming, camping and just lepaking around. No wonder the friends kept telling us both not to worry as there's alot of people late at night.

There were 5 pools here. 3 main pools where everyone hanged around, 1 baby pool and 1 private pool for those ladies who want to have privacy. The 3 pools where everyone hanged around, the water temperature was different. The 1st pool right at the bottom was the coolest-meaning water was warm like, followed by the 2nd pool which got hotter and the 3rd pool which no one could actually swim in. Water there was damn hot. I tried dipping my hand in and it was freaking hot. I think you would probably burn your skin if you swam in here for like half a minute.

The amount of people here

This is the 1st pool

The 2nd pool

The 3rd pool

The 3rd pool

I tried to take nice shots of the place but because of the steam everywhere the pictures all came out 'steamy'. We found a place next to the second pool and slowly made our way in the water. Since the water was hot, we couldn't exactly jump in, so everyone dipped their toes in slowly till the water reached thigh length. It took us about 10 minutes to achieve this!!!!

Everyone sitting down dipping their legs in

Ed in the water covered by the steam

Since it was that time of the month for me, I couldn't go in further. Ed manage to get his whole body in the water slowly, and he lepaked at one corner for a while sweating away from his neck up. But he couldn't stay in for long as his head started to pound and came up with a slight headache. I guess the hot water gave his blood vessels a rush. But the cool thing is that when the guys came out of the water, there was actually steam coming out from their skin. Looked as if they all had their chi coming out from their body...hahahhaha.

So anyways, it was a new experience for us both. Was our first time in a hot spring place. Perhaps we may be back one night again, not during the school holidays time as there were a bit too many people around.

Oh before I forget, a lot of bugs were killed throughout our journey here. It was pretty bad, at some areas the amount of bugs crashing to the windscreen sounded like as if it was drizzling outside. Perhaps in the bugs life, they had some sacrificing rituals going on...hahahaha

A video of the pool area