Sunday, April 6, 2008

SOFRA Turkish Restaurat @ Show Tower

Prior to Demona's reward for her hardwork in the "meeting" today, we had our lunch in Sofra, the Turkish Restaurant in Shaw Tower along beach road.
The overall quality is pretty good and the ambience was pretty relaxed.
Here are the foods we had that afternoon.

Appetizer platter for 2@12.50: Mixed of turkish salad, chick pea hummus (much better than Moussandra@KL, flavourful and good nuttiness, some pine leaf rolls, stewed brinjal. The portion is generous and big enough as a main course for 2. You just need to order some turkish bread to complete the meal.
Mixed Kebab Platter@17.50sgd: Feeling greedy, I'd ordered their mixed kebab platter. Again, portion is generous however, most of the meat was not very warm to my liking. The lamb and chicken was the best among the lot, while one of the meat (not sure if its beef or lamb) was a tad dry and tasteless. an average effort.

A candid shot of the Turkish Coffee we had: Demona commented the turkish. It was sweet on the palate with some bitter note at the end.

Verdict: Pretty interesting turkish food but it did not have much magic to move us much.


Tom's Palate

Besides pastry , Ice cream would be one of Demona's many weak spots.. Give her a spoonful of kick-ass ice cream and she would be jolly jumping for the rest of the day.

and Tom's Palate's ice -cream do kick ass!

After a tiring meeting on a Saturday morning, I decided to bring Demona to Tom's Palate to reward her.

This is her second visit to Tom's palate and they did not dissapoint.
Strawberry flavour: Thick solid texture with generous portion of frozen strawberry. This is lovely. not overly sweet with a good acidity and sourness on the palate. Very natural flavor.
Double Combo of Butter pecan and Cheese Cake: Can't remmeber much as demona was hogging the spoon. Will let her post her review soon.

Tom's Palate contact:
Jeng Jeng: Demona's art work paste on the wall.



My suggestion for Tom's new creation: Mature bordeaux ice cream: Smokey nose of vanilla and blackberry + tangy palate with chocolate and mocha flavour.


Verdict: After visiting a couple of the ice cream parlour in Singapore. Here are our rankings of them.

1) Tom's Palate: Solid, natural thick ice cream
2) Daily's Scoop: It was solid and thick ice cream on our first visit. But the second trip was too sweet to our liking
3) Swirl:
4) Island Cremery: I dun really enjoy this as the flavour was tad watered down or too sweet.

Provence Bakery@ Holland Village 3

Without a doubt, Demona has turned into a die-hard Provence Bakery Zombie Fan..
Zombie-mona: I .... need... Provence Bakery.......................

What to do, I being the resident chauffeur have to wake up early on a cozy Saturday morning to satisfy Zombie-mona's cravings for some Japanese Carbo!

Third Visit to Provence Bakery in 2 weeks for Demona from KL!!
I had the fried sausage bun. OOOOOO... the bun was very very lite, buttery and chewy. It is not oily as compared to most typical fried sausage bun...I like!

Another close up picture of the buttery fried sausage.....

Chocolate Danish: Zombie-mona's favourite on her third trip to Provence. Dark gooey chocolate fillings ooozing out from the fluffy danish.... It is light and not overly sweet. Beautiful!

Cream Cheese Sesame Bun: Fragrant cream cheese butter in the middle of the black sesame bun. It was pleasing but not amazing. So so la...

Saturday, April 5, 2008

Dim Sum@Foh San Restaurant, Ipoh

Demona: Dogma's temperamental camera has got issues: sometimes he's naughty and does not want to work, sometimes the power dies, even when I have charged the batteries full the night before.

He showed his temper again on my Foh San breakfast day, and this was the second time he did it. I used Michelle's hi-tech gadgety touch screen, 5 megapix LG phone instead. Some pictures were a little blur.



Demona: The precious char siew paos of FS. Everyone yearns for it. It is always sold out. If you come past 10 am, the chances of getting your teeth sinking into it are honestly slim. The CSP was quite good, with a decent portion of chunky char siew meat filling inside. However, Ming Room still scores as the daddy of all CSPs.



Demona: They are also famous for their egg tarts. I much preferred Nam Heong's and am looking forward to try out the egg tarts from Simee market. I have yet to find the place. Apparently, they make one of the best egg tarts in the country.

FS's egg tarts were not to my liking. The pastry was too buttery, I know I would feel nauseous on my second piece. Too much vanilla essence was added in the egg filling. Its smell overpowered the whole tart.



Demona: The fried shrimp rolls tasted quite nice. We managed to get the fresh batch from the trolley lady as I saw the shrimp rolls being laid on layers of tissues to adsorb the excess frying oil.



Demona: The chee cheong fun took forever to reach our table. My boss was almost boiling up to his brains because his numerous calls for CCF were plainly ignored by the waiters (whom were foreign workers, who understood minimal chinese and english) and waitresses (whom were fierce, rough looking middle aged ladies).

The CCF at the kopitiam next to Sin Yoon Loong was much better than the one we had over here. The taste was pretty normal.



Demona: I have NO clue on what this was. All I remembered was it was a new invention by FS. I didn't like their newbie at all. It was basically a Loh Mai Kai wrapped in a dumpling. "Creative" eh. It was too, too oily. The dumpling was not well attached to the LMK, once we opened it up, the dough just fell apart. Pretty much like cracking a nut out of its shell.



Demona: I did not try this at all. So I can't describe much of its taste. They did not look appealing to me. Pretty much like mini donuts, shaped in a ball, deep fried and coated with sugar.



Demona: Steamed scallop dumplings. So so only too. They did not leave much impression on me to describe any further on them.



Demona: These were the Har Kaus. They tasted so so also. The spicy garlic chilli dipping was definitely required to eat along with the HKs.



Demona: The Siew Mais were quite tasty. The pork meat were quite flavourful and chewy. Quite enjoyable, I would say but I still needed the chilli dipping to enhance its taste though.

Verdict: The bill came up to about RM 45/ 4 pax including a pot of tea and all the food above. Overall, I would say the dimsums are average, but mind you, the place is forever packed to the brim. I am guessing, people do come back again and again for FS's dimsums are mainly because:

1) There aren't many local dimsum shops to choose from.
2) FS has been there for donkey years. Locals grew up eating their dimsums. This forms a special bond between the food, the place and the people. People feel connected with the old memories, the past, their families, by eating at a place when they were only babies, spoonfed by their grandparents. It gives out a cozy, comfy feeling I guess.
3) A business that has been running for generations, and still growing strong. A restaurant that is forever packed with hungry customers. For newbies, this is definitely an attractive eatery to try out. Not to mention, the endless publicities of this legendary dim sum place by the paper and internet media.

I am very sure that there will still be trips to FS whenever I come up to work in Ipoh. Hopefully, there is a chance for Dogma and I to tummy growl together at FS sometime soon. I'll definitely have much nicer pictures by then!

Dinner@Kafe Hilltop, Ipoh



Demona: It was a wet, heavily drizzling night. Honestly, we are always clueless on where to scout for food at night in Ipoh. After driving around Greentown and Old Town area, we finally decided to eat at Kafe Hilltop, which was one of the few night eateries that looked slightly livelier than the zombie-like rest. No one really eats out much at night for smaller towns, I guess.

This place was brightly lited with wired strings of little yellow light bulbs, and the misty air from the giant mist fans made the area looked cozy from far. I guess this coffee shop got its "Hilltop" name from its geographical location, slightly leveled up from the ground, like a baby dwarf hill.



Demona: Michelle ordered mee hoon in tom yam soup. Nothing fantastic about the dish. The soup was too watery, and the ingredients were unimpressive (processed fishball, meatball, and some sad withered looking vegetable leaves), clearly due to the stall seller trying to maximize his profits by minimizing his ingredients. This is a typical problem we face in most kopitiams these days.



Demona: Notice the brochure of a local BN politician on our table? He came to the coffee shop with two ferocious looking 4 wheels, playing some crappy athem-like music, carrying several people holding giant BN flags on the opened air boot. A lady got down and started distributing these beautifully printed high quality brochures (which us taxpayers are paying for) on every table, asking us to vote for this man.

He stood at a dark corner with a speaker and started his speech in cantonese. A futile move I think, no one could hear him clearly, and he was basically preaching "Predicted" promises: "Make Ipoh prosper!" "Give people more benefits" "Fight for their rights". I did pity him for a while there, for finishing his speech, because it does sucks if no one listens to you.

When they left, no one seemed to give any reactions. The brochure on our table became Michelle's table mat. I'm assuming the rest will end up in the dumps.

Congrats to PKR! It's about time, for change.



Demona: I ordered two rolls of popiah, RM 3.20. Nothing fantastic either. A very, very average tasting popiah.



Demona: BIG BOOOOOOOOOO to you!

Verdict: Besides the breezy, comfy looking ambience. The food that we tried were a total failure. I have no intention at all to come back for another visit to try the other varieties here.