Dinner@Gyukaku, Holland Village

It was end of 2009,
and the beginning of 2010..
Both Demona and Dogma were back to their foreign home in Singapore...
Many friends, many memories, and not to mentioned the glorious wine and dine....

While walking along Holland Village with a Poor Ringgit based budget...Dogma decided to relive the glorious wine and dine session by spending abit more.

Man should not worry about the Food and Clothes as He will provide!

We stepped in to Gyukaku, a Japanese Smokeless BBQ Joint.

First up, its the Asahi Super Cold Beer and the complimentary Porky Cold Cuts.
Lube the Throat with some icy cold beer to facilitate the large amount of meat coming your way!

The smokeless BBQ Pit:

In life, there are always Smoking Oven ( Trials/Tribulations).. but do remember, that the Flaming Torch( Grace of God) is not far away!


The meat:

Wagyu:Pork:

The Meat on Fire:
The Fried Pork Cutlet
Fried Meat Balls:

BBQ Roasted Rice Ball with Salmon inside:Some tasty soup with Meat:


The total bill: SGD75bucks

The verdict:
All the meat were tasty and super value for money.
the only disappointment was the BBQ Rice Ball and Crispy Pork Cutlet which were too dry...
The Meat Soup was gorgeous, the BBQ meat was sweet, and more refined and clean compared to typical Korean BBQ.

A Glorious Meal in the Land of Singapore..
We will be back.............

Frequent visits@Woo Lim Jeong, Desa Sri Hartamas

Demona: My first ever meal at this tiny, but cozy Korean restaurant was my birthday dinner, last November. Since then, there was no turning back. We became regulars, until the Korean guy who owns the place became Dogma's friend. Hey, he even gave Dogma's parents free Korean pancakes just for treats! How nice of him. Ever so pleasant, warm and friendly.

They always try to improvise their appetizer dishes in order not to get regular patrons bored from having the same ones all the time. However, they do regularly serve their trademark appetizers, which Dogma and I give thumbs up everytime! eg: kimchi, seaweed wrapped eggrolls, steamed kangkungs, spicy cucumber slices.

Demona: We ordered the ox bone soup. The broth was clear, light beefy taste, with a hint of spring onions accompaniment. I am not a soupy person, so I gave Dogma the honour of gulping the beef juice down while meaty me chewed up these cube sized tenders. Rating wise for this dish was : 6.5/10

Demona: Time to fold clothes! Oh wait.. fold veges and meat i mean. (ok.. cold joke, yes). Usually, we'll order the Bulgogi dish on our tight-budget-but-still-craving-for-Korean days. THIS is a MUST order. Sweetened, tender beef strips entwined within slurpy strings of vermicelli. Rating: 9/10. We did not have a pict for this though.

Oh yea.. back to the folding story. The tools needed for this task were in the pict below. The chilli paste KICKED butt BIG TIME! mmmmmmm... yummy gobbly.

Demona: These nicely grilled pork slice babies are to be nicely tucked inside the fresh crunchy lettuce leaves and sealed with a chilli paste kiss. Once you popped one in your mouth... you won't stop popping in the rest until your tummy screams "too full!"

The beef meat here are all flown in from Korea as the guy said the quality of the beef here was disappointing that he just could not cross his own conscience to serve it to his customers. (It is that bad...) Imagine, we have ample space, resources and government fundings to rear good quality cows, but hey, all the good quality meat are exported out and...wooohoooo.... leaving behind the lousy ones for our very own fellow citizens.

The pork however, are from local sources. Its quality was good enough to make him happy. Hmmmmmm... doesn't that leave you wondering what is going on with our country? Even animals are marginalised.

Total verdict: 8.8/10. Oh yes, if you are really unhappy with the quality of the dish which was served to you, please do not feel shy to express your concern. The owner is a man who is open to comments and critisisms, which we both love that sort of attitude in him! Pricing wise is good too, especially lunch meals! RM 12/lunch set. Pheng leng cheng ah! I rather pay for this than the equivalent RM 12 of OldTown kopitiam food for instance.

This is one Korean restaurant which will definitely make us come back again, and again, and again, and again... .for more culinary excitements :)

Oh yes, I believe we have visited this place more than 10 times already.

Sizzling BBQ@Dao Rae, Taipan USJ

Demona: It's been like forever since I last blogged about food! Crazy hectic period for me. Company's tri-annual team event, chasing sales, dealing with housing issues, and finally.... April had come to an end and I could finally take a huge and deep breath.

Yes... I'm still busy venturing and eating, eating, eating along the way. Just lack of time to put them down in words.

Dogma and I had been crazy fans of Korean food lately. I was renting in Pinggiran USJ then, that was why our Dao Rae experience was in Taiping. The craze for all these kimchi-madness heightened even more when I finally moved in to my new home in Hartamas, land of Korean food!

Demona: Got protein, got vegetables, no carbs. Fairly good diet for those weight watchers! The lettuce leaves were fresh and crunchy, somehow psycho-ing you to forget about the charcoal grilled oily, juicy, slightly fatty BBQ flavoured pork and beef. Mmmmmmmmmmm!

Demona: I know.. I know. The thrill of eating BBQ food is to grill the meat on your own, as burnt as you wish, as rare as you wish, as flavourful as you wish. However, these two lazy asses just gawked at the raw meat cookin on the burning hot coal sizzled grill plate by the kind and helpful bangla waiter. All we did was open our mouths (say Ahhhhhhhh.....) and close our mouths, and the rest, we leave them for your own imagination.

Demona: Yes, mr.kind and helpful bangla also grilled these to perfection for us.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.... ngarm, ngarm, ngarm, ngarm.

Demona: The part I loved most about Korean food was the generous refillable servings of a wide range of appetizers in the midst of eating the main dishes. They were served in little bowl like plates and you could ask for a refill if you really enjoyed that particular appetizer and wanted to have more, more, more, more. "Si Beh" worth it!

If we were to eat on a normal basis (the usual amount of food we need to consume to feel full), by eating 2-3 rounds of these appetizers would keep your tummy full and happy already. Being the Malaysians that we are, words like buffet, refills, eat-all-you-can are like magic. Our tummies just won't fill up full somehow.

We also ordered a spicy stew soup but left the picture out. The soup had a balance of veges, tofus, and beef strips, making it a full meal being on its own. By the time we finished the bbq meat vege wrappers, we were too full to drink down the soup even if it tasted really delicious. However, no good food should go wasted right!

Guess what did we do?

Guess. guess. guess.

We tapao-ed of course! And um... there were still some 3/4th round appetitzers left on the table. No good food should go wasted right! We quietly dumped them into the soup as well before we asked for it to be packed. Urks..... shhhhhhhhhhh! hehehe.

Taiwan Trip 1

During my recent trip to Taiwan, mom, dad and I had lunch at one of the Restaurant Chain owned by aFamosa Group ( one of the richest family in Taiwan). The restaurant concept was pretty unique, with per pax cost is fixed at NTD499, and comes with a myriads choices of starter, antipasti, maincourse, dessert and drinks. Such system allows the restaurant to more precisely forecast revenue and prevent freeloaders like Dogma/Demona who would normally share a meal in any restaurant. ( Tough times call for tough measures)

The services here was engineered to perfection and each sequence of presentation was probably rehearsed and preplanned. A typical trait of restaurant owned by engineering firms i guess.
Antipasti: Asparagus and radish with some vinegerate sauce i think. Fresh.
The killer meat: I ordered Wagyu beef. While it was not top grade wagyu, it was still pretty decent and have a sweet, tender, kinda melt in your mouth texture. Somehow the meat was a tad sweet for my liking. Dad ordered a veal skillet which was less tender but more beefy... The beef was accompanied by fried garlic chips, which was pretty appetizing.



The dessert was quite a let down, basically black sesami panna cotta with some green tea biscuit crust on top of ur spoon.

At the end of the lunch, the restaurant even give you free pens, and gift for you to bring home.
Who don't love free gift, doesn't you?

Assorted Wine

We had ordered this bottle for Michaelangelo Solaris. Placido 2006 Chianti. Once open, some sweet, sourish note occure with some significant red fruit. It was pretty much a simple, fruity wine that is lack of much complexity. However, priced at about RM100, it was pretty decent value..

Demeocq Bourgogne Pinot Noir 2007. Simple, light weight palate with red cherry nose. A wine suitable over lunch but skip this is u are seeking for banyardy, earthy and complex burgundy pinots.