Sashimi Till I Drop (Literally)@Caribu, Seoul

http://foodventuras2.blogspot.com/2013/08/sashimi-till-i-drop-literallycaribu.html

Swordfish burger and fried seafood goodies@Bondi Beach, Sydney

The houses, apartments, shops and cafes along these hilly winding roads along Bondi beach really give out the sense of holiday-ing-all-the-time feel. I will never forget the first glimpse of Bondi beach when we reached the tip of one of the hilly slopes. Although you can't see much from the picture which was taken from one of the slopes, believe me, the view was outstanding. Those people staying at the apartments nearby are so lucky to be waking up to this view, EVERYDAY.

My friend who is also a frequent traveller says that Bondi beach is quite similar to Kalkan. I've never heard of this place before but apparently it is located on the Turkish Mediterrenean coast, known to tourists as a place for fine beaches too. Greeks used to live in this place before the war between both nations started and since then many Greeks had left, leaving Kalkan almost disappearing from the map. Luckily, some rich merchants back in the 50s decided to preserve the place and today, it has become a famous tourist destination and the Kalkan property scene has since hit sky high. Similar shops, houses, apartments, cafes located along the hilly roads complementing the scenic view of the beaches.

What an interesting FYI. Turkey, hopefully my future destination and Kalkan will definitely be one of my must-visit places.

Ok! Back to the foodies!

When we were finally here, I was really awed by the scenic view of the splashing blue waves, and baby blue clear sky. Breathtaking! Not to mention, lean, mean, machine surfers to make the view, more sassy!

The place my friend had been raving about since we first arrived. Swordfish burger!

These guys are so lucky to have fresh seafood served daily. And it is so affordable for them! Argh.

Deep fried calamaries and fries. Yummylicious! The squids were nicely marinated with pepper and paprika. I'm salivating already, looking back at this picture.

Grilled tuna and swordfish. The fishes were fresh, but a little too bland for me. Healthy dish! Minus the fries of course.

Finally, the long awaited swordfish burger! This is definitely a much healthier option of a burger if you are indeed craving for one. The breaded crumb fried swordfish was delicious of course, but it wouldn't have been good alone, without the fresh vegs and the delicious tartar sauce. The diametre of the burger was about 6 inches. Phew!

Fried scallops. Yums! The only downside, was the batter. Didn't stick well to the scallops and they were too thick. We dug out the batter and ate the juicy fat scallops on their own. Good enough!

Say hello to my foodie friends. Only 4 days and nights of food and we all ballooned up. Aiyaiyaiyaiyaiyai!



Sashimi frenzy@Sydney Fish Market

Free flights to Australia for Miss Foodventura, anyone? Particularly Sydney! Am missing the sashimi from Sydney Fish Market terribly now. It's only been a month..

Mr Trav, a sashimi expert, was in charge of all the food ordering. We ordered a balance between raw salmon, tuna, swordfish sashimi, scampis, oysters, prawns......

to deep fried soft shell crabs, baby octopuses, grilled unagi slices and fries. Madness! So much food for only 4 tiny tummies. The sashimis were by far the freshest I'd ever eaten in my life. Mr Trav, however says that Japan is leading when it comes to fresh seafood.

Even the salmon roes, were really fresh, and crunchy. Each sashimi slice was dipped with wasabi and soy sauce, and with a finishing coat of salmon roes. Bliss!

Initially, we wanted to eat our lunch by the pier, enjoying the gorgeous view and cool breeze. The view looked peaceful right? But we were attacked by gigantic fiercesome seagulls. Dozens of them were hovering over the waters and benches. One of them dashed towards us and pecked on our plastic bag. Crazy! We moved back into the market, not risking any of our delicious sashimis to these predators.

They tasted as fresh as they looked! My favourite, were the scampis! I had never eaten them before and this first opportunity surely did not disappoint! Sweet, tender, fresh. Yums! The next in line was the prawns. I must admit, when the steamed red prawns came in a plastic bag, it looked a little unappetizing. Little did I know, the prawns were fat, juicy, tender, and complemented so well with the tartar sauce. Best cocktail prawns ever! Total damage: AUD 50/head. It was all worth it! So... free flights to australia? sydney, anyone? I want fresh sashimis... fresh seafood...pretty please?

Glorious dinner@Botafumeiro, Barcelona

This seafood restaurant was highly recommended by locals, as well as my European affiliate colleagues, who frequently have business trips in Barcelona. I had been warned that it would cost about 30-40 Euros / pax.

When we walked in, we were greeted by countless numbers of picture frames hung on the walls. If you look closely, you will notice that the photos showed all kinds of famous celebrities who visited Botafumeiro. Some examples that we saw were Shakira, Eva Longoria, Enrique, Nadal! photos, taken with the chef but I could tell that his was most proud of his picture taken with the ex- American president, Bill Clinton. The photo and its frame was the largest among all the hung pictures.

Squid ink seafood paella. I didn't get to try this dish, but those who did said it had a lot of 'wok hei' in it. Hmmm.....

We initially ordered the escargos, thinking they would come cooked with butter and garlic. Instead, they came on a pile of ice, along with the oysters. I ain't a fan of shells, but the rest who ate all gave a big thumbs up for its freshness.

This was my dish, grilled monkfish. Freshness was 10/10. Flavour was so so. Not sure what a monkfish looks like but the meat was pretty supple and tender, thinly layered of chargrill coating its sufrace.

Each table had a dedicated waiter serving, and ours did a fantastic job. Although I must say, his way of serving the crab was rather peculiar. My doctor ordered a crab dish, and at first it came on a plate, the entire crustacean, red and cold. My eyes widened thinking how to eat it.

The waiter was laughing at our reaction and later explained that he brought out the crab  to show its customer first, proving a good quality crab would be served. He even mentioned that the crab's name was Motolo. Now that made eating it a "whole lot easier"knowing its name. Minutes later, the crab was nicely dissected like an experimental lab rat, served as a cold dish.

WIERDDDDDDDD......

This was a scoop of vanilla ice cream, with raspberries and soaked with bourbon. This... would get you high just as quick as tequila shots. One scoopful of it, got the alcohol shot right up to my brain. I could feel my cheeks immediately flushing from the heat.

Definitely one dessert you woud like to eat, knowing that you're gonna have some sassytime later through the night! *winks* If you know what I mean.. haha.

This white wine was.. spectacular. Peachy, light, with a hint of grass. Perfect for seafood dishes. Deep down, I wanted to quietly have another bottle on my own. Damn..

Such nice hospitality! Since we had a big group and clearly, we gave them a pretty good profit, they gave us some local desserts .. for freeeeeeeee! The chocolate truffles were damn good, but the best was the almond flakes. Kinda reminded me of chinese new year cookies, I don't know why.

The famous Sagrada Familia church, designed by Gaudi. Gothic looking, with pastel colours on the tips of the church. It is still not fully constructed and the cost of building it fully depends on the entrance fees of visitors. However, the cost of going into the church is just too expensive in my opinion. The entrace fees was 15/20 Euros. Even more expensive than the Vatican!



Home cooked crayfishes@Courtesy of Mr Frizzo, thank you!

 My friend Frizzo was such a sweet soul. He had some extra crayfishes and so happens, his wife had a business trip overseas (no cook at home!). Rather than letting these fresh prawns go to waste, he offered to give 'em to me .............. for freeeeeeeeeeeee! (Adam Sandler in Bedtime Stories style)

Boy oh boy, they were gigantic alright!

 The crayfishes were grilled and sauteed with onions and mustard. Cholesterol conscious fellas, stay away!

 The meat was quite dense, and a little chewy. I could taste a hint of the muddiness from the meat, most likely these crayfishes were farmed. 3 pieces of them were enough to fill you up full. But nonetheless, I was happy eating 'em.

Maybe because we all have this generic perception that seafood or prawns are considered a luxury item on the menu. The bigger they are, they pricier they get.

And mine is for freeeeeeee! So yes, I was smiling from ear to ear. The size of the crayfish was almost like the size of my fist. Kapow.

The crayfishes.. GUILLOTINED. You all have served me well. Burps!

Thank you Frizzo!

A fallen worldly dinner@I have no idea where this was, but it was along our way to the midnight shopping district

After the 3 day Yeoju retreat, we returned to Seoul. This was our first night out, and shopping, shopping, shopping was the night's agenda.
After receiving so much spiritual blessings, we returned to the ugly, frightful, sinful, fallen world. I'll explain why.

 We were heading towards the midnight shopping district. It was quite cold that night. Along the way, we came upon a stall, with puffs of steam coming out from pots and pans. Locals dining here were half tipsy, happily chatting away their day's endeavors. Some of us are fans of shell thingies (not for me), therefore we decided to have a quick bite at the roadside.

Peculiar looking shell thingies (varying breeds of clams) were placed on our table. My friends quickly toothpicked out the juicy bits inside the shells.

*barf*

 We also bought some fried chicken from a nearby vendor. Too oily, and sinfully fatty. Not good.

Although the fried chicken was below average, the lady owner has a heart of gold. She gave us a free plate of dolboki. Unfortunately, the dolboki tasted just as bad as the fried chicken. The rice cakes were too hard, and it was difficult to swallow them. The only good part was its spicy chilli sauce, which ended up as a dipping sauce for the blanched clams.

During the course of our street food snacks, we were reminded how we are still fallen, stuck in this sinful, dying world when several funny scenes happened right before our eyes.

a) Some drunk guy slurring, limping away decided to take a "leak" at a potted plant placed just next to our table. What a put-off sight and we crossed our fingers, hoping the guy wouldn't abruptly decide to leak on us.
b) Soon after, a MPV zoomed past us and stopped several shops ahead of our table. Sexy, skimpily dressed ladies walked out the vehicle and headed towards a narrow alley. Some went into a shady, neon lited corner lot shop. In a couple of minutes time, two policemen came in a car and the ladies were seen hurriedly running off. From nowhere, a different MPV appeared and the girls ran in and the vehicle quickly zoomed off.
c) Bunches and bunches of red faced drunkards in black suits, leather bags and shiny ties were seen walking out from the narrow alleys.
d) A homeless old man collecting old boxes punching a retarded fat girl, till the girl fell to the ground and bruised her arm. Policemen came not long after and broke the fight.

All these happened in just 20-30 minutes of our meal time and we felt that God has really opened our eyes that night to remind us what a world we are in today. We decided to leave the area. While walking away, we stumbled upon the highlight for the night.

Two old men, probably the age of 70-80, weary, haggard, thin to the bones, and whatever hair left on their heads were white. Both drunk, both laughing away, hugging each other. They were going into make-out mode. One of them was trying to kiss the other.

I thought to myself. My gosh! Even for gays, I had to witness the oldest of the oldest. The highlight reminder for us all.

Shopping temporarily took our minds off the incident early. After 1 - 2 hours of shopping, we grew tired. The sudden heavy downpour made things worse. We decided to go for supper. Tani! A jug of beer... impossible for 2 of us to finish at 2 a.m. The rest of  my girlfriends continued on shopping.

More fried chicken. Koreans love BBQ fried chicken, when beer comes into the picture. The spicy sauce fried chicken woken us up. The spiciness, phew! We could not finish them either.

When the heavy rain reduced to drizzles, it was already nearly 4 a.m. Ladies were still shopping. Madness!
We packed the fried chicken leftovers and they became supper food for my friend. He deserved a good treat, having carried out a tiring job of accompanying my girlfriend shopping from 10 pm to 4. a.m.

Sorta' romantic dinner@beach side of Nusa Dua

Demona: Dogma and I, with several colleagues of mine took a break from work and went to Bali during Labour's Day. This trip had opened up many 1sts to us eg: 1st fun diving trip, 1st banana boat ride, 1st naked bath in a tub filled with flower petals... and many more.

Bali, rich with its culture and food, proved to be another gastronomic trip for us. We stopped by for a BBQ seafood dinner after a hectic day of water activities in the famous Nusa Dua.

Demona: This BBQ snapper was the star of the night. Burnt, crunchy, savoury skin on the outside and tender, juicy, fresh meat on the inside. Good thing, it wasn't really over boney which could be a big turn off to the lazy me. The fish was quickly eaten up by the hungry 5 in minutes, just like watching the man being eaten up by those black bugs in "The Mummy" movie.

Demona: This was supposedly a famous local delicacy, especially for those who live near the sea. It is a type of sea plant that can be stir fried into a yummy dish. Texture wise, it was similar to our kangkung, but hey, frying with belacan still topped it all.

Demona: Greedy yani wanted to eat crab badly, and we left the ordering choice on her hands. She chose the black pepper crab dish. The meat was fresh alright, and its size was quite big also, but the gravy/sauce was somewhat, disappointing. The sauce was watery ( you could tell from the picture), therefore the whole licking up or sucking the sauce off crab shells while eating its meat satisfaction was lacking. This dish was much in lack of character.

Demona: I'm not a big fan of shell dishes, but for venture sake, I took a try on this tomato paste, with cheese grilled clams. While the rest smiled widely, with two thumbs up in air after gulping this down, I thought the taste of the muddiness from the clam was too powerful for my liking.

Demona: Even I must bow down to this kick ass powerpacked chilli sauce. From its looks, I thought it's taste would be similar to the Thai chilli sauce. With just several scoops, I already felt my mouth burning up. It was so spicy that, if added on the seafood, it would cover all the food's taste. Eventually, 5 of us left this chilli king aside, proudly staring at our burning lips and laughing at our failure to handle his power.

Verdict: Total damage for this dinner was RM 150. Dogma and I agreed that this meal was a little too refined for our liking. We were surrounded by nicely lited up tables and yes, 80% of the patrons were caucasians. We much preferred the BBQ dinner that we had in Perhentian, by the beach. That was all raw deal and nothing else.

Budget constrained fish meal@Fatty Tiger Restaurant, Puchong

Demona: The images of rows and rows of fishes on this gigantic banner hanging outside the restaurant was definitely an eye catcher to anyone who passes by. So much so that even if you were standing on the other end of the lot, you could still faintly see it.

However, it wasn't the fishes which caught much of our attention. Instead, it was the two digit number that was printed next to the fishes, the beautiful number of 1 2 and the two alphabets before them, R M.

RM 12/ one full fish woey.!?
We could hardly believe our eyes. Well at least, for KL's price of fishes, that is.

Demona: Fatty Tiger was fairly packed, so we proceeded upstairs. Biz looked good for the taukehs here as several tables were occupied upstairs as well. The menu boasts of a huge range of river rishes, which a frog-under-the-coconut-shell person like myself, wouldn't know how to differentiate except some obvious difference in shapes and sizes between the several few.

Some fishes had golden bar price tags, potentially costing a mere fish head alone to be several hundred bucks (WOW!)

We hunted for the RM12/fish but couldn't spot it on the menu. The waitress came up and explained to us that there was such a fish at such a price. These particular riverfishes are reared by the taukeh and sold at a real good deal price, and they do not make much profit out of this. Instead, their profit targets are more on the higher end river rishes eg: the golden price tag fishes.

Demona: Poor RM 12 river fish, you. Fed to the right size, and scooped right out of its pond and in it went, into a pack of ice, waiting to be served fresh to the next customer...... US.

Demona: Sorry, fishy fish. You were the chosen one to serve us. Cooked assam nyonya style. Initially, the sauce was really spicy and sour, yet at the end palate, the sweetness of the pineapples showed up. The fish meat was fairly fresh. We had this fish, cooked plain steamed before, and my gf who joined in the dinner mentioned that there was a slight muddy taste to it but thankfully, wasn't obvious enough to put you off eating it further. With the assam nyonya paste, the mud taste was of course, covered.

Anyhow, in usual circumstances, almost all self reared riverfishes couldn't run too far from having the distinct muddy taste to their meat as they have less room to freely swim about, unlike their wild river fish brothers.

Demona: Dogma ordered a Dried Chillis Fried Chicken rice to eat along with the fish. The chicken meat was quite tender, with a nice fragrant aroma of ginger, onions and dried chillies absorbed into the meat. Deliciouso! As for me, the usual rice skipper.... I also stole half of Dogma's chicken slices away. Grrrrrrrrrr.

I'm guessing the owner will shake his head whenever he sees people like us coming in, as we chose the cheapes fish, and ate the least (some more share meal!). If there are more of us diners coming in, the restaurant's profit margin's going to decline drastically.

On the contrary, the owner came up to us instead, with a big sincere smile, explaining to us about the fish which we ate, as well as the other fishes that he was selling, and even brought those expensive dead fishes on a tray, just to show us. He did subtly mentioned that the profit earnings for the RM12/fish was not much but that did not affect him severely as this strategy also earned him more happy return customers who potentially have golden goose pockets, and willing to explore more than just the RM12/fish deal.

This is one restaurant that we shall always come to whenever we feel like having good olde' fish meat to eat and not having to burn our wallets too much.