A spread at Dong Dong BBQ

Once I went to Dong Dong BBQ for lunch with a friend, and ordered a lunch set of dwaeji galbi (marinated pork). For lunch sets, they only give three side dishes which are not refillable. Upon leaving the restaurant, I noticed that they had a whole array of side dishes behind their counter. I decided that it would be a good idea to go and try their BBQ one day.

The other day we finally went there for BBQ. We ordered a set that included grilled kiwi chicken, grilled spicy chicken, kimchi soup, and a bowl of rice. Then we added a portion of dwaeji galbi, because I liked it from my first visit.

interesting condiments

Firstly the condiments are already special! They had two kinds of bean paste (or sauce?), and the one on the left didn’t seem to be spicy, but in the end we found that it contained chilli seeds. This is the first time I’ve seen chilli powder provided as a condiment for Korean BBQ too. All in all, I do like having these choices; each of my lettuce wraps can have a slightly different flavour.

Then the side dishes arrived. Usually restaurants provide six types; this is the first time I've seen a restaurant provide eight types. (And when we were leaving, we saw tofu and pancakes being prepared...pancakes which I had received during our first visit but which were unfortunately not given to us during this visit.)

The side dishes are also quite uncommon, so let’s have a run-down of what each item is.

From left to right in the top row, is kimchi, crabsticks in the usual gochujang sauce, pickled cucumber (that one piece looks awful :P ), deep-fried sweet potato fries with chilli powder (this tasted good but it wasn’t crispy; the exterior was a little hard/chewy).
From left to right in the bottom row, is pickled radish, seaweed (rather crunchy; I think this is my favourite), stir-fried chicken (curry, I think? I didn’t like this much; I saved my stomach space for our grilled meats), potato with fishcakes.

The kimchi soup was good, with pieces of pork inside that melted in your mouth. (but those pieces were rather fatty)

They brought us the meats and asked us if it was okay if they grilled them on another table. We were fine with that; we weren’t very interested in grilling them ourselves. The only drawback to that was that they didn’t give us scissors…and they cut the meat pieces quite big (too big for a wrap :P ) Not sure whether it was because they were quite busy… There weren’t many employees, and there were about four tables there for an early dinner (including us). I didn’t think about it till almost at the end of the meal, but I could have asked for a pair of scissors to cut the pieces smaller myself. 

the chicken is cut into long strips (it seemed that they were boneless chicken thighs)

dwaeji galbi (marinated pork)

The kiwi chicken was very tender. We don’t really taste much kiwi taste. The spicy chicken wasn't so good...not as tender as the kiwi chicken, and the spice is not that tasty either. The dwaeji galbi was as good as I remembered, and just like last time, some parts of meat were slightly tough (the parts that hit the tendons?).

The grilled chicken set cost RM72 and the marinated pork RM38. With a service charge of 10%, the bill came up to RM121. 

Highly rated Double Zero

We were looking for something to eat in Ampang other than just food courts, when my father surprisingly suggested Double Zero Pizza after noticing that it had a 4.9 rating on Google Maps. Usually my parents are not fans of pizza, so I hadn't paid any notice when I saw this shop on Grab. The price was rather high, but with such good reviews, and a 20% discount with Grab dine-out, we decided to give it a try.

It turned out that it was attached to AMP Cafe beside it (they had different doors and different payment counters, but we could walk through to the next shop inside), and they brought us the menus for both shops. We had seen at the AMP counter that the croissant looked beautifully puffy, so after having two pizzas, we ordered a croissant for dessert. (Note: Drinking water is given for free if we ask for it)

NO BS, B+S (beef pizza), RM48

Duck, Yeah! (duck confit pizza), RM52

The names of the pizzas are weird, but each had a list of the toppings on the menu, so that was fine. Both tasted good; I just have a slight preference for the duck one.

The croissant was served with a dish of butter. The outside was crispy and the inside was as puffy as expected, so this was a good one. Just that it didn't seem that buttery without the additional butter. 

French butter croissant, RM10

There was the usual 10% service charge and 6% SST.

Lamian and the best choux pastry

While looking for something to eat at Lalaport, we saw this lamian shop called Mee Hiris China Muslim which offered a Grab dine-out discount. We decided to try it, and was pleasantly surprised at how good the braised beef noodles were; better than the usual beef noodle soup that we like.

beef noodle soup, RM18.90

The beef noodle soup had a very light taste. The beef slices were not especially tender. So this was not very special.

The braised beef noodle soup, on the other hand, had very tender beef chunks, and was not even spicy (we expected it to be spicy because the soup was red). All of us preferred this one. 

braised beef noodle soup, RM21.90

We also ordered fried dumplings, which was quite good.

chicken pan-fried dumplings, RM13.90

chicken fried noodles, RM22.90

(Add 10% service charge and 6% SST to the prices.) 

The fried noodles arrived at the very end, which was a pity because this was unexpectedly the most spicy. Especially at the bottom where all the spicy oil had pooled... The taste is actually not bad, but not outstanding like the braised beef noodles.

Following the discovery of these braised beef noodles, we ordered it again at One Bowl Lanzhou Lamian when we visited Pavilion Bukit Bintang. We had already tried the clear soup noodles there before, without Snorlax. This time I wanted to eat that again, so we went there after letting Snorlax try all the other foods from our previous visit (see this post).

mutton skewers, RM20

traditional lanzhou beef lamian, RM19.80

braised beef noodles, RM26.80

hot soybean milk, RM6.80

The soybean milk was rather special, unlike the usual ones we get in Malaysia.

As you can see, the prices at One Bowl are higher. The clear soup noodles are better than at Mee Hiris; the soup has better flavour and the beef is extremely tender. However, the braised beef noodles were not as good in my opinion (the others were happy with it though). If I want braised beef noodles, I'd go to Mee Hiris, but I'd go to One Bowl for the clear soup beef noodles.

The lamb skewers are good, of course...that was why I wanted to order them again!

Both lamian shops offered 25% off with Grab dine-out. This should have been a good reason to order more skewers, except that we had too many different foods to try.

In Pavilion, I spotted a stall called Chez Choux. It basically sells cream puffs, but there was a new item advertised on the menu. They call it a baguette puff, and it was a long puff that looked crispy on the outside. I bought one for the exorbitant price of RM12, but oh it was so good...

baguette puff with vanilla cream

There were other flavours of cream, but they were more expensive. I decided that the basic flavour was enough, because what I wanted to try was the puff, not the cream! (Psst: the table is One Bowl's table; we ate this while waiting for our order to arrive.)

a very crispy puff

Loving ParaThai

ParaThai at Lalaport was having a Grab dine-out promo of 25% off the first visit (none of the other outlets have this promo). The photos looked great, so we decided to try it, and we enjoyed it so much that we returned for a second visit, to try some dishes that we had to skip ordering the first time.

deep-fried papaya salad with crispy dried shrimps, RM19.90

This was very special, first time I've seen deep-fried papaya salad. Yummy too.

green curry chicken, RM23.90

The curry was so creamy, we loved it and finished up every drop.

Thai-style omelette with minced chicken and prawn, RM23.90

Nice and crispy. The chicken and prawn pieces inside were rather small; if we don't look properly, we might miss them. Under the omelette is some raw shredded cabbage. I guess it soaks up any excess oil...but the cabbage did not get very oily either; we could eat them as raw veggies. So they did a good job draining off the oil from the omelette before serving.

pandan chicken, RM20.90

Pandan chicken was very fragrant and tender! 

mixed appetizer, RM49.90

The appetizer platter arrived last, which was rather silly. :P The menu actually shows four appetizers plus one salad in the middle (som tam). But they put the som tam on the side, and under the spring rolls with prawn, they put the fourth appetizer which is "normal" spring rolls (with bean sprouts or sengkuang inside, or both? I can't remember). The prawn spring rolls were better than the normal ones, unsurprisingly. The money bags were filled with minced meat and were pretty good. The Thai fish cakes tasted good enough, but were not bouncy enough for my taste.

Jasmine rice, RM3.50

The rice deserves a photo because the grains looked shiny and lovely. And the high price deserves a mention!

mango sticky rice, RM18.90

This was a bit of a let-down. The photos looked great and so did the actual dish, but the sticky rice was a little hard and there didn't seem to be enough coconut milk.

Thai iced tea, RM13.50

Thai iced lemongrass juice, RM13.90

Both drinks tasted good, but the iced lemongrass juice was so thick with lemongrass taste, it puts all the others I've tried to shame. 

During our second visit, we wanted to try the pad thai and the pineapple fried rice. We re-ordered the green curry chicken and the omelette, and decided to try the tomyam.

chicken tomyam, RM19.90 (per pax)

We ordered the "per pax" portion instead of the sharing portion, because the sharing portion may be too much with all the other dishes we ordered. The dish is marked as "5 chillies" on the menu, indicating its spiciness level. Since the green curry was marked as "2 chillies", we actually were rather worried that the tomyam may be too spicy. But it turned out to be really good and easy to drink on its own. I would rate it "3 chillies". However, there were a number of chilli padi inside, which we picked out... If we had eaten all the chilli padi instead of picking them out, then the rating of "5 chillies" would probably make sense.

showing the omelette beside the tomyam bowl, for size

pad thai with prawn, RM24.90

green curry chicken, RM23.90

I am posting the photo of the green curry chicken again, because if you compare with the one from the first visit, there is more gravy this time!

size comparison with the tomyam bowl

pineapple fried rice, RM22.90

I like how the pineapple is actually charred, and not completely raw like in most shops.

So on both visits, we were completely satisfied with our meal. The first time the bill came up to a little over RM200 (with 10% service charge and 6% SST), and the second time it was a little over RM150. With 25% off, it's quite a bargain for such good food! 

There is a ParaThai outlet in Penang as well, but unfortunately there is zero discount with Grab dine-out. Maybe their business is already too good, they don't need it?  

Trying fahsa, a Yemeni dish

Let’s continue our food-post marathon with Middle Eastern food from Dallah Restaurant in Kuantan.

Ever heard of fahsa? It is a Yemeni stew made with shredded lamb. It had been recommended to some of my family members before, so they now recommended it to me, and it is awesome! (or at least the one in this shop is)

a steaming fahsa served bubbling in their claypot (it was still slightly steaming at the end of the meal)

mixed grill

both the fahsa and the mixed grill platter came with flatbread

for size

again, for size

mandy chicken

The waiter recommended us carrot cake when he took our order. He said that it was specially made on that day for an event, and that they did not have it on the menu. He also said that it was less sweet. It really was good, but we were surprised that it arrived immediately before any other dish. We thought they would serve it later after the meal.

carrot cake (note: this is a single-person portion on a dessert plate)

After the meal, we decided to order their kunafa. If you remember, we had tried kunafa in Halab before. The kunafa was nice and crispy, and also not too sweet, but I felt like I would have preferred it without the chocolate sauce.

chocolate kunafa

I also feel that the chocolate sauce makes it look ugly. :P But the chocolate is thick and tasty!

All the dishes were good...comparable to my favourite Halab! Only the rice seemed less flavourful than Halab's, but it was still good enough.

The crispiest pork ever

When in Kuantan, I tried three new restaurants (new to me).

The first is a Chinese restaurant called Yat Yat Loi (in Cantonese. In Mandarin it would be Tian Tian Lai, i.e. Every Day Come :P ) 

The highlights of this restaurant are the very crispy pork and the soft-shelled crab with salted egg. Both are extremely crispy. 

signature crispy pork belly, RM30

The pork is sliced so thinly that the texture after deep-frying is like keropok. :O It is coated with a sort of honey sauce.

signature salted egg soft shell crab, RM40 (nice meaty pieces!)

signature tofu, RM15 (the topping is crispy too, haha)

stir-fried sweet potato leaves, RM12

This nicely balances out the saltiness of the dishes above. My mother and I didn't even take any rice.

Second: Java Flava. This is so near to our house...we just had never tried it. Very expensive. We went to try only the desserts, which are what it's especially famous for. They also sell Western food as main meals.

Their desserts have weird names. :P 

Paris Brest, RM18

This is choux pastry (cream puff pastry) with chocolate mousse. This dessert is in the cake display, and we luckily managed to order the last one.

Java Flava is famous for its waffles, and we ordered a chocolate-flavoured one. This took longer to prepare, and the chocolate-flavoured waffle was warm and crispy.

The Magnum, RM20

The third dessert we ordered was one of the most special ones, with a special name of Humpty Dumpty. This is made of choux pastry stuffed with salted egg custard, served warm.

Humpty Dumpty, RM19

the custard inside a choux

For size, those spoons that you see in the photo are dessert spoons. Each choux is smaller than a ping pong ball, which tells you how expensive these desserts are! (The waffle is normal-sized.) 

The prices in both these restaurants are nett, without any additional taxes or charges.

Chinese soft-shelled turtles are food, not friends

A long time ago, I had turtle at Restoran Sin Tong Kok in Sri Jaya.

On the way to Kuantan this time, we decided to stop there to eat it again. But Sin Tong Kok was closed. A banner announced an event the previous day…so we guessed that it might be closed due to that event. Luckily my father knew another nearby restaurant where they also sell turtle. This other restaurant is called Restoran Dong Mee Hong.

Note: My mother says that they call the turtle literally “water fish”. When I looked it up online, I found that it is “soft-shelled turtle”. I was wondering how they got the shell off…I guess they didn’t have to. :P

steamed catfish

potato leaves

claypot turtle

If you look back at the previous post, we ordered the exact same dishes at this restaurant. The claypot turtle was prepared a little differently…not spicy (my mother says that the other restaurant makes it “kung po”). But it was good, and that is the most important! 

If not mistaken, the fish cost RM60 and the turtle cost RM40. The veggies and the drinks are negligible. :P