A meal at Brussels

It's again time to catch up with food posts that I had not had time to write!

Brussels Beer Cafe was having a lunch promotion on weekdays. It cost RM17.90 for a main dish, a drink, and a salad/entrée/dessert buffet. (still need to add on 10% service charge and 6% tax)

crispy thai fish salad with rice

fried pork chop with mushroom cream sauce

grilled lamb chop with frites and spicy yogurt

Everything was pretty decent. As you can see, the main dishes did not come with any salad, because we could get it outselves at the salad bar (with a choice of vinaigrette or thousand island sauce).

The salad bar had purple mashed potato (or should I say mashed purple potato?), which for some reason had small cubes of chicken in it. The soup of the day was chicken soup, and was a bit on the watery side, so it was not that good. The fruit (of the day?) was watermelon, and the first tray was very sweet, but the later refills weren't as sweet. So that would depend on luck.

A cup a day, and a cake to share

The other day we had a farewell lunch for Jackie (the name is important, as you will see :P )

We went to a place called A Cup A Day, although for some silly reason it was actually registered as Acupaday, which bring "acupuncture" to mind.

I like the decor, though some of the others said that it seemed very simple. The photos of the decor are courtesy of our guest of honour; I only took photos of the food! :P 

I find that the food presentation is a lot better than the actual taste itself. Though the taste was not "bad"... it was just normal.

I initially didn't plan to take a photo of the coffees... I thought, it's just a leaf pattern, we've seen it all before! Then I saw the swan on the other cup. On the left is regular latte, and on the right is butterscotch latte. I tried a sip; there was not much butterscotch taste in it though.

Then there is the most photogenic drink of all, "espresso cube in silky milk" (RM15). I'm not sure whether that's the regular price or the lunch price. For lunch, some drinks come free of charge (like my peach tea which I didn't take a photo of), and the coffees above were charged only RM5 instead of the actual menu price.

the instructions

While waiting for our food, we ordered a slice of cake to share.

Belgian cheese cake, RM14

 When we saw that they had written so much stuff on the serving board, we requested that they write "Jackie" for us. The server looked puzzled, but complied. :D

See the added word?

This was the best-tasting thing at that lunch! First layer was chocolate cake, second layer was cheese, and at the bottom, more chocolate (not cake).

Then on to the main course...

bagel rendang chicken, RM20

just to let you see the top of the bagel

This is a fusion dish, and it looks great, but unfortunately it didn't taste as great. The bagel was very good, the top piece was perfectly toasted (in my opinion), slightly buttered and crispy. The bottom piece was definitely not crispy after the rendang chicken was placed on top of it. The rendang was okay, but just not that good. Maybe there was just too much sauce, but the two of us who ordered it just left some behind in the end. (however that does mean that the portion was huge :P )

salted egg-crusted chicken chop, RM28

This one looks really good, with cornflakes on the crust, and fortunately with the salted egg sauce on the side instead of poured on top of it. I tried the sauce, but unfortunately it did not taste that much of salted egg.

summerglitz chicken chop, RM25

I think the glitz of summer comes from the apple slices (yes, those are apples).

And after eating, a group photo (guest of honour in the middle)

Mentai

Recently I went to Sakae Sushi not once, but twice!

The first time was with Snorlax. We had a "buy 1 free 1" promotion with the Maxis app.

mentai zukushi, RM8.88 for a plate

The three pieces of sushi came with prawn, octopus, and white fish (I call it white fish because I don't know the actual name). The octopus was very chewy and even the fish was slightly chewy, so it wasn't very good. The mentai sauce was good though.

chicken teriyaki jyu, RM11.88

tempura & sushi bento, RM17.88

The chicken teriyaki rice was very good. As for the bento, it was a hesitant choice on our part. Snorlax wanted a tempura bento, and this was the only one. It it came with rice, it would have been perfect for him. As for me, I had wanted to try soba for some time now, but always hesitated because I was afraid I wouldn't like it. So we decided to share the chicken teriyaki rice: he gets his rice, and I get to try soba.

The soba was actually quite nice after squeezing the lime on it. I tried it without the lime first, but felt that it wasn't so good. The only thing is, it's still a cold dish so I am unused to it making a complete meal. (the same as when I tried Korean cold noodles)

That was the meal with Snorlax... then another time I went alone and made use of the "buy 1 free 1" offer for mini don with my Watson's member card.

gyu kinoko mini don, RM9.88

I knew that gyu was beef, but turns out that kinoko is mushroom. The beef was stir-fried with brown beech (shimeji) mushrooms. This was just as good as the chicken teriyaki rice.

tamago mentai mini don, RM6.88

Since this costs less than the other mini don, it was the free item. There were only four mini dons to choose from, and this was more special, and something that I would definitely not order when there are other dons to choose from. So I took this opportunity to try it. Tamago is egg, the Japanese rolled omelette. Actually in the photo from the menu, we can see the slices of tamago and the mentai sauce is on top (similar to the mentai zukushi at the top of the post), not fully covering the egg. I was surprised (pleasantly so) to see so much mentai sauce when the dish arrived.

The dish tasted good, but... I think I still need my meat. :P

Just a photo of both mini dons. The beef one arrived first, so I was already halfway through eating it when the second don arrived.

The prices above are all non-inclusive of 10% service charge and 6% SST. One thing to note was that even for the free items, we were charged for the service on those items. The actual price and the SST were the ones that were waived.

As for the title of the post, I thought it was worth mentioning that I usually don't order mentai dishes because they are quite expensive. So the "buy 1 free 1" deals gave us a chance to try some mentai!

An unusual tandoori

Some time ago we went to Indian Palace. My friend had raved about how the tandoori there was not dry, unlike the tandoori at most places. So I tried it, and really, it was moist and juicy!

I made sure to ask for the thigh part, so that I wouldn't end up with the chicken breast. As you can see, the end of the drumstick is wrapped in foil, presumably so that it wouldn't dry out.

Vampire bunny

I just read an article about Bunnicula, a vampire rabbit. The name Bunnicula sounded so familiar, and after doing some Google research and reading the story of A Rabbit-Tale of Mystery on Wikipedia, I am convinced that I have read that exact same book before.

Finding the bunny at the movie Dracula and naming him Bunnicula? Check.
Two holes in the vegetables that turned white? Check.
Bunnicula sleeping all day? Check.
Using garlic against Bunnicula? Check.
Bunnicula thriving on a liquid diet for a happy ending? Check.

All these plot points definitely sound familiar. I'm pretty sure I found the book in a library and that I don't have it myself. Now I wish I can find the book again to read it.

When someone rejects AirAsia free seats

So what do you want? Free airplane? :P

Indian ice-cream

Some time ago, we went to GEM restaurant, an Indian restaurant in Georgetown for a farewell. A friend had recommended the briyani there as "the best in Penang". I didn't find the briyani that special, though it was definitely good briyani at an affordable price (RM18.90 for lamb briyani, and with plenty of lamb pieces).

We also ordered dessert to share. It was the first time I had tried kulfi, which is basically Indian ice-cream.

They serve it sliced:

It seemed to have pistachio bits in it, which is good. I liked it :) Though it's still slightly pricey as all these desserts usually are. :P I can't remember the exact price though.

Numbers

Recently I watched Innocent Defendant, a Korean drama about a prosecutor who was framed for the murder of his wife and daughter. The storyline was interesting, but the details weren't taken care of so well. A number of times, it had me thinking, "Why on earth did he do that?" or "Why didn't he do that?" But there were also quite a lot of humorous scenes, which together with the overall plot made the show an enjoyable watch.

Notably, a big part of the drama took place in prison, where the inmates are often referred to by their 4-digit number.

Then this weekend, there was an urgent issue at work and they asked a few of us to step in and work during the weekend (it was wrapped up in one day yesterday, yay!). They created a Whatsapp group, and with engineers and managers in the group, some people were asking stuff like, "Who is 1234?" "Who is 5678?" I couldn't help noticing the resemblance to being referred to like prison inmates... :P

A handsome discovery

Recently there has been a new channel offered by Astro/Njoi. Channel 110 is Hello (easy to remember because they took the "llo" in Hello to become 110, the channel number), and there are a number of Korean shows on it. Notably, there are Korean movies being shown every Saturday and Sunday, at 3pm and 9pm. That is four movies a week!

Anyway, I have been watching those that sound interesting, and in the process, discovered a few actors as well. One thing that I noticed is that Hello seems to keep showing movies that feature certain actors. At first there was Kim Myung Min, whom I had seen in Detective K: Secret of the Living Dead (if not mistaken that was on another TV channel; the movie wasn't that good :P ). Hello showed Open City, which was so-so, A Day, which was good, and more recently Deranged, which I had already watched before with Snorlax (I think it was okay but not that good).

A Day also starred Byun Yo Han, whom they had also featured in Will You Be There? (this one is very good; it's based on a book by Guillaume Musso and now I'm dying to read the original) But I don't think they have shown any other movies with Byun Yo Han, so maybe that's a coincidence.

Then there is the actress Son Ye Jin who acted in Open City with Kim Myung Min. Among her movies, Hello also showed Be With You, a super-sweet story that was adapted from a Japanese novel (I thought it would be a cheesy love story and only switched on the TV because I wasn't doing anything else, but it turned out to be a beautiful story), Classic (which I also thought would be cheesy, and it was slightly cheesy, except that the love story in the past was more dramatic and it wasn't so bad after all), and The Pirates, which I didn't watch because it didn't sound interesting.

The other actor that they seem to be featuring is Gang Dong Won. For this one, I thank them from the bottom of my heart (exaggerating much? Maybe... :P ). He is so good-looking. For now I have watched three of his movies (all on Hello) and they are all pretty good.

Gang Dong Won
photo courtesy of AsianWiki

The first movie that I saw him in was Master. Ironically, at that time I was more interested in seeing Kim Woo Bin (whom I like quite a lot too) in a non-teenage-bad-boy role. I didn't even notice Gang Dong Won much when he appeared at the beginning of the movie, maybe because he was playing a rather arrogant guy and I didn't care much for him. But later in the movie he smiled, and I looked up the actor.

After that I saw him in A Violent Prosecutor. That movie was also quite good.

Then on Sunday I just saw him in Secret Reunion, and I don't know whether he's just growing on me, but I just like him more and more.

When looking him up, I noticed that he actually also acted in Kundo: Age of the Rampant, which Hello had shown but I didn't watch because it didn't look interesting enough.

Next week they are showing Vanishing Time: A Boy Who Returned. That makes five movies of his that Hello is showing (and I'm not sure whether I missed mentioning any). From the synopsis, it's not really a movie that I would definitely watch, but maybe I should watch it just to see how he does.

IWD week at work

The 8th of March was International Women's Day. Every year, Motorola will give the female employees a token of appreciation on that day. This year, they went a step further and organized a whole lot of events for the entire week.

I didn't join every single event that they organized, but here's what I got from that week:

On Tuesday, there was a workshop to make decorative woolen bangles. This is what I made!

Basically you take old bangles and wrap wool around them, then tie them together with beads and other decorative items to make a hanging decoration. Every piece is unique, it's all up to your creativity!

On Wednesday they had a small charity event where you could get a nail painted for RM1. Just for the sake of supporting it, I went and got my pinky nail painted. Two of my guy friends got both of their pinkies painted. The girl who painted my nail was surprised that I only painted one nail... I noticed other ladies got all ten nails painted. :P

Anyway, you can see my gold pinky nail in the photo below, where I am holding the pandan roses that I made in the workshop on Thursday.

It's actually the same as a ribbon rose that I had learned how to make years ago. But I had totally forgotten how to do that, so this was like a refresher. Plus pandan smells nice!

I only made five roses and tied them together because I had to leave the workshop early for a meeting. Otherwise, we could actually make up to seven, which would make a nicer-looking bunch, and also they had taught us how to make a basket for the roses as well, all with pandan leaves! The handle of the basket is actually made by pleating three strips of pandan leaves together. The roses are made with the whole pandan leaf, whereas to pleat the handle, the pandan leaves would need to be slit into half (or smaller than half, I'm not sure...maybe it depends on how wide the leaf is).

On Friday, the actual International Women's Day, the female employees received a flower each...

(the vase is my own)

...and a mystery box.

I thought it was cutlery, but it turned out to be metal straws.

There are three straws inside; in the photo below, I have shifted the wider straw (bubble tea straw) to the side so that we can see the smaller straws better.

There is also a brush to clean the straws, but the brush seems too wide to fit into the smaller straws... I'm confused, isn't this an actual set? Or are we supposed to force the brush into the small straws and the width of the brush will make sure that the straws are cleaned properly?

It's not a very useful gift for me, since I seldom use straws... I hope I remember to use it when I actually want to use a straw!