Ichiban Boshi

Ichiban Boshi is apparently a part of a Japanese chain that started in Singapore. Besides Malaysia, they have outlets in Vietnam and (curiously) Russia. In Malaysia, they are found in the Pavilion in Bukit Bintang in KL and the Sunway Giza Mall in PJ. They also have a sister restaurant, the Kuriya at the Bangsar Shopping Complex in KL.

We chanced into their outlet in the Sunway Giza Mall. We actually drove to Tropicana for Korean to satisfy my wife's craving for her favorite foreign food. But the place was closed - perhaps permanently in spite of their signboard that still hung lighted outside. Then I remembered a friend told me about a Korean place in nearby Kota Damansara that according to him was very good. It turned out to be a Daorae which we have tried a number of times and were not too eager to revisit. So we drove into the Sunway Giza Mall to look for a Korean. There wasn't any, and Japanese in the Ichiban Boshi was the next best alternative.

There was a long queue when we got there. Normally we would had moved on but for some reason, my family was willing to wait. And so we did. We were attended to by a very pleasant waitress who politely asked us for the number of diners and assured us a table in a short while. Still we waited for about 15 minutes. They should have some chairs outside to make waiting a little more bearable.

We finally got a nice table with a view of the outside mall. I would had preferred one next to their conveyor-belt sushi bar. But it was OK. I didn't mind. We were just hungry. We browsed the menu and made our orders.

While waiting for our food, I moved around to get some pictures. The place wasn't big. It had a nice contemporary decor. But soon the same pleasant waitress came to me to tell me that they did not allow photography in the restaurant. I wondered why. I wasn't using a flash and I wasn't disturbing anybody. And it was not as if they were a high security place that had anything to hide. By then I had enough shots of the restaurant and later ignored her instructions to take shots of our food.

My wife had this sukiyaki gozen. It was a set meal. She opted for chicken over the beef. It was served with rice, a mushroom appetizer, some udon noddles, a raw egg, water melon as dessert and curiously a bowl of miso soup. I wondered why they bothered with the miso since the sukiyaki is already a soup. They could had given something else. Perhaps a cawan mushi would had been more appropriate.

My set was a soba & teridon gozen. I opted for the green tea soba, and it was served with the same mushroom appetizer,  a bowl of chicken terriyaki rice and water melon dessert. I enjoyed the green tea soba. The noddle was very nice dipped into the soy sauce. The portion of soba was generous and adequate.

Crystal had this bowl of white soup half udon. It was udon in a milky soup. I wondered why they call it "half udon". I had a taste of the soup and to me it was rather odd. Yet Crystal seemed to enjoy it.

We ordered a number of side dishes. This is a salmon tataki. It was half grilled salmon in a soy sauce. It was good. Only the serving was rather small. Not quite enough to sate our craving.

This unagi juice roll was very good. It was eel rolled with sushi rice and in it were egg, crab stick and cucumber. The roll was generously covered with a mayo sauce. The unagi was delicious and combined very well with the other ingredients in the roll. Yummy.

This was a cream croquette. It was a deep fried croquette with cheese and crab meat. It was not OK. The taste was rather flat and I was not too crazy about it.

The gyoza was deep fried and served in a hot plate. Curious. This is the rarely seen in a Japanese restaurant. The Japs normally do not deep fried their gyoza. In any case, it was quite good. The skin of the gyoza was crispy which I like.

Dessert was tempura ice cream. It was vanilla ice cream deep fried inside a batter and topped with a strawberry sauce. I found the batter rather thick - in fact so thick that there wasn't very much ice cream in it. It was for this reason that I did not find it to be good. I have tasted fried ice creams that were a lot better.

Overall, the Ichiban Boshi is not a bad place at all for a Japanese meal. It is quite authentic and the prices are also reasonable. The positive reasons for wanting to go back outnumber the negative. So I think my family will be gunning for more of this place.

Ole Ole Bali

The Empire Gallery shopping centre in Subang Jaya is apparently not a great shopping place. But I really cannot tell for I dislike shopping. The idea of walking the whole day into shops after shops does not at all appeal to me. My department is food. I know the Empire Gallery offers a good selection of it. And we have been eating there a lot. We were there again not long ago before it went boom. The place we randomly popped into was a Indonesian place called Ole Ole Bali.

We didn't realize it then, but we had eaten the food there before - although not in the same restaurant. Had we been aware of it, we probably would had gone somewhere else.

The place was very nicely furnished. The atmosphere was elegant, elaborate and distinctly Balinese with numerous artifacts that authenticated this aura.

Particularly impressive was a huge painting that was so intricately and artistically done.

They have 2 dining areas - a comfortable conventional indoor place...

 

And a relaxing alfresco (outdoor) area for smokers.

It was when we browsed the menu that deja vu crept in. Crystal commented that the menu was the same as that at the Waterlily. The listed food certainly looked the same. But we doubtful. That was Waterlily. This was Ole Ole. Could they be the same? We asked the waitress who took our orders. She confirmed that we were indeed in the same restaurant chain.

Somewhat disappointed because I wanted to taste a different Balinese place, we made sure not to order the same dishes we had at the Waterlily. Our first was the "Sop Buntut" - the oxtail soup. The soup was light. The beef (tail) in it was adequate. There were some nasi impit (rice cake). It was served with a piece of garlic bread, some deep fried shallots, fresh coriander and a slice of lime. I had tried "soup buntut" in Jakarta and I had liked its rich and spicy flavor. The soup here paled in comparison.

The next dish we shared was the "Tipat Cantuk". It was like the Indonesian gado-gado (a salad) with some veges, tofu, boiled egg and a piece of grilled chicken. It was served with a peanut sauce. It was pleasant. The sauce was very nice. But I would prefer a little more veges.

Lastly, we had a plate of chicken and fish combo. Both the meats were grilled. It was served with half a cob of corn and a bowl of slaw. The gravy was thick and peppery which was quite good. The essence of this dish was really the gravy.

I really cannot pin point the reasons but somehow the experience here was not as good as that in Waterlily. Perhaps it was the disappointment that this was the same restaurant and not being able to try something different. And when we scanned the menu again for dessert, we were not in the mood to remain there and decided to go elsewhere.

We moved one floor up to this place named 'T forty two'. It is a combined boutique and a tea/coffee place. They offered a tantalizing selection of  over-priced cakes and pastries. We made our orders and proceeded to their sitting area outside the shop.

 

Their sitting area in a barricaded foyer of the first floor is rather chic. It had elegant furniture. But because they were so over-priced, the place was largely vacant - save the 3 of us.

The coffee was served in quaint small cups and saucers...

So were the macarons and tiramisu that Crystal picked...

Fanciful place and crockery alright. And so was the money we had to pay....

At the time of this blog posting, the Empire Galley is still recovering from the boom. They have not yet re-opened. When they do, I wonder if the place would be the same. The boom was quite devastating. And I am sure there would be major make-overs in some of the places. I am looking forward to go back there again. Not for the shopping - but for the food.

Restoran Nyonya

This nyonya restaurant has been around for a long long time. Simply named Restoran Nyonya, it is located on Jalan SS2/24, in the heart of Petaling Jaya. They claim to be have started business in 1974. That makes them well over 30 years old - approaching 40.

I remembered eating there many times and was there again recently. What I did not remember was its new decor. It did not look the same. I later found out from their website that they are a makeover in 2007. So it must had been at least 4 years since I last ate there. The place now looks bright and cheerful. It used to be rather drab.

Our meal started with the ikan assam pedas. I could not tell what kind of fish we were served. I think it was either pieces of a snapper or a grouper. Whatever it was, the fish was fresh. The assam gravy was very savory, with pieces of okra (ladies' fingers) topped with mint, basil and chopped lemon grass (serai).

Next was the sambal prawns with petai. Petai (parkia speciosa), the strong stinky seeds that are gathered from the forest, is one of my favorite idiosyncratic delicacies. It makes the mouth stink, the breath foul and the toilet unbearable. Yet unexplainably, like a lot of other Malaysians, I love it. The sambal prawn petai in Nyonya was not the best. There wasn't enough petai. It was also a little too oily. But I enjoyed it nevertheless.

I believe sayur paku is a nyonya vegetable. So appropriately, we ordered it. This vegetable which is a fern, used to be very cheap. I believed they used to be gathered from the wild. It is best fried with sambal, which was exactly how we had it. It was good. I think Nyonya did a good job with this humble green. The sambal and some pieces of prawns made the paku very delicious.

The inchi kabin is a nyonya deep fried chicken. It was very well done - crispy and well marinated. I liked the aroma. My only complaint was the serving was too small. There was hardly enough to go round the table. Chicken like this - there should be at least 2 pieces per person.

This gado-gado, a kind of rojak that originated from Indonesia, should had been our starter. But it arrived at our table in the middle of the meal. It was various veges, tofu, boiled egg, etc, blanketed with a peanut sauce. The flavor of this dish is totally in the sauce. And it was not great. I felt it was too sweet. And I would prefer more crushed peanuts in it.

I do not know why nyonya folks are so crazy about their perut ikan (fish stomach or air bladder). This was our final dish. It was a meshed-up, soggy potpourri of various veges. And in it was supposedly some fresh fish maw (or air bladder). It tasted spicy and sour with a weird kind of fishy taste. I could not find any fish maw in it - they had been so thoroughly cooked that they had dissolved into the mess. I did not find it good at all - not then and not at all previous occasions that I had perut ikan.

And then we enjoyed our desserts. My wife had this bowl of ABC (ais batu campur). It looked very nice. The taste certainly did not disappoint. It had a good mixture of what ABC should be. I tasted it and I agreed with her choice.

I did not try this cendol though. It did not look as good as the ABC.

My hot bowl of bubur cha cha was the jewel of the dessert crown. It was one of the best bubur cha cha I had. There were 2 different types of sweet potatoes, yam, cendol, jelly and beans. The santan broth was rich and so very creamy. The taste was fantastic.

The tag line of this restaurant is "Yesterday's taste. Today". After more than 4 years since my last visit, it is impossible to tell if they had maintained their "yesterday's" consistency. But going by our latest experience, their "today's" taste is definitely good enough to go there again when we next have our craving for nyonya food.

Ipoh hawkers under the big trees

We departed Penang early for home to avoid the post festive traffic. It was the Friday of the Merdeka Raya week. We picked that day to drive home reasoning that it would not be the day that people would go home from their holidays. Our reason was only partly valid for the traffic was still heavy albeit not a standstill. Perhaps others think like us too. In any case, it took us about 3 hours to reach Ipoh. And when we did, we headed straight to Pasir Pinji for some hawker food under the big tree.

大树下 or under a big tree is a small hawker area very near to Tuck Kee Restaurant where YF bought us lunch on our way to Sungei Petani. It is located on Jalan King in Pasir Pinji. It is a combination of several sheds under, not one but several big trees. It did not look very impressive but in it was a surprising hive of activities.

There were many food stalls selling all sorts of delightful things - beverages, noodles, porridge, popiah, chicken rice, fried radish cake, yong tau foo, etc, etc. There were tables all over the place. People jammed it in. It was like an organized disorderly hustle and bustle of serious eating. 

There was an open area that even in the midst of a hot afternoon, was cool and comfortable below the shades of the big trees.

The place is famed for the yong tau foo (釀豆腐). Apparently this YTF stall started the whole hawker place. I was told they were the first to set up business here. It became so very popular that other food stalls joined in and the whole place became what it is today.

The YTF remains the most popular stall. There was a long queue of people selecting from a large variety of fish stuffed tofu, fu chuk (腐竹), brinjal (egg plant), bitter gourd, long beans, chili, fish balls of various types, etc. They all looked so very good.

 

 

This YTF stall also sells noodles - curry, clear soup and kon lo (干捞 or dry). After selecting your YTF, if you want the noodles, you tell it to a lady at the end of the queue. She writes your noodle preference and table number on a piece of paper and stick it to your bowl. You then wait for it to be delivered to you. On that apparently normal day, the queue for noodles was this long....

Another stall worth mentioning was the beverage. Its specialty is blended drinks - red beans, green tea, fruits, etc. The red bean and green tea are particularly good.

Our lunch that day started with yong tau foo. We had to have this of course, having drove all the way here. And it did not disappoint. They were good. Both the fried and non-fried stuffs were delicious. The fish paste was springy and very nice on the bite. Small wonder why it is so very popular.

The popiah was very nice. Lots of crunchy stuff inside. We seldom get such crunchy popiah interior in the Klang valley. In Ipoh, it is the norm.

The bowl of chu chap chok (猪杂粥 or pork innards porridge) was also very tasty. The porridge was smooth. There was a generous portion of innards. Best of all was the crispy deep fried pork intestine. And the yew char kueh (油炸鬼).

From the same stall, we ordered this bowl of pork noodles. Most delightful. We cannot get pork noodles like this in KL or PJ. The soup was heavenly. 

This plate of fried radish cake was so-so. It was wasn't bad. I guess it was over-shadowed by the other good dishes. Still, like all the others we ordered, it was cleaned out.

It was a lot of food for 4 of us. But we were hungry and everything was so good. This place under the big trees will probably be our regular pit stop every time we pass Ipoh on our way to and from the in-laws'. And I am looking forward to the next trip.