Vietname Culinary Experience

Hanoi is indeed a pearl of heritage and culture. Although nowadays it is flooded by sea of foreign tourists (am in no position of complaining as I’m one of them as well), but the deep rooted culture and boundless spirit of the locals is still very much intact and preserved. This has been best portrayed through their culinary and local cuisine.

The local vietnamese cuisine is very much simple (fast to prepare) but absolutely delicious. On top of that, you have the privilege to share the table with the local vietnamese as well as the fellow tourists, very much like in the busy dim sum restaurant in Hongkong. The only thing is that the table and chair are much shorter. And its kinda funny to see the foreigners which is like 5 feet tall sitting on the short chair, its like the giant sitting on the midget chair.

PHO

Pho shop

Half of the Pho menu

Despite of all the stories of diarrhea threat, I have finally tried the famous hanoi street’s PHO at Cham ca street (mind you this is not the KLCC Vietnam Restaurant’s Pho which cost a bomb), of course with charcoal tablet ready in my bag. It’s a rice noodle which taste heavenly with the clear but tasty soup. For 18,000 dong (around RM4), I’ve tried tai chin, which means a mixed of half cooked and thoroughly cooked beef slices. I cant describe the different of the pho with Malaysian’s rice noodles soup but it just different. The beef was soft and tender, and if you have good toleration towards raw meat, half cooked is always a better choice. Well, not to say we didn’t eat raw food like sashimi and sushi in Malaysia.

The cooks prepare the pho behind the glass window (lots of corriander, yucks)

The happy me with the yummy pho

Bun Cha

Bun cha is another great local dish, it’s a dish consist of barbeque pork cutlet, char siew, fresh salad (mint leaves, salad leaves, coriander and some other herbs), rice noodle and a funny tasted soup (sweet and sour) which has pieces of vegetable (carrot, cucumber in it. The way to eat the dish is to mix everything in one small bowl and eat together in a mouthful. The pork comes with some fat and burned choacoal taste, exactly how i wanted it to be. yummy! Apart from that, i’ve also ordered 1 roll of nem (by showing ‘1′ finger), which i have no idea why they have served me a plateful of at least 3 rolls of nem.

Bun Cha Dac Kim at Hang Manh street

Bun Cha

showing the nem

Aunty frying the nem

If you ask anyone what they know about vietnam cuisine, Nem is definitely in their list. Nem is like the veitnamese version of popiah, with pork, glass noodles and some vege in it. They have two types which is the grilled and non-grilled type. Well, unhealthy oily grilled food always tasted better, arent you agree?

Yummy nem served with pieces of tomato and salad leaves

More vieliscious food to come!

Claypot Briyani

Back in November 2008, a couple of friends and I went up to the island of Penang. The land of where supposedly Char Kuay Teow and Roti Babi was born among other things. Although for the latter I did find a better tasting one closer  to my aunt’s house, that is not my focus of today. My focus for today is…..*drum roll*

!~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~***CLAYPOT BRIYANI***~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~!

Who would’ve thought that George Town, Penang still held some secret delicious tasting dishes when we came across this corner shophouse. Other than what you see in this picture, this neatly served dish comes with a side order of chicken curry as eating the rice by itself is dry and a small tray of yogurt like condiment which helps if you find the food too spicy and believe me it is spicy. This dish costs RM 7.00 which is pretty cheap to me given the quality of the taste.

Here’s a shot of the cook cooking the chicken (as I wrote this, I am craving for it)

And another the dish from another angle, accompanied by a fresh glass of mango juice

Now where to find this place? I did not take a picture of the shoplot itself, stupid me, but here’s a map and no that is not the flag of Japan. It’s the marker for where the place is. The shop has a giant banner advertising the dish so you wont miss it.

Anzen Organic Shop/Restaurant

KL has seen a slight increase in healthy eateries and supply stores. With the news of contaminated goods going on for the past few weeks, these places provide an alternative source of healthy goods. Anzen is one of them and it lies in SS2.

On top of being an organic store, it is a vegetarian (Buddhist kind) store. This is different from the usual affair. I won’t go into specifics but organic food does not mean vegetarian but actually growing vegetables and rearing animals for consumption in the most natural way possible.

This was what I ate, Mushroom Vegetarian Fried Rice. Very healthy as you can see the unabashed amount of salad garnish. I didn’t mind the salad but my gripe with this dish is that its tasteless. I know vegetarian or organic food can have more flavour but this establishment missed the point. Price wise is alright. The average price for a dish is RM 8.50. Bottom line is, I won’t be going back to this shop to eat.

Mizi Shabu Shabu

I had a nice farewell dinner with my colleague a few weeks ago at a steamboat restaurant in Puchong. My stomach was an inch wider when i went out of Mizi Shabu Shabu restaurant. Its a not so conventional type of steamboat restaurant, where you have the sushi conveyor belt with individual steamboat.

The fun thing is you can mix and make your own steamboat soup, just add in dried fish, mushroom, oyster and wala! you get your nice self-made soup. Also, there is no charcoal, no gas tanks, but electricity to heat up or keep warm the soup. i love their thin slices of pork meat and the squid, so juicy and yummy. You should only submerge the pork in the steam soup for couple of seconds, dip into their signature onion soya source and eat the whole slice in a go. Gosh, its sinful.

i enjoyed very very much the companion of my fellow colleagues as we talk about things like office affairs, pets and so on. Its quite rare for me to have the chance to share and spend time with them as i am in the business team while they are in the Technology team. However, on occasion like this (especially when good food is involved), we lose all the inhibition and laughed at stupid jokes and craps. I think its really a Chinese culture to connect to each other while eating.

Anyway, the price comes at RM 26 per person. If you are interested, feel free to go and have a try!

Mizi Shabu Shabu
No 17, Jln Puteri 2/5
Bdr Puteri, 47100 Puchong

Alexis Ampang on Merdeka Eve

Hello, back again from the dead due to a lost of interest in blogging for a lonnnnng time. Recently a bunch of us guys including Bee went to Alexis Ampang for a cozy night of live jazz music and some food. Arriving at 9.10pm we approached the lounge that had a black curtain for an entrance. Manning the entrance was a lady that collected the cover charge of RM 25 per person. Soon we were shown to our table in a corner which was separated us from the main room by a foldable door.