vkeong loves good food, travel and photography!
Kuala Lumpur
Unbelievably Bad Dim Sum @ Kedai Kopi Mee Bon, Jalan Ipoh
Apr 28th
I like to blog about good food. I honestly believe that no food blogger with a right mind wants to write about bad eating places because that defeats the purpose of having a food blog. But there are some places that I think I should warn you all about and Mee Bon Dim Sum restaurant along Jalan Ipoh is one of them. Usually I leave what-I-think-is-lousy-makan-places alone but when a “highly regarded” food blogger rates the dim sum here as “super tasty” – it just flips me out. And the irony is that the writer (an expat if you are wondering) claims to have had the best dim sums in the region.
The shop. Despite having so many steaming baskets our dim sum arrived lukewarm.
Ril’s Steakhouse @ The Warehouse, Jalan Tun H S Lee
Apr 3rd
Based on my two visits to Ril’s Steakhouse, my conclusion is that the food coming out of Ril’s kitchen is just consistently inconsistent. And no, I am not going to sink any more money into this place when there are better alternatives in town. It almost feels like you are taking a gamble just to eat here, it might be good or bad – you will never know.
Anyway, we actually had this meal at The Warehouse even before our visit to their Bangsar branch. Remember when I said I seem to have bad luck with steaks? Well my Wagyu Rib-Eye @ RM168 is overcooked no where close to medium rare (and at Bangsar branch as well) while my wife’s Rib-Eye was perfect. Couldn’t they at least get the more expensive meat done right?
I would have been more forgiving if Ril’s is a normal Western food restaurant, but the fact is that they are a premium restaurant specializing in steaks and their main starts at RM76 the cheapest! And let’s not forget again they advertise themselves as the best steak restaurant in KL too. So it is just simply disappointing to be served dry and chewy meat amidst all the hype and expectation.
Restoran E Soo Yong Tou Foo @ Bandar Manjalara, Kepong
Mar 19th
E Soo (Cantonese for 2nd sister in law) is an extremely popular Yong Tau Fu restaurant in Kepong and it is not difficult to understand why. Not only your food arrives fast even during the busiest times, there are plenty of other main dishes to order too which makes a meal here really quick and complete.
The sizes of the individual YTF here is delightfully big and packed with fish paste, so we did not really mind them being slightly pricier than the rest. Besides, they are really tasty too except for some fried items that were just plain oily to the extent of being inedible.
The fried item I was referring too is the friend brinjals, they were so soaked in oil that it felt like biting into a greasy and soggy tissue, kind of gross. We complaint about this to the staff and owner but our complaint was simply brushed off with something along the lines of ‘fried brinjals are like that one mah, sure got a lot of oil, even if I replace for you also will like that‘ So yeah, no more fried brinjals for us in our future visits since the other restaurants do not seem to have this problem. The rest was OK though – we liked their fried ‘fu cuk’ and ‘tau fu pok’, both were crispy and light with very little grease.
Kedai Makanan Bak Kut Teh @ Batu 5, Jalan Ipoh
Mar 8th
One day, we planned to have Soon Lee‘s prawn noodles for dinner but unluckily for us, they were not open. Then we noticed a Bak Kut Teh stall at the other end of the road and figured we should give it a try. After some searching on the Internet I found that nothing has been mentioned about it. Even though the stall has a Chinese name 新全和园肉骨茶, the Malay version simply says “Kedai Makanan Bak Kut Teh“.
We thought the Bak Kut Teh was going to be a filler meal to make up for our prawn noodle disappointment but as it turned out, the BKT is actually quite good and worth a mention. While it is tasty, it is not that “oh my god” good that you need to make a special trip for this. But in case you happen to be in the area at night and also craving for BKT, this could be one of the choices that you will be less likely to go wrong.
