Izzy's & Izakaya Tamako

It was so sweet of Ipoh Banker and Stanchart Model (from 19XX) asked to meet up for lunch, also for the reason of celebrating birthday. It's been years since any of us celebrated each other's birthdays, so it was quite a surprise.

Ipoh Banker was late, and the rendez vous was to have been at Pavilion. Stanchart Model then suggested Izzy's, along that row where Ship used to be (is it still there?), apparently an Indonesian owned franchise selling a mish mash of local and pseudo Italian food. The place was packed, which is always a good sign.

As I had been killing time in Pavilion, I used up my 20% birthday voucher from Times bookshop, intermittently on the line with Boolicious of Masak Masak, my walking wikipedia for all things food related. What a privilege to have such an invaluable guide. Anyway, I couldn't really find any books I really wanted, but the kiasu in me felt I HAD to use the voucher, so ended up buying one cook book and one comic book (SHERMAN'S LAGOONS LATEST, Sharks Just Wanna Have Fun).

Stanchart and I sat down, while waiting for Ipoh Banker (who actually now works in KL) to appear. He appeared, looking very dapper with shirt and tie, instead of the usual bank uniform that make them look like highly paid janitors. Anyway, he spied this package on the table, (my Times purchase) and assumed it was a present from Stanchart, so quickly chirped, "oh, the present is from the both of us".....

Roll eyes! Anyway, after a good chuckle, we proceeded to order. Stanchart recommended the Prawn Aglio Olio and the funghi pizza.

The pasta was lovely, and light. Perfect for lunchtime food. Not too oily either.



Mmmm, the pizza was rather good, with generous mushroom topping. The crust could have been thinner, but overall, it was better than your average pizza hut or dominos....

I forgot to take a pic, but the bread with garlic butter was heavenly. The latter especially, but beware if you have to attend a meeting after lunch, for that garlic smell really lingers in the breath, and through the burps.....

They have this really strange deal, whereby if your mains are above RMX, you get 70% (yup, SEVENTY) discount. The soft drinks are bottomless too. Without the discount, the alacarte prices seem pricey, but our total bill came up to just over RM40, for 2 pastas, 1 large pizza, the bread and garlic butter, bottomless iced lemon tea....cheap what hor.

Since they both sound similar, I thought I'd blog about Izzykaya too in the same post. One night, AWOL and the toy couple on MSN decide they would meet up for a late dinner. As I had brought the kids for the 7pm screening of Madagascar II, we also needed to eat something for supper, so invited ourselves.

AWOL was famished, and had ordered ahead, a plate of Japanese Pork Curry Katsu with rice.

There's something about Japanese curry. It's really a completely different taste. Rather good, but cannot be compared with our Malay curries.

This Izakaya is famous for its various skewered stuff. Gosh, the term escapes me. But I simply LURVE the bacon and enoki yakitori. The bacon is gorgeous and porcine, without being overly fat, and the enoki lends a fabulously fibrous texture that assuages your guilt at chomping on bacon. Not being a tomato fan, I didnt care much for the bacon wrapped cherry tomato, although it wasn't bad.

Despite having SPECIFIED I wanted SOBA, the FAT ONE, I got udon instead. Bah. The buckwheat taste is a tad too healthy for me. The tempura and soup were nice, but the noodle really spoilt it for me. AND to make things WORSE, Hairy Berry's Tampopo post, and AWOL's reference to Ramen had given me a serious Ramen craving which was not about to be fulfilled that night. Argh. Good ramen recommendations anyone?

I always thought the Japanese were exceedingly healthy, but these skewered crispy chicken skin yakitori indicates that they can sin afterall. It's LARRRVELLLY, and were it not for the health implications, I'd have had 5 myself.

Toyboy couldnt resist his usual staple of garlic fried rice, although they had eaten dinner. Tsk, the youth of today.



Ooh, this one was some kind of belly pork yakitori. A carnivore's sure road to esctasy. A bit too much meat, unlike the enoki rolls which had the enoki to balance out the plentiful pork but very delicious.

Not content with all the above, we ordered more bacon enoki rolls. Absolutely yummy.

Check out the other review at AWOL's blog.

I am off to the Western Seaboard, for the school holidays, and will be absent till Friday. Have fun at work, peeps. Pbbbbbbth.....

And The Celebration Continues

I know it may seem a bit self aggrandizing to go on about how I celebrated the day I was born.... well, the good thing about being born on that day is that I made a new friend on facebook, coz someone who saw it was my birthday added me. Cool huh!

Actually this is one of the few years in my living memory where I haven't hosted a birthday bash for myself. Now, for the record, I don't know what the hype is about birthdays, anniversaries, etc. After all, the length of one year is so arbitrary. Why not celebrate daily, the time you were born, or married, why is it done annually? To me, these celebrations are not important, merely an excuse to party and eat. For example, I would have quite happily ignored my anniversary to attend a friend's invite to a magazine launch, especially if I am always wining and dining anyway. Different if you had to scrimp and save for a whole year for the one special occasion.

But I digress. I wasn't referring to anyone in particular, of course.

Birthday lunch, wife offers to meet me for lunch, with the kids, after their vacation bible school. I tell her, "I'll let you know at 11.30am, in case any of my friends offer to buy me lunch".... but alas, no such offer was forthcoming, and as I held the dam of tears that was about to burst, and flood my keyboard, I meekly sms the other half and say, "okay, I can join you for lunch".

We troop to Bangsar Shopping Centre, after seeing a poster earlier that there was a new restaurant there, called the Grand Imperial, or Xie Yue. Located where Coca used to be, I think, or in that general direction. Given the dearth of good chinese places to eat in the greater bangsar area, I was pleased that another establishment had opened.

They tout their specialities to be dim sum and la mein, at lunch time. The deep fried brinjal was an accidental but serendipitous order, as it was lovely, and even the carnivore kid who needs to be force fed vegetables pureed and fed to him intravenously on a drip, loved it and chomped up the whole piece.

The fish balls were nice and springy.

I loved the fu chuk kuen, bean curd skin wrapped around a generous filling of pork and prawns.

The siew mais were large and succulent, not stuffed with all fat, but nice textured meat, prawns and a generous helping of roe on top.



The long life noodles, cheong sau mein, was one big plate, and I love the texture of the sang meen. Only RM32 for a large plate that even had leftovers.

The abalone loh mai kai was good, and I was wondering how the heck we were going to finish all that food, but thankfully, the kids have been trained in the ways of a Hoover, and lapped it all up as if they had been just released from boarding school.

Thus wrapped up the afternoon celebrations. Oh I must go back again and have dim sum there, which I thought was rather good and fairly priced.

The dinner celebration was at our usual haunt, Shang Palace, because of the
1) 35% group dining voucher,
2) voucher for free cake & 2 glasses of wine,
3) free bottle of wine.

My favourite non shark fin but taste like sharkfin enoki mushroom scallop soup. Absolutely divine on a cold winter's night, or in a cold aircond room.

Seeing as to how most of the guests, young and old, love crispy crackling, we chose the suckling pig over the Peking Duck. And good choice it was too, as the skin was simply marvellous. Not an overly fat little pig, the skin complemented the hoisin sauce and the chinese bread that came along with it.

Soon Hock fish, or Bamboo Fish. Usually the bigger the soon hock the better. This one weighed in at about 1.5kg, and was adequate. The flesh was sweet and firm, and the sauce perfect. Actually, for a hotel chinese restaurant, Shang palace is not bad at all, if you ask me.

The fart poot, or yam ring. Filled with copious amounts of goodness, tender moist chicken pieces, cashews and yam crisply fried on the outside, but smooth and soft on the inside.

Verdant stalks of kai lan, plainly steamed, to combat the richness of the other foods. Yeah, well, it always pains me to pay for veg at a chinese restaurant, as the profit margins must be like 1000%. Nevertheless, these were good quality kai lan, not like those fibrous ones that double up as dental floss for your teeth as you chew.

And more healthy food, steamed brocolli.

The grand finale, the seafood noodles in claypot, always a favourite. Plump juicy prawns and scallops, pieces of sea cucumber braised till tender, ah, it reminds me of the Little Mermaid song, UNDER THE SEA....

The seaweed is always greener
In somebody else's lake
You dream about going up there
But that is a big mistake
Just look at the world around you
Right here on the ocean floor
Such wonderful things surround you
What more is you lookin' for?

Under the sea
Under the sea
Darling it's better
Down where it's wetter
Take it from me

Oh, forgot, there was another pai gwat dish (spare ribs), crumbed and served with man taus. Very good too, but marginal utility was approaching zero as we got fuller and fuller and FULLER.

It's nice to eat cake from other places every now and then. The berry cheesecake from the Shang. It was not bad. Very strawberry-ish flavour, with the occasional dark cherry stuck here and there. The texture was good too, not too cloying.

My presents so far................

Some presents are given with ulterior motive such as the the Gordon Ramsay book. It was given with the hope that I will try out the recipes and invite the givers for dinner..... sigh.

Memphis Bistro

Last Saturday, in the company of good friends, we checked out this place in Puncak Dana, somewhere near Ara Damansara. It was like a leap of faith, following the directions given by KTT, because the area is fairly new, and there were like NO other shops operating at that hour. So imagine, going to a deserted "Bangsar" and to be told that at the end of the 2nd left turn, there is a fully functioning restaurant. It reminded me of Indiana Jones' last obstacle in the holy grail show, where he had to take a leap of faith into the abyss whereby a magic bridge just opened up once he took his foot off the rock.

So anyway, apparently this place has been featured in the papers recently, and wasn't as deserted as the general neighbourhood. Old Vinyl covers embellish the place, that made friend, (King of England) remark that the place was like a time warp. I said, duhh, that's the idea ma. Memphis, hallo.

The chit chat began, as the bottles of wine started accumulating, each guest arriving bringing one or two bottles. Our table probably had more bottles of wine than the entire stock of the restaurant.

I'm more a whisky person myself these days.

Pet groomer remarked that she enjoyed reading this blog, and she never knew I could write. WHAT THE FATOOSH!!!! Hallo, how can she not know? I thought my sms-es to her would have clued her in as to how eloquent I am. "weiiii, see tou poh (boss lady), why so long never see one? watchyew up to dis days ah?" or, "i where got horny one, u ah, simply say only leh"....Goes to show, you can know a person for years, and not really know them. With the advent of computers recently, how many of us can actually identify our friend's handwriting? Gone are the days where we used to gape at beautifully handwritten letters, and our tongues get paper cuts from licking stamps and envelopes.

Somehow, escargots (ass car gots) always remind me of the show Pretty Woman, and while I bear no resemblance to Julia Roberts in any way, I have always wanted to recreate that scene where a snail flies off my hands onto someone else's plate. You see, I am very un-the-cultured one, so I delight in showing of my plebian roots.

I don't know how the escargots came about, but it must have happened when the waiters, all elderly gentlemen, but gainfully employed, and Hainanese, of course, muttered to me that the shrimp starter was not available, and asked if I would like [mumble incoherently] instead. I guess I must have unwittingly nodded to the snail dish. But no loss, that the cultured Tai Tais on the table whacked it like a sailor downs his rum from a hipflask. Very flavourful, and the texture just right.

The other popular starter was the chicken skewer with a peanut sauce, in our local language, known as SATAY. Chicken being the most politically correct carnivore staple, you can't really go far wrong, although I didn't care much for this particular dish. The use of breasts in any culinary caper hardly takes my breath away, and I would rather be breastless.

The baked crab was yummy. That potent symbol of small sized fiery women, the chilli padi, is more for decoration, adding a dash of scarlet to an otherwise colourless but tasty dish. Which I guess is applicable to women and make up too.

Grilled Portobello Mushrooms, gratinated. Rather tasty, but I found the mushroom a wee bit undercooked. Some people like it that way, but I am not one for raw mushroom, unlike steak, and prefer mine cooked through and through.

Crab cakes. A delicious starter, (though one of the gals on diet decided to have it as her mains...oh, with half a lobster), it had generous amounts of crab meat, and not too much of those undefined fillers that one usually gets. By the way, it has been said, that peeling crab for someone is the greatest expression of true love.

The soups are definitely noteworthy. Very reasonably priced, (which makes me think that in some other establishments, we're paying the rent when we order soups), and very good. Hearty wholesome thick but yet not starchy. One of the Soong Sisters had the mushroom soup, which was smooth and silky and mushroomy.

The seafood chowder tastes like Lobster Bisque, which of course, is a good thing. For RM9.50, I'd tout this as the best value for money chowder so far. Thick, prawny, full of gumbo-tion, so much so one of them wanted to order another one.

I decided that I should treat myself (on other people's money), after having given birth to 4 children (vicariously), to a lobster, as the occasion was in honor of ahem, ....me...so I ordered the lobster..... priced at RM185/kg. I was expecting only half a lobster actually, so I was shocked to get a whole one. I also made the mistake of ordering a Thermidor. Whilst these fancy sauces are delicious in the first few bites, it becomes too rich (like carbonara) after the 4th bite, and you feel like you're shovelling saturated fats down your throat with a bulldozer. Should have opted for the plain grilled one, but the good thing about lobster is, there's never any shortage of takers, so wife and godma were the major beneficiaries of my greed.

The grilled lobster is definitely more palatable for the long run.... although as I said, the first few bites of Thermidor were divine.

There's something to be said for good old fashioned steak and chips, which the wife ordered. It was funny how something as insalubrious as french fries is actually THE major hit....everyone started picking on the fries, and eventually, ended up ordering another plate of just fries. These days, its too fancy smancy....steaks are served with all kinds of unpronouncable things.... and a list of saucery that would put a witch to shame.

I was so touched that KTT offered to bake me a cake. And even more impressed when I saw the finished product. Following a Donna Hay recipe, from the Classics II book that we gave her years ago, she succeeded in producing a lovely blueberry swirl cheesecake. The plump fresh blueberries were supposed to be plastic surgery for the tak jadi swirls, but I thought the cake on its own would have looked fine, but then again, I am hardly the highest bar when it comes to cake decor.....

The cake was perfect in sweetness, texture just right, although I think a reduction in cheese would not have noticeable. The three blind mice would have been able to sniff out the cheese here. Lots of it. An excellent effort by KTT...

2 bottles of white, 2 bottles of red and 3/4 bottle of Macallan later, we all left Memphis with amazing grace, high spirited and basking in the warmth and knowledge that yes, life is good, and wealth is measured by the love of friends, not by money....(so say the sour grapes).

Happy Birthday, to ME...... (talk about your syiok sendiri post eh, HB ;))