Malaysian food in London Chinatown

I really love this place. None of its food I can fault at all. Their drinks aren't great...teh tarik's a bit weak, soya bean from a bottle, but it was the food I came here for anyway.

And as a testament to the yummy-ness of the food, my lousy-in-a-hurry photo taking still made the food look gorgeous. Malaysian food rocks!

Wat Tan Hor. Only problem with this restaurant is their relative inflexibility in changing it (or adding, really) to even more sublime-tasting yin yong. I guess they don't want the hassle of deep frying rice vermicelli, but the hor fun's got a nice smoky taste and the gravy's excellent.

Singapore Laksa. Maybe it's memory playing up how good it was, I mean, it was pretty damn good, but the last time I had it was a day or two before I flew home in September, after a year of not tasting a decent bowl of curry laksa. I remember it creamier and with more intense flavours...although in reality this particular bowl must be almost exactly the same one I had, because a creamier and more intense bowl of laksa would've made me sick (jelak) after a while. Still, its a better bowl than a lot I've tried in KL, definitely up there with the amazing ones.

And course my beloved belacan. Ooooo yeah belacan. I can sing odes to belacan.

Couple days later, we went back to the same place for more Malaysian nosh, promising ourselves to try something different. There's so many things on their menu I've not tried...bak kut teh, Hainanese chicken rice, Ipoh nga choy kai, nasi lemak, Hokkien mee, char kuey teow, sambal petai, ....mmmmph...nevermind, when I can afford it, I'll spend a week in London, and eat 10 meals there in that week!

Prawn noodles. Quite spicy, perhaps not as good as the best ones in Penang but its even better than some in my neighbourhood (and I live in Kepong! GREAT FOOD!).

Tim ordered Teochew meehoon and I had no idea what it'll look like. When they put it down, I was worried it's going to be bland, but it was really well seasoned, and with a bit of briny-and-meaty gravy. I sure won't order it myself (cos it IS less exciting than spicy stuff that I can't reproduce) but it sure suited Tim pretty well.

Finished the meal with bubur cha cha. It was good because they used gula melaka and good coconut milk. Bad because the yam had too much of a bite and the sweet potato was a little...off. I was a bit dubious about it to be honest, like it was frozen and then reheated with sago thrown in before serving. But hey...while it wasn't excellent it's edible. Couldn't really ask for more! (You could tell I'm easily pleased.)

C&R Cafe Restaurant, 3-4 Rupert Court, London, W1D 6DY

Valentine's Dinner

My posts must be quite confusing now...because they're not in order.

Maybe I should explain: The idea to write my food blog started couple months ago, I just haven't gotten around to doing anything until quite recently...and I already have a backlog of material so I rather use than waste them. I also have a tendency to not upload photos til there's about 300 photos on my camera (yes yes maybe it's just plain laziness) but now that I'm starting to get into the groove of things...

Chinese New Year eve I made a big dinner for a few of my friends, and even though the food was ok, the photos turned out awful because I have an annoying habit of taking photos too close to the subject and have not learnt my lesson well so far.

Still, Valentine's Day Tim booked for a table in a restaurant he heard about in town, and the food was pretty impressive (and I'm rarely impressed with the quality and taste of food in Sheffield). We walked into town to All Bar One, which is just outside Orchard Square off Fargate, and ordered two starters for £5 and lamb shanks for mains.

The first starter was tiger prawns with lemon, parsley & garlic olive oil dressing, and I struggled to find the 'tiger' in the prawns, scrawny as they were, or taste in the dressing. We both resorted to dipping our prawns into the mayo for our other starter.

This was much better. Listed as calamari with lemon, lime & garlic mayonnaise, it was warm, crunchy and slightly greasy, and very very tasty. We fought over batter crumbs.

As big fans of lamb, we both ordered the lamb shank in a minted gravy with spinach and a rustic parsnip & sweet potato mash, and this was just gorgeous. I had Gordon Ramsey's infamous 1-year shelf life without refrigeration lamb shanks playing in my mind as I ate this, but with fall-off-the-bone tender meat and nothing artificial tasting, I may have been a tad paranoid. The spinach was gorgeous, silky and well-cooked and the mash still had good chunks in it. The dish was well-seasoned and if the lamb shank doesn't fill you up, the mash will do the job.

All in all, a very very pleasant experience.

All Bar One, 13-15 Leopold Street, Sheffield, S1 2GY. Tel: 0114 275 3423

Favourite nom spot in England...

...its gotta be Malaysian.

Of course, what else can it be? What can beat a decent bowl of Wat Tan Hor or laksa?

C&R Cafe Restaurant, 3-4 Rupert Court, London, W1D 6DY

Winter cheer

Okay, apologies for my silence...I know to start something's easy, to find the motivation and energy to keep it going is another, and this is set for a failure if I don't post something up right now.

The camera I use is Sony Cybershot DSC-W210 SteadyShot 12.1 megapixels and course I'd like to play about and own an actual DSLR but that will have to wait til I have the moolah...meanwhile, my profuse apologies for asking you to content with (sometimes) bad lighting, shaky shots and less-than-satisfactory inferior-quality photos.

That being said, hey I think I'm a decent photographer, and hopefully this blog will see through improvements with a few teething issues (like my tendency to shoot too close to my food subject). Alright, moving swiftly on...

...Let's start with something simple shall we?

Cafe Rouge is one of those chain restaurants that is prominent in the eatery scene in England (as far as I know)...which is not really a guarantee of good quality food, though it looks sufficiently posh enough for a decent 'special meal' (you'd think there's quality control!) so for our six-month anniversary we downloaded a meal deal voucher and headed there.

Appetizers: We ordered two. Course!

Crevettes du Café Rouge. Tail on king prawns cooked in garlic and herb butter with a warm cherry tomato and chilli dip and slices of French baguette.

This tasted pretty damn good, especially the salsa. Prawns were nice and crunchy.

Champignons de Paris. Baked Paris mushrooms in a creamy roasted garlic and mushroom sauce, with melted Raclette cheese and slices of French baguette.

By the time we had our two starters (appetizers to the American English speakers), I was pretty filled up, especially with the delish cheese and mushrooms, and they were pretty substantial especially with the baguette being really nice and light.

We both ordered seafood as mains, with the ever popular mussels and frites or as the menu described, Moules du Café Rouge Classic Café Rouge mussels cooked in white wine, cream, garlic and herbs with a choice of French fries or French baguette ordered by Tim.

First bite: Delish. Very briny, steaming hot, and I wanted to steal half the portion off the plate. But then as the concoction cooled down, it became really salty. VERY salty. Need glass of water NOW salty. Next to his mussels my food seemed bland, but it's actually correctly seasoned.

I had the fish casserole, which is missing from the menu these days, and it had cod, mussels, baby potatoes and leeks in creamy sauce. It wasn't bad at all, really, but was quite boring next to Tim's steaming mussels. Also as I'm not a big fan of waxy potatoes, I struggled to finish the halves, seemingly aplenty, in my dish.

But quite a good meal for about £25, including tip. Must admit, while it was a memorable meal, my memory is poor, and this is what happens when I try to blog about food 2.5 months later. Serves me right for procrastinating. Note though we do 'save up' by not ordering alcohol (good not to be a drinker!).

Cafe Rouge. 1 Sheffield Centre, St Paul's Place, Sheffield S1 2JL. Tel: 0114 2753815. Opening hours: Mon to Sat: 9.00am to 11.00pm, Sun: 10.00am to 10.30pm.