Roast Pork, Happy Garden, Kuchai Road Kuala Lumpur

Located in this really old run down shop next to the famous 4 faced Buddha in Happy Garden, is this really popular roast pork stall. (never realized there was one as this shop looks really run down.)
It is advised to get to this place before lunch. If you're late, there will be no tables and most of the time, their famous roast pork (烧肉)will be sold out.
After hearing about their so called fame, I decided that I had to go see for myself. My first time, I got there at about 12.30pm. Crowd was already there and I could not get a table inside, therefore had to settle for one outside that was barely in the shade.
Damn, this shop is old. Windows missing, pipes leaking, walls that need some paint work done and floors that require a whole month of scrubbing.
No wonder comes to take orders other than this pretty friendly Chinese lady that sells drinks. Walked over to the stall and placed my order. Char Siew (叉烧), Roast pork (烧肉)  and Roast Chicken.
The food took forever to come. Place was not exactly crowded, wonder what took so long. When it finally came, I was hungry. First impressions. Roast pork looked OK but the char siew, I had my doubts. Too red for my liking. Red meaning they used coloring on the meat making them look too red on the surface. Not good. Here we go again, sigh.

This looks pretty nice. Taste wise not bad but nothing to really shout about either.

Now check out the red borders of each slice of meat. That is coloring. Char Siew should be BBQ-ed for color, aroma and taste.

Another photo of the coloring to emphasize my point!

The roast pork although cut not as thinly as other places which is good, is actually on the average in terms of taste, aroma and texture. Yes, if you compare to some other places around this area, I will agree that this one is one of the better ones. Crispy skin but does not have that melt in your mouth experience. I reckon that the soya sauce should be kept separate and not poured on the roast pork. Soya sauce will cover the taste of the meat and often get the crispy skin soggy even before it reaches your table. Roast pork is normally already on the salty side therefore you do not need to drown it with soya sauce unless you have something to hide..Smirk!!
The BBQ pork....hmm...not good. I hate going to places where they have colored char siew. Reason why it's called char siew is before you BBQ the damn meat. OUT!!!!
Roast chicken..very very normal. Any other decent chicken rice stall can do this.

Overall. = Dirty restaurant which mean hygiene is of concern though I've not gotten a tummy ache yet and Yes I do have a pretty strong stomach. Food wise, they ain't cheap. For two persons, this will cost you about RM20+ excluding drinks.

Roast Pork = 1.5 (because they were not cut into paper thin slices)

Char Siew = 0

Roast Chicken = 1 (if you can't get this right then you had better shut it down)

WIR - Hmm..I will come back but maybe just stick to the roast pork and nothing else.

Malay Chicken Rice - Roadside, Taman Desa Kuala Lumpur

I have never been to these stalls although I've been living here over 30 years. Really cannot recall when these row of stalls opened. One thing for sure is that I have always resented this place for a few reasons. 

1. The stalls are built on top of a big drain. Talk about being hygienic!
2. There is filth everywhere. These buggers are the main guys that contribute to the rat population and not forgetting that they dump all their rubbish into the drain. 
3. How the hell does city hall even approve the licenses for such a place? Beats me!
4. They also happen to cause a jam everyday. Once during lunch, once during tea and once in the evening. 
5. The one I hate most is that there is a mamak stall located right on top on the same row as them. I am bewildered why those poor fellas keep getting raided by DBKL till the extent of getting excavators in to tear down the concrete platform they built. If these guys are operating illegally, then what about those bunch down 5 meters from them? Malaysian justice as usual.

Anyway, I was finally persuaded to have lunch there yesterday after hearing so much about this chicken rice stall. Located smack in the middle of the row is the stall with no name. Just two elderly "makciks" operate. As it is Ramadan, no one was in sight. 

Empty place. Why? Ramadan mah!

Rice drowned in gravy.  

Chicken done just right. It may look dark but check out the crispy skin. 

The way this dish was served made it look like a mess. I don't really fancy messy looking dishes but heck, I am eating on top on a drain, DON'T expect too much right?

The rice is actually steamed rice or nasi kukus. Just a tad over steamed making it too soft. (one thing to note is that the quality of the rice is not good. They always use the cheapest rice they can get their hands on.)

The second observation is that the rice was drowned in gravy. I was told it was curry but sure didn't taste like curry. It was more like curry looking gravy minus the curry taste.

Deep fried chicken - Now this is their specialty. Looked good. Piece of chicken was big enough. I liked the fact that they took the effort to marinate the chicken well enough making it juicy and tender plus exciting your taste buds with the variety of spices in it. The aroma was magnificent and they know how to deep fry their chicken. It was crispy on the outside and juicy inside. The skin..yummy! that was nice.

They did also throw in a few slices of cucumber mixed with their own chilli or belacan. The chilli was really good. Spicy but had a little tinge of sourness to wet your appetite. 

I reckon that this is actually more Indonesian than Malay. Kind of reminded me of the fried chicken you get in Jakarta. Does it matter? As long as it tastes good right?

RM 8 including my "limau ice". Not bad.

Points - 1.5 The chicken kicked arse but the rest was ok ok only.

Taman Desa Food Court, Kuala Lumpur

Hawker food these days in Malaysia are surely going to the dumps. Tell me one food court that is good in Kuala Lumpur and if I agree, I'll give you a RM100. 90% of the stalls in town are all manned by foreigners, mainly Burmese. (Now that Burma is called Myamar, I really don't know what to call them.) I reckon that in 10 years when Myamar is free, all of them will go back and if we want to have Malaysian hawker food, we'll have to fly there.
The Taman Desa food court is no exception. It is the only food court in the place and I reckon that the only reason why they still have business is that there is ample parking. Nothing is fabulous or even worth wasting bandwidth on. The chicken rice stall is ok only because his price is reasonable and the portions are adequate. The Thai food stall used to be good until the cooks were displaced. The prawn dumpling is not bad but the attitude of the old man there..something to dispute next time. 

Servings pretty good and for RM5.50, it's a good deal.

The classic story of the place is the char kueh teow stall. A couple of years back, the owner put up a huge notice saying that if it's not good, we will refund you. He was pretty good then, no complaints. He had a great Indonesian helper too. Everything went downfall, when the helper left and in came his PRC girl friend. After a few months, the poor old Casanova was dumped and he could not fry his kueh teow anymore. After numerous refunds, he just could not hack it anymore. (By the way, I heard this from some aunty there.)


Anyway, it's the only place in Taman Desa that you can find more variety albeit the quality.
As I said, which food court in KL is good after all.


Another one bites the dust!

Hainan Chicken Rice (雞容海南雞飯) - Jalan Sultan, Kuala Lumpur

This place is a favorite of mine since the one two doors away sucks big time. I referring to the famous Nam Heong Chicken rice shop. Ever since it was bought over by Esquire Kitchen, the quality of the food there dropped faster than the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.
Anyway the place I am talking about is just two doors from Nam Heong. It's an old, dingy looking shop with no decor whatsoever. I was told that the old man used to work for Nam Heong. It is one of those chicken rice places that still serves chicken insides. Not only do they have chicken liver and gizzards, they also have chicken intestines. (Most chicken rice shops do not serve intestines as they are too lazy to wash and prepare them.)
As usual ordered chicken for two, a small bowl of pork balls and Spicy & sour vegetables. Note: This is one of the last remaining chicken rice shops that serve your rice in a bowl.

Rice is meant to be cooked this way. 

One thing about this place is that the chicken is done perfectly. Honestly I cannot stand the sight of blood in my chicken which you do get in other places. 白切雞 or "white chicken" is an art form. You just do not dip the entire 

chicken into the soup to cook it.

You mean't to "shower" it slowly with the hot soup, basically bathing it like a 
baby. It then cooks the bird gently and in return the results are a tender and juicy 
chicken.

Points - 3

Perfectly cooked chicken which was juicy and succulent. They do not drown the birds in soya sauce

but where are the spring onions?

The pork balls are just very normal pork balls which I will not waste too much
time talking about it. Not too good and not bad either.

Points - 1 

The pork balls were of decent size but where is my spring onions and coriander? 

Points - 0


All in all, this old shop is a good place for lunch and my craving for chicken 
rice. My suggestion is go there soon before the old folks in there retire.

Room Eighteen - Mid Valley Megamall

Lunch time in Mid Valley is always madness. If you work there, you should eat at 12 noon and try to avoid the 1pm crowd. I have never really had much to say about the Tai Thong Group ever since their main restaurant in Jalan Imbi closed down. These days the group has moved on to do more Hong Kong style restaurants and also some western fusion restaurants which have failed miserably.

I was pretty lazy today and chose the nearest restaurant. Room Eighteen is one of Tai Thong's projects and has been revamped twice if I remember correctly.(used to be called Chopstick Noodle House) I have been to this place a few times and each time I have left the place fuming as the service is really hopeless.

Went through the menu and the usual stuff is still there. Very Hongkee inclined menu with dim sum extras in it. (Will talk about their dim sum selection next time) They stopped their lunch set menu but are not promoting a couple of their new dishes. Hot pot this and hot pot that. Nothing that really fancies me.

As usual I ordered their Double Combination rice, which you can choose two type of their roasted meat. (duck, chicken, roasted pork, char siew) I chose the roasted duck and pork. My lunch partner ordered the new menu selection of Hot Pot Spicy Fried Rice. (Bei Foong Tong, I will try to type chinese next time)

Color combination of the fried rice was pretty good. It did taste pretty good. Fried rice has to be done in a way that the rice does not stick together and it cannot be too oily. (Mum always says,"Use overnight cooked rice!) I must admit that this was not too bad. The only thing is that it does not live up to its name - Hot Pot Spicy Fried Rice. It didn't come sizzling hot although it was served in this Korean looking Bee Beem Bap bowl. As it is called "Bei Foong Tong", it has to be spicy. This was not at all the spicy fried rice I had in mind. There was not much ingredients in it other than a lot of vegetables that made it look colorful. No chicken, no pork..you mean NO MEAT? Some slices of egg..and that was about it. For 12 bucks, I better go the mamak for their fried rice. There at least I cannot complain as you would not expect anything.

Points - 1

Next came my double combination roasted meat rice. As you can see above, the servings pretty small. Just a few slices of each meat. The steamed white rice was cold (maybe due to their overzealous air conditioning), actually the whole dish was cold. They even "stinged" on the cucumbers. Cooking 101 - Don't ever cut your cucumbers this way. They don't look good and it makes you look bad. 

The roast duck was ok. Not much taste to it though as I reckon they expect you to dip it in their plum sauce and maybe a little chilli oil. (The plum sauce was terrible. Not much taste to it and you would expect this sauce to be thick and sweet) I have nothing much to say about the roasted pork as it just tasted like any ordinary roast pork you get at the coffee shops. For RM12.90, this is pricey and not satisfying.

Points - 1

Finally, I was impressed today with the service which was rather quick and efficient. The food came out in about 10 minutes and the bill came in a jiffy. I recommend this place if you have no other place in mind for lunch. The food is just OK, nothing to shout about. The air condition in there is freezing and the service can be atrocious.