Restaurant Busy Corner, Damansara Jaya

 It was Friday and unlike the usual Friday; I'm there in PJ that day. To spice up Friday night; went for dinner with my "boss" instead :P  Here we were at Restaurant Busy Corner in SS22, PJ  which is famous for their Claypot Chicken Rice! It's good to have a hot pipping pot of chicken rice on a cold and rainy night. It warms your day :) Along this street where this shop is located, it's full of cybercafes and quite quiet too; thus do be careful yeah if you are dining here.

There were not many people when we dine here around 8 something at night. But it takes a while for your meal to arrive because they only start to cook right after you ordered. Thus, no precooked or heated up claypot chicken rice!

There are a few types of claypot rice where you can go for the chicken, steak (beef) or prawns or even the traditional one with Chinese wax sausage. They are also famous for their double boiled soup which is rich in flavour. Here's the menu for your reference: 

Menu at Restaurant Busy Corner

The soup came first and I had this herbal chicken soup as my "drink". It's rich in flavour and the sweetness of the soup is good! It contains lots of red dates, wolfberry, yuk chuk, dried fig fruit (mou fah goh) and chicken feet. Good that they are very generous with their herbs but perhaps their chicken feet needs to be thoroughly selected because one of the chicken feet in my soup still have its "feet nail" not removed.  

Herbal Chicken Soup, RM5

My darling boss had her Groundnuts with chicken feet soup. It looks rich in flavour too and for chicken feet lovers, you'll get a pair of huge chicken feet with a few chunks of meat in the soup. 

Groundnut chicken soup, RM5

After a while, here's our claypot rice. This is the Thai Sauce Clayout Chicken Rice, RM7 for regular portion suitable for 1 pax. Once the rice is served, you can immediately smell the fragrant scent of marinated chicken still cooking in its hot pot. The thai sauce clayout chicken rice is good. Although it's called a thai sauce chicken; it's not spicy at all. Instead, there's a unique taste that will makes you eat few bowls of rice :P          I love the crunchiness of half cooked onions and spring onions which compliments the rice well.

Thai Sauce Claypot Chicken Rice, RM7

Next, we had this "Red Bean Sauce Claypot Chicken Rice" at RM7 per portion for regular size. When you read "red bean sauce" from the menu; you'll be like huh? You mean the red bean tong sui that red bean mixed with chicken? That was what I thought -,-''''   Okie. No! It's actually a sauce that contains fu yu; a type of Chinese fermented beancurd which is red in colour. Oh and do remember that "fu yu" is different from "nam yu" but both are also Chinese fermented beancurd but their taste are a bit different. The chicken in this claypot is marinated with a special sauce where it's a bit spicy ( can see some chilli in the sauce), salty and sour. Quite unique though but you can't taste the fu yu taste that much because you'll probably say it's spicy as the taste of chilli is quite overpowering. 

Red Sauce Claypot Chicken Rice, RM7

Overall, the chicken rice is good. Would like to come back next round to try the traditional claypot chicken rice with wax sausage. And more onions and spring onions! Oh and perhaps add an egg :) Price is affordable too where it's only RM12.30 per head for a claypot chicken rice, steamed soup and a packet of wet tissue. Oh, we didn't know about the RM0.30 wet tissue but it was put on our table when they brought us the cutlery. Perhaps you can inform them that you don't need the wet tissue when you dine in there?

They do have another branch in Sunway Mas Commercial Centre area according to the info behind the menu:

And if you would like to know about other places that serves good claypot chicken rice; Hungrygowhere had recently recommend some famous places to hunt it. Will find sometime to try them all!

Restaurant Busy Corner

83, Jalan SS22/11, 

Damansara Jaya, 

47400 Petaling Jaya, 

Selangor.

1919 Restaurant , Jalan Medan Ipoh (Opposite Tesco Ipoh Garden)

There's tons of Chinese restaurant in Ipoh and was looking for something different for the family dinner. Went for Nyonya food this time at 1919 Restaurant. We seldom go out for family dinner because my aunt's house serves wonderful home cooked food everyday! That's the reason I'm back every weekend :)

 This 1919 Restaurant is located at the row of shops opposite Tesco Ipoh Garden. It's the corner shop and it's the same row as Fu Tien Vegetarian Restaurant. We made a reservation at 7.30pm and we had a little disappointment when we arrived. The table which was supposed to be reserved for us (8pax) was still occupied by the previous customers who dined in earlier. And the restaurant was full at that time thus we had no tables to sit! Well, we made a reservation and even booked the all the dishes too but we had to stand there staring at other customers while waiting for the previous (or any other tables) customers to complete their dining. This is not a good thing to start our dinner with because we only managed to get our seat at about 8pm (which we supposed to be home by 9pm). Well, it looks like "reservations" is not taken care well by them :(

We got a pot of tea served to us right after we got our table. Not bad this tea huh. 

 Then, all our dishes which we had ordered the day before arrived. Presentation of the food was ok and the taste is good too.

Fillet was removed from the fish and cooked with Thai styled sauce? Was too hungry to figured it out but it's a little bit spicy and sour. Sauce is good and it complements the rice well. The fish bone was deep fried to crispy and served as a decoration for the dish. 

Thai styled fish?

Oh, I love this! It's Salted Egg Chicken. Cubes of chicken was coated with strong salted egg batter and deep fried. Very well executed because you can taste the salted egg on the chicken. Most shops outside only contains a little salted egg taste. Bravo to this dish. 

Salted Egg Chicken

 Beancurd is a must have dish when dining in. Sorry for the blur pic because too excited to chop it down. This beancurd is unique (oh well, the name is unique beancurd) where the tofu is made in a shape of a pot and there's a little hole in the middle that contains cubes of prawns, asparagus, etcc.. Love this.

Antique beancurd.

 This is deep fried soft shell crab with thin and crispy shreds of egg. Love the crispy egg and there's curry leaves too. Double thumbs up.

Deep fried soft shell crab

Next is the deep fried yam ring stuffed with kerabu ( cucumbers, peanuts and young mango). The combination is fantastic. The heavy feel of yam paste is lighten by the sour and crunchy taste of cucumbers and young mango.

Deep fried yam ring with kerabu stuffing

 You must not missed this. Thin shreds of brinjal is coated with batter and deep fried to crunchy. Then, special spicy sauce is drizzled on top of the crunchy brinjal. A great appetizer!

Deep fried brinjal

Overall, food was good but it will be good if our reservation was appropriately taken care of. The bill was about RM280 for 8 of us with extra bowl of rice. Do note that all our food was in big portion. We had to chop these food down in less than an hour to be home at 9pm as we had some errands to run. These are their specialty and most are fried food :) If you prefer some dish with gravy or non-fried food; there's plenty of choice to choose from the menu. But it's good to indulge in these "fried" food once in a while. 

1919 Restaurant & Galley 
1, Jalan Medan Ipoh 6, 
Taman Ipoh Timur, 
31400 Ipoh, Perak

Taiwan 2014 Day 2: Exploring Cingjing at night

Since we were there in Spring, the sunsets at around 6 something in the evening and the sky turned completely dark at about 7pm. The weather was very cold at night due to the wind.

Dinner at Misty Villa was great at it was only about 8pm when we finished our dinner. Since the night is still young; we walked out of our minsu in the dark for some adventure. The road leading to our minsu was very dark and there's no street lights along this road; we used the light from our handphone to guide us. After a few minutes walking downhill, you'll reach the entrance of the road where there's lots of signboards indicating some of the minsu that are located along the road which we walked and they are all located further in from Misty Villa. Thus, Misty Villa minsu is the first minsu located along the road leading uphill and you will see other minsu if you walked uphill from Misty Villa. We're glad that we chose Misty Villa as it's nearer to the attractions in Cingjing. But probably if you staying in the minsu located uphill; the scenery will be even better :)

The signboards at the entrance of the road leading to our minsu.

From this signboards, we walked across the road towards the 7-11 store where the Carton King and Small Swiss Garden are located. Be careful while crossing the road because many cars were "racing" uphill and downhill along this road. Our first stop is the Small Swiss Garden because there's a musical fountain at night. It was drizzling but that did not stop us from our adventure :)

As we entered the Small Swiss Garden in the late evening, our entrance tickets entitled us for another free admission for the next day :) Thus, we can see the beauty of Small Swiss Garden at night and in the morning too. There are few sessions of musical fountain at Small Swiss Garden; do look our for the showtime at the entrance. 

The musical fountain was a simple one but it's enough to entertain us. The music consist a peaceful and calming tone compared to those loud and fast music which you can get from the typical musical fountain in Sentosa Island or the one used to be in The Mines, KL. A unique experience watching musical fountain under a cold and windy weather.

Entrance to Small Swiss Garden

The end of the musical fountain

Then, we explored the park before the drizzling starts again.

The windmill on the lake. It looks more beautiful at night due to the lights.

Still Christmas in March?

A beautiful garden surrounded by Christmas inspired statue.

There's a cafe located at the end of this park but it was closed.

One last pic of the night view before we left due to rain.

Since it was drizzling, we went to explore the Carton King located beside the Small Swiss Garden. This outlet of Carton King is quite small compared to the one in Dakeng.

Made from paper too!

It's made of paper!

 

Animals figurines made from cardboard.

Besides Small Swiss garden and Carton King, there's a 7-ll there where you can grab a whole bag of snacks as supper. I love Taiwan's 7-11 where there's a variety of fast food available. 

There's also an outlet of the infamous Mina Chocolate store outside Carton King and several store selling souvenirs and ice-cream.

Mina Chocolate stall.

Yum!

Opposite the area where the Carton King, Small Swiss Garden and 7-11 is located, we saw some buildings with bright lights. Without further delay, walked across the road to explore that area. This area is a huge area complete with food stalls, cafes, a MOS Burger outlet, Lavender Cottage shops as well as bus station hub.

cute panda!

There's an outlet of Lavender Cottage to buy your souvenirs!

Colourful bath salts at Lavender Cottage

There's a giant teddy outside the shop for photo taking.

The Old England is a famous place for high tea in Cingjing. If you would like to book for a high tea in the Old England hotel or minsu, you can do so here in the Old English kiosk or cafe. Dining in Old England hotel/minsu is very expensive; but you can try their food here in this Old English cafe.

Old England cafe !

They sells dried tea leaves, coffee, pastry and sandwiches here.

Explored the Starbucks outlet to grab a coffee.

Since it's spring season, there's lots of cherry blossoms inspired tumblers and mugs for sale.

Looks presentable and yummy!

 There's also a tourist bus station here where they can take you to Hehuanshan to see sunrise. Since it's Spring, the peak is still covered in snow. But we had a packed itinerary the next day, thus need to save this for our next trip. Really wish to see sunrise at Hehuanshan!

That's our adventure for the night.

Afternoon tea at THIRTY8, Grand Hyatt Hotel Kuala Lumpur

It was pig's birthday and guess what I treated him for a nice high tea as a birthday present! Well, it's bored to buy presents for every occasion (Valentine, Birthday, Anniversary, Christmas?) and when you don't know what to buy when we have everything we need. Thus here you go, an afternoon high tea at the infamous Thirty8 Restaurant in Grand Hyatt Hotel Kuala Lumpur.

We parked at KLCC and walked over to the hotel since it's located right beside KLCC. Heard that parking rates in Grand Hyatt is expensive thus went for KLCC instead. We were glad to grad a nice seat with good view that day even though we didn't make a reservation. Oh well, it will be good enough if we get a seat without any reservation as reservation is essential because it's always full house. If you come on weekends, make a reservation few days or a week before hand.

Since it's a weekday, they only have afternoon high tea set and some ala carte menu available. The infamous ala carte dessert featuring their Signature cake and other famous desserts was not available and it's only available on Saturday ;(  It's okie; we'll come on weekend one day to try their signature cake. For now, let's go for their afternoon high tea set instead.

Their afternoon tea set is available from 3 to 5pm on Monday to Thursday. Priced at RM68+ per set per head. Which means each set consist of the portion for one person at RM68+ . You can share the set with your friends because if you're going for a heavy dinner; you might not be able to fully digest your high tea meal in time for dinner. We ordered 2 sets for sharing since we had 3 pax dining in and 3 hours later; we'll have scrumptious dinner at a fine dining Thai restaurant nearby. Thus, sharing is essential ;)

Each afternoon tea set comes with either a coffee or tea. Although we went for 2 sets only, they gave us another drink too. Yay! Thus, we had one coffee and two jugs of tea.  0.o

A pot of tea

Mocha served with a chocolate cookie

Here's the elegant looking afternoon high tea set. The three tier serving stand filled with pastry and cakes looks appetizing indeed. FYI, this picture consist of the portion for 2 sets of afternoon high tea.

Afternoon high tea set at RM68+. Here's 2 set's portion

From the bottom tier, it's the world of cakes and puffs ;) There's 2 pcs of cream puffs, 2pcs of Chocolate layer cakes and 2 pcs of Strawberry Cheesecake.

World of cakes ;)

Here comes the second tier; mini sponge cake or is it Madeleine? and tarts.

Top tier with MACAROONS and thin slices of nougat. Macaroon was okie (those at TWG was better) and I love the nougat. 

It also comes with 4pcs of scones and c-r-e-a-m-y cream and strawberry preserve. I love the cream! Creamy and light. yum. Scones was freshly baked too.

Scones!

Last but not least, there's sandwiches too. There's 3 types which are egg mayo, tuna and chicken ham versions.

Sandwiches

Afternoon high tea was good! You can enjoy the beautiful view of the Petronas Twin Tower as well as the scenic KL view. A good way to spend your afternoon overlooking the scenery while sipping your tea.

We sat right in front of this view.

Note: 10% Service charge and 6% government tax applies.


THIRTY8
Grand Hyatt Hotel Kuala Lumpur
12, Jalan Pinang
50450 Kuala Lumpur.