The quite horrible experience @ Hello Kitty Gourmet Cafe, Malaysia

Hello!

Back with updates! I know Im suppose to be writing about that kebab stall but I've just been to the newly opened Hello Kitty gourmet cafe so I wanna faster write about this first before it gets stale. So this is the first ever Hello Kitty cafe in Malaysia and this first outlet is in Sunway Pyramid! It's amazing that Sunway Pyramid always gets to woo interesting shops! Like how they managed to rope Palladium in! :D

Hello Kitty Gourmet Cafe

Sunway Pyramid, Malaysia

(Outside Sephora)

Entrance to the Hello Kitty cafe, taken when I was about to leave the cafe

I was there with Nay at lunch time and there wasn't a line so we didn't had to queue. The weird thing was when we were attended the waiter made it sound like it was full house, telling us that there are two levels (ground floor and 1st floor) so he gotta check for availability. But, I saw a few table empty from the outside:S

Anyway, I asked for the menu because from the conversation of the customers before me I got to know that different levels have different menu. The ground floor one is the more affordable range menu and the 1st floor serves teatime set. By more affordable I mean one cake RM20+ if compared to the teatime set that can cost more than RM150 I think

The waiter told me that if I want top be on ground floor then there might not be space but if it's the 1st floor surely got space. But he spoke without looking behind him because I spotted 2 empty tables. So I told him I want to be on the ground floor. Resigned, he pointed me to a table at the back. 

It's quite a nice quite corner. Okay, by no means the cafe was quite la. In fact it was so noisy and there were kids' screaming in the background:S But yeah, sitting at a small corner makes things better.

From my view, Nay with her glorious hair checking out what to eat.

This is the menu. I took this shot so you can check out the menu and the price and decide what to have prior to visiting this place. You're welcome. 

Kitty border on the menu

Kitty serviette. Talking about serviette, I was lucky to have a new clean piece.

While Nay had rotten luck so she had a used one! I think that's pretty unacceptable for any eatery standard. It was folded so we didn't notice it beforehand. She only noticed the oil stain when she wanted to wipe her mouth. OMG image if she were to just swipe it across her lips!

So we came to a hypothesis that these people don't change the serviettes on the table for each new customer as long as it 'clean'. Not sure why would they want to safe cost till compromise on dining experience? Hello Kitty cafe some more so everything suppose to be clean and cute. This is so not cute.

Very cute paste coloured Kitty cushion! But later realised that it's stained at one corner also so I faster put it back because I felt a little grossed out. By the way, the seating is very close to the next table so don't expect privacy whatsoever. You wanna camwhore, you just gotta be thick skin and camwhore even if you can sense the next table peering over at you HAHAHA

Finally, we were ready to order! Initially, we decided to have a macaroon, a slice of cake and a coffee. That's because we want to try one from each section of the menu. I wanted Latte because of the Kitty art on the coffee foam!

The waiter came promptly to take orders and guess what? He can only take your drink order so I had to go all the way to the front cake counter to point out which cake I wanted. Since I want a picture of the cakes on display, no problem I went ahead in front.

There you are, cakes!

Don't know why but I felt a bit let down when I saw the cakes because they don't look tasty. I've always knew that I can't expect much from theme cafe because we are paying a premium price for the experience and not for the food quality. With that in mind already, still felt disappointed nevertheless. Anyway, since we are here already I went with the order.

Saw the Cherry Cheese cake that we decided on in our seat and saw the last slice on the counter so I got that. Macaroons no where at sight so I asked the guy at the counter if they have macaroons today? To which he told me that macaroons are only served to customers dining on the first floor. I was surprised because the menu that we had clearly offered macaroons!

I told him that macaroons ARE on the menu even for ground floor diners. He just repeated what he told me earlier. Then I asked, okay even if macaroons are served on top, can we still have them brought down? He stuck to the same reply.

OK. No macaroons for cheapskate ground floor diners like me.

Didn't want to make a scene over a piece of macaroon and it's not that I like them anyway, so I opted for a salted caramel chocolate cupcake. Repeated my order twice. But what arrived was salted caramel chocolate cake, which cost twice the amount =.=

Salted caramel chocolate cake, RM21.90 if I've not mistaken. 

I think this is a steam cake. It tasted very much like those chocolate moist cake that Malay aunties usually sell from home. However, this is not as moist or as chocolatey but it was still not bad. The cream was a little frozen but after a while it got better. Where's the salted caramel? That meager drizzle on top, not too bad either. I rate 5/10. 

With that price, I expect the cake to be at least Secret Recipe's standard la but oh well. I knowingly got conned just for the same of that tiny round chocolate kitty topper LOL

Remember our Cherry Cheese cake? I think this was RM20.90

OMFG, please do not order this! You can't taste the cherry, you can't taste the ricotta cheese or much of any cream cheese and the worst is that there is so much gelatin in the top layer of the cake that it gives it such a weird texture. Once you have a bite of it, all you can think of is Gelatin! This cake real bad, I think I'd rate it 2/10. 

Again, I don't expect fantastic standard tasting cakes in a theme cafe but this was a little too disgusting to even be platted. The good thing about it is that it looks quite pretty with the white chocolate kitty topper.

... which I camwhored with but was too scared to eat after tasting the cake. Cake already like that, what more a cake topper:S

Check out what the next table got! It's a rainbow cake!!! This one very good for instagram! But honestly, the sponge layers look damn dry la. Oh ya, I was envious of her ice latte though!! If you can see it's served in a tall kitty glass with a pink Kitty stirrer.

What happened to my coffee art on my latte?

This! Err... what's this?

Yup, when the waiter served us our coffee it was in this state. I'm pretty sure that it's reasonable to expect them to do a Kitty art on my hot latte because usually normal cafe's also will do those leaf shape coffee art on your latte. So being lazy to not create a Kitty art is downright preposterous!

Wait... this one got me confused too, it look like they did something on it but it was disfigured. If that's the case they still got the cheeks to serve it to the customer ah? We paying for the Kitty experience and all we get is this disfigured foam that confuses us of whether there is any kitty art in the first place:S

Anyway, the coffee tasted decent. Nothing extremely off for me to fuss about so I can deal.

So that is my Hello Kitty cafe experience, I'm leaving you with a few pictures out of the bezillion I took to compensate me. Oh, got one last story at the end of the post which is DAMN SCARY! Enjoy the pictures first, later I'll tell you what it is about!

Last story before I leave! So when we were done with our Kitty desserts (We left the cherry cheese cake almost half unfinished) and wanted to pay, I decided to use my Maybankard. As usual, the waiter shows you the bill, you place your card in that card holder and off it goes to the front counter to be swiped. 

Not long after he returned with an acknowledgement slip for me to sign off. Only after I signed that I notice that it was more three times more than the amount I was shown earlier! I asked him why charge this amount and the waiter was confused as well so he didn't answer me. Somehow I took the card and flip it back to check the signature. THIS IS NOT MY CARD!

I crossed out the signature and told him about the mistake. He looked confused and annoyed. Yeah, like it's my mistake? Then it took him a while to return. I was so damn worried that my card had been wrongly swapped and that if that customer was not as attentive as me, would just sign off and walk away with my card!

Thinking about all the hassle that comes with a missing card made me fume!

I was stretching my neck like a giraffe looking for that waiter and another waiter noticed. He came to me and asked if I wanted something. Told him I was waiting for my card. Just went he wanted to check on the matter, the earlier guy was approaching with the right slip and card. Guess what? I heard him mumbling to the second waiter- grumbling that I signed off the wrong card!!

WHAT THE HECK. Oh, it's my fault that you brought me the wrong card yet not noticing till I pointed it out. And it's my fault that my card was almost off with an unknown.

Ok, story ended. The end.

Sea & Saw Cafe, Johor Bahru

Phew! Just finished working on my report that is due in two days time. Actually it's due tomorrow but I've got a one day extension. It's my first extension though so I feel a little lousy about it. I've got the whole thing written a month back so that wasn't the problem. The problem was not reminding my supervisor about the due date in the first email that I sent so she thought she had more time to look at it:S

Anyway, since I'm done for now I decide to faster blog before I get lazy and continue watching my cooking shows. This restaurant is not new anymore but since it's frequently visited by people (mainly for the deco, IMHO) I decided to ride the bandwagon too.

It was sisters' day out and I gave my sisters a treat here for lunch!

Sea & Saw

Strait View, Johor Bahru

Facebook

The place is pretty nice because they did put in a lot of effort and no doubt $$$ in decorating the place. This is the outdoor setting facing the seaside. Great for outdoor events! I can imagine a lovely small gathering outside with friends!

Okay, I'm bringing you guys inside the restaurant. But first, let's check out the toilet LOL

Big ass mirror outside the toilet

Same deco concept running through the toilet area as well. 

By the way, the toilet is situated outside the restaurant and somehow it reminds me of those olden days poor people's house where they have to share a toilet with their neighbours. So they have this communal toilet outside. But of course the toilet here at Sea & Saw is obviously cleaner la though their bathtub of greens/ fungus with dripping water gross me out. Sorry, don't know how to appreciate this aqua- plant thingy.

Enough with toilets. So here we are inside the restaurant! I'm siting at an area with natural lightings so that's why the picture look super bright here. Love the idea of having natural lightings from the greenhouse looking sitting area but it got a little too warm soon after. You can opt to sit inside too but it look quite squeezy inside. Not too sure though because I didn't explore the place.

The plus point for sitting in the green house natural lighting area is that you are really close to the drinking making counter! So you can watch them whip up your drink and your dessert. Talking bout desserts, not sure if their desserts are made in- house or vendored from someone else? Saw them taking out their cake from a huge box though. 

A little corner for live band I suppose?

This was what I meant by greenhouse area. The walls are all made up of glass.

Sat next to free water for easy access HAHAHHA

This is my seared salmon and poached egg, RM20.90. 

The salmon was cooked beautifully, still juicy on the inside but it has crispy outer skin! I LOVED the garlic dressing on my salmon, it was crazy good!! It's slightly sweet and slightly tart with some heat coming from the garlic, yums! 

It would be better if they had given me a bigger slice of fish though. My sis told me that the last time she was here, she was served with a much bigger fish. Needless to say, I wasn't full eating this for lunch. Also, not a big fan of the poached egg though, tasted rubbery.

Reb's fish and chips, RM19.90. 

The fish was good because it wasn't some frozen fish that we can get off the shelf. It tasted very homemade, made from a scratch like how restaurants should have their fish and chips done. Fries could be better if they had more crunch. Overall, good dish but the portion was small. 

Beef & mushroom charcoal bun burger, RM18.90

The beef patty was good, freshly made from a scratch. Something that I really like about this restaurant is that you can really see their effort in whipping up fresh food for you. The only downside is their serving portion. Too tiny. Like the burger, it was good but by the picture itself you would wish it came it a side of fries/ wedges/ potatoes right? Their salad at the side was quite measly.

Good beef though.

Iced Latte, RM10.90

Cool thing is that you get to pour in your own syrup so you can control the sweetness. For me, it's all down! LOL I'm not a coffee person, unless I'm needing the caffeine to rush assignments, but this was alright. For the price we pay, not too bad.

Mixed berries smoothies, RM10.90

This one I like!! Not too sweet but sweet enough with lots of berries inside! I'd opt for this over the coffee anytime and it does look a little healthier and bang for buck! You know, berries are expensive these days, heh.

Here, the full address of the place. Not a bad place to hang out- good food (but in tiny portion) great ambience! Everything is subjected to service charge but oh, no GST? :D

Just remembered I'm suppose to write about the best kebab in Pattaya! Ok, I'm on it! Keep reading folks!

Seafood Dinner @ Nang Nual, Pattaya

Back with more updates because I have a little more free time this week! So I had a short getaway to Pattaya about three months back and I managed to find three good eats there! The first would be buffet breakfast at Casa Pascal, the second is this seafood dinner and the third is my upcoming post on probably the best kebab I've ever tasted!!

One thing about Pattaya is that it's hard to find street vendors. I don't want to make sweeping accusations la, but based on my experience it was so hard to find street vendors other than those selling orange juice. Talking about orange juice, Kave recommended me to try Thai's orange juice because she said it was really good and cheap. One bottle cost 20 Baht I think and while it was very fresh, it wasn't our typical orange so it has this kelat aftertaste. Their orange look more of a lime species:

With the unimpressed orange juice seller LOL

Ok, back to the seafood dinner story. We reached Pattaya beach are around 7pm (Thai time) which was about 8pm (Malaysia time). Was super duper hungry and was hoping to eat something authentically Thai. Walked all the way to Walking Street, a famous tourist attraction, expecting to find street vendors like those in Bangkok but don't have! Found a few food trucks but those look like they cater more to locals i.e. the Thai people working there. 

Oh! Now I remember why we walked to Walking Street! I wanted to find this seafood restaurant called "Marine Seafood" which had rather good reviews on Trip Advisor. However, the review did wrote that it was quite difficult to locate Marine Seafood because it's tucked between alleys. With a rather whiny travel mate and a very hollow stomach, I just couldn't comb through each alley to find it so we settled for another seafood restaurant on Waking Street.

Nang Nual

Walking Street, Pattaya

Website

This is Nang Nual on Walking street. It's situated further down the road towards the pier. Very bright and clean restaurant that you wouldn't miss!

If I've not mistaken, this place serves Chinese style Thai cuisine. So of course you can find Thai food like tom yam and what not here but the cooking style is very Chinese. Once you walked into the restaurant you will be greeted with all kinds of seafood!! I think you can pick and choose the seafood that you would like to have because I've seen people choosing fishes and what not then instructing the waiters how they want it cooked. 

I didn't go through all that hassle though because it's not like I'm a pro in seafood also LOL So I left it in the hands of the restaurant people. Some pictures:

Mr Crabby still trying to escape to no avail.

Mr Lobster. Not a big fan of lobster meat because I feel like it's texture is in between a crab and a prawn so the in between texture confuses my brain. It's a bit mushy also so by far I haven't found a cooking style that brings out the loveliness of the lobster meat.

Prawns are more of my thing and the prawns here were pretty huge! It was quite big till I didn't know if they were big prawns or baby lobsters if not for the labels:S

Fishes and vegetables.

The waiters there weren't the friendliest bunch so we had to make our way to the seating area ourselves. Initially was very unsure if we should actually pick the seafood first or what? No one told us anything so I just followed the crowd LOL On the way to the dining area, I noticed this wine shop! I think you can select your wine to go with dinner! Not so much of an alcohol person so I gave it a pass.

Wine shop. Quite impressive because so bright and attracting!

This is Nang Nual's seating area!!!! It's by the beach! I don't know why but I was so surprised that it was this pretty!! Probably was just expecting to get my stomach filled before going back to the hotel. But yes, it was very beautiful and quite romantic I would say.

After standing there for like 5 minutes like a goon, finally a kind waitress asked how many of us were there and showed us to a table. The theme of this restaurant is marine I think because you see everything is blue and white and the waiter were dressed in those sailor uniform! So cool!!

There, the waitress in sailor clothes. Very facinated with the overall theme and deco. It's pretty simple but just really really beautiful.

View I had when it got darker

This was their menu. Very simple and clean in design, I like!

We agreed that we should have a Tom Yum soup so we chose seafood tom yam! I think this was about 250 Baht. I lost the receipt so I can't be certain. Total bill was about 1,000+ Baht

 (Approximately RM100) for all three dishes, rice and drinks.

The tom yum didn't taste like what we usually have here in Malaysia probably because they use a lot of dry chilli and it didn't taste as sour. The seafood was fresh and they were very generous with it. Despite the soup looking rather clear, it was SPICY! We ate up all the ingrediants but didn't manage to finish up the soup. I think we probably had 1/4 of it then too spicy to go on with all the mucus flowing HAHAHA

I was rather autocratic on having a fish in whole because I usually don't get to eat it. Good thing Nit was agreeable to order a huge ass fish too if not I'd probably be eating it on my own anyway lol. 

We ordered this spicy steam fish and it was the star of the day! Gravy was heavenly! So flavourful, spicy with a tint of sweetness coming through.The fish was super fresh with very thick meat. Forgot what type of fish this was. Normally I will have problem ordering a fish in whole because I don't know the name of the fish I want. When doing groceries, I'd pick out the fish based on its look but I never knew their name HAHA Surprisingly I manage to name the fish that I want then, which I have now forgotten:S

Don't underestimate this mix vege dish because it was our LIFE SAVER from both of the spicy food!! The tom yam was like dragon breath spicy and the steamed fish was spicy but sedap so die die also we drank every drop of steam fish gravy then faster eat vege to counter the spiciness. The fish itself isn't that spicy but probably because it came hot so it accentuated the spiciness. 

My coconut shake! Nothing beats Klebang's coconut shake though. Malaysia Boleh!

Leaving you with a few more pictures of my dinner because I've got to go prepare dinner already before the cows come home! Oh yes, Nang Nual serves Western meals like fish and chips and what not too! I saw people having Western like so sedap onlyyy! But didn't regret our orders though because it was pretty good! The table next to us, a couple dating (hehe) ordered this flaming dessert which looked very impressive.

You can try if you make your way there someday! Got to go for now, happy weekend!

Big fish, big yums!