Lek & Rut Seafood, Bangkok

Happy New Year 2016 and Happy Chinese New Year!!!! HAHAHAHA

I know it's a little too late for both greetings but hey, better late than never eh! Just noticed that my last post is in November 2015. Yikes! Been busy with my thesis, I know I know, you've read about this excuse throughout my post since 2013. But I'm back with an awesome post!

Took some time off in January this year with my sis to travel to Bangkok because we actually saved up for US but US didn't happen, and it was also a post exam trip for her! And it's also because we wanted to scout the place a bit before our family trip to Bangkok in July. You know, it's always better to know the place before you bring mum. We want the best for her and we ain't got much time in July so only good shopping places and good food please!

Talking about good food, the best food that I had in Bangkok would be my first meal that I had there! Hence, this post!

Lek & Rut Seafood

Yaowarat, Bangkok

Initially, the plan was to go and eat at the famous green shirts seafood shop at Chinatown but we ended up trying Lek & Rut, which is the Red tshirts seafood shop right opposite the green shirts shop. Don't worry about me being a little vague but these two seafood shops are so famous in Yaowarat (Chinatown) that you wouldn't have a problem looking for it on Google Maps or Waze!

This is Chinatown in Bangkok at night! Around 9pm and it's very lively!!

Ha! You see that yellow signboard shop in the middle of the picture? That is the green tshirt seafood shop and there are a lot of good reviews about that shop. But as mentioned we opted for the Red shirts one (notice the guy in red tshirt).

You can choose your seafood outside and have them cook for you or you can just place your order from the menu and let them help you with the selection, which was what we did.

The prawns in Thailand are HUGE! I'm not kidding you. It's probably 100% bigger than our prawns here. I initially thought they were lobsters because of their size.

As for seatings, there is an option to sit outside or inside. Noticed that a lot of people loved sitting outside so outside is full and you have to wait for a table. It was a no brainer for us so we immediately headed inside where there was comfortable seats and less wet floors.

This is how it looks inside Lek & Rut. Once seated they will come to you with their menu. Items are labelled in both Thai language and English so ordering wouldnt be a problem. Plus, they have pictures in the menu as well- better describes the dish this way.

A sample of their menu. This is probably a special pull out. The full menu is in a folder. 

We had in mind a few things that we wanted prior to making this trip because we wanted to taste their signature (food that everyone else raved about) but also stick to our budget. We initially set our budget to a maximum of RM100 for a dinner for two. But... you know, things don't always go as you plan HAHA

Oh ya, I did my research on dishes based on the green shirt's shop but I could actually find everything that I wanted from the green shop in this red shop! I bet they taste as good as the greens. One of the reason we chose to dine at Red as that my sis' friend kinda recommended Red so Red it is!

Upon placing your orders, they will bring over your cutleries and chilli dippings! 

There are two types of dippings, one sweeter than the other but but pretty good especially with fried fish! More on that later.

Our drinks: I think that was guava juice, chrysanthemum and Chang beer that the major really recommended. I didn't had any because I can't hold my liquour LOL 

Something to note is that beverages in Bangkok is generally very sweet. So drinking that chrysanthemum drink without adding ice was little too sweet to handle. In this case you cant ask for "Wan Noi" (Less sweet) because the drinks were prepacked, so just make sure you have ice to dampen the sweetness.

Okay, from here onwards I'm gonna show you what we had for dinner. The total for all of these were about 3000 Baht! That was like tripple of our budget HAHAHAHA But I am really grateful for our dining mates because we evenly split the bill despite us eating most of the food :P

Sorry I can't tell you exactly how much each dish cost because they didn't had an official receipt and I didn't note it down from the menu. But I'll probably give you an estimation if I can.

Thai Steamed Fish with Lime. I was looking forward to having this dish because I had it when I was in Pattaya and it was really good! The one that I had in Pattaya had just the rice sourness from the lime and the right spiciness from the chilli! This one at Lek & Rut, meh.. wouldn't order it again because it tasted just like normal steam fish. I think this was about 400 Baht

Seafood tom yam, about 250 Baht? This is very very very good!! The soup tasted so flavourful and spicy, this is a real good Thai tom yam! Ingrediants were generous and fresh! Tasted a bit like Thai Mama instant noodles broth though haha

This is stir fry morning glory. They call it morning glory there but it's actually kangkung. Not bad, quite yummy. The cooking style is pretty much like what we have here in Malaysia but this tasted yummier, maybe a little more chili and MSG? lmao

Was damnnn hungry that time because it was 9pm (10pm Malaysia time) and we haven't had dinner nor lunch! 

By the way, the fish and the tomyam was in our planned meal as in we budgetted for that earlier before we went to Bangkok. We were thinking, okay one fish, one tom yam, one small grilled river prawns and maybeeee... one oyster omelette. But when the day came for seafood dinner in Bangkok, these were what we actually had:

Fried rice! OMG their fried rice was so so so soooo good! It tasted like crab meat I have no idea why. I don't think this is seafood fried rice but I could be wrong since I wasn't the one doing the ordering. Okay, just so we are clear my sis and I ordered one bowl of steamed rice each. But lo and behold came additional fried rice because major wanted us to try as much food as possible! LOL

Curry crab. Curry crab sauce was sooooo good that I'm really suspecting that they used a lot of MSG haha The crab on the other hand wasn't that meaty but it was worth the order because of the sauce! Eat that with steamed rice is enough already, no need other dishes! Oh, but one thing good about the crab is that it had a lot of crab eggs, I loves!! This serving prolly cost around 500 Baht.

Sauce. Is. Goddamn. Good.

Fried fish. This is another dish that my sis and I didn't order but magically appeared on our table. By magically, it meant that major ordered them LOL When the fish came I was like errr... don't look very appetising. I'm not a fan of fried fish even back from my hometown because I just find fried fish very 'dry'. I don't mind if they fried the fish and drizzle with sauce la but not fried fish by it's own.

But guess what? I shamelessly whacked finish the fried fish here because of the chili dippings!!! It was the ultimate combo I tell you, fresh fried fish and the dippings they gave! I also liked to dip it in the sweeter cili sauce that is slightly greenish in colour. VERY GOOD!

Us again, this time when more food came!

Oh ya, we had our grilled river prawns which were huge as hell. I think the prawns can be ordered in small or big portion but I think major ordered big. I know no Thai language but by his body language, I'm pretty sure this is the big serving LOL The best part was sucking the brains off the prawn!

You see, these kinda prawn has a really big head if compared to body size. 

It doesn't stink really! It was so fresh that all you tasted was the sea!

Initially we didn't know that it's the brains that we are paying for. So we ate the body and left the head. But then our Thai dining mates told us that that's the best part of the prawns!! In fact, there are shops in Bangkok famous for selling Pad Thai that serves a premium version using these prawn brains. Okay, I call them prawn brains because I forgot the correct term that I was told of but you get the idea.

Steamed mussles with bay leaves? This is another dish that I was skeptical about because it looks so... sad and a little scary LOL but, it's true that locals know best!! The mussels were so fresh that when it's steamed/ poached with those leaves the scent is captured in the mussles. Ooh la la, that subtle infusion of scent was so refreshing and good!

Yums, yums, yums, yums, yums!

These were not all because more dining mates came later on! HAHAHA

We were told that more friends were coming for dinner so we ate according to proportion la meaning that we didn't want to finish up all the dishes before other people came but we were told to just eat! 

I got a little worried here because by that time we already ordered a lot and the bill was gonna be over our budget. Not sure if this dinner will be a treat, you know like a welcome treat? If it's a welcome treat then nevermind la, but if it's going dutch... yikes. But no point worry because what is done is done so I just whacked finish all the dishes that I like. HAHAHA

So when more friends came, as expected they ordered more dishes. So we had more grilled prawns and a few other dishes like these:

Siput sedut. They taught us how to pluck the bugger out with a toothpick but this was my least favourite dish la because it was so chewy it was like chewing on rubber and I didn't fancy the taste that much. Not my favourite seafood in Malaysia, definitely still not my favourite seafood in Thailand.

Eeee... that's what it looks like. You dip it with chilli but no thanks LOL

Grilled squids! This wasn't too bad because it was a nice smoky taste to it but it was also very chewy and rather dry so I didn't had much. Plus I was soooooo full, just had a bite to try different dishes that the rest ordered. 

Prawns with soysauce glass noodles. OMG I don't even know who or why they ordered this because no one actually ate this! haha I think it's because everyone was full so nobody was gonna eat up the glass noodles of which was heavily soaked in soysauce. The dish was a little too salty but it went well with the prawns though.

In the end, everyone was pushing the remaining food to everyone else HAHAHAHA It was obvious that we over ordered but it was such an amazing experience of having seafood with the locals! Also, we went dutch! But the bill was evenly split even if my sis and I ate like 70% of the food. So each of us had to fork out only 500 Baht, still within our budget after all! Thank you generous new friends of ours haha

Dining with us Malaysians! Really funny bunch of Thai friends:)

Flaky Buttery Pastries @ Huckleberry Food & Fare

I was about to abandon this blog of mine (again) because I'm just too caught up with my thesis writing. Every time I 'have' some time to write about things on my blog I feel so damn guilty because I could have been data analysing or re- writing the chapters of the thesis that I have wrote, or writing the findings or reading journals. But! Today I receive an email notifying me about a certain someone who left a very encouraging comment on my Tangkuban Perahu post. He/ she quite like my post and so I am encouraged to keep this blog alive LOL

So here I am, writing about my experience to Huckleberry instead of... completing my data analysis:S 

I've always wanted to visit Huckleberry because I'm a big pastry fan! This is especially so when it comes to those laminated pastries likes croissants!!! OMG I love those buttery multilayer folds! I'm also very amazed because the weather in Malaysia is not quite suitable for folding butter in dough. I can imagine how quick the bakers gotta move and how often they had to refreeze their butter dough just to work it right.

Huckleberry Food & Fare

Jalan Medan Setia 1, Plaza Damansara

Facebook

Sorry I don't have the shop's picture because I was just too excited when I reached there so all I wanted to do is plunk my butt down to a seat and start ordering! If you know where humble chef is, it's the same row but opposite end of Hunble chef. Huckleberry is a corner lot so its easy to spot but parking there is really an ass!

Glad that someone else was driving so all I had to do was get down the car as soon as the car is parked LOL Anyway, I was there around 12pm and the cafe was full! The good thing was that I was first on the waiting list. Asked how long will I have to wait and the polite waiter told me 15mins. But we got our seats in about 10mins!

Waiter asked if we mind sitting outside? Though the haze hasnt really subsided yet at that time, I immediately said OK! because I was too excited. Suck in dirty air nevermind, I'd do anything for you buttery pastry :')

This is how it looks inside! It's semi self service so you have to place your order at the counter and foot the bill. Then they will send you your orders. Oh ya, I don't remember telling them where I sat but they manage to find me anyway.

Before reaching the counter you will pass this counter of bakes! Everything looks so good!! If my budget allows, I would have wanted every single pastry on the counter!! The special on that day was a coconut bun but I have a cheap perception of coconut bun so I decline. The baker looked rather dissapointed though when I rejected his offer:( It almost made me buy the coconut bun out of pity LOL

It wasn't like the coconut bun was sad looking or anything. It's just that I'm too used to those 6- pieces of coconut buns that you buy from Tesco that type. You know the cheap type with caramelised coconut fillings inside? Not my favourite bun la so I immediately cringe when he mentioned coconut bun. But I'm pretty sure it wouldn't taste cheap because Oh my goshhhh!!! The pastries here are really good. More on that later.

Oh ya, if you would like a takeaway load bread they can help you slice. They serve cakes too!

Oh no, I lost the receipt that I was supposed to reference to. Oh well, this is what we had that day. Pineapple & coconut juice was pretty good! Not too sweet and its very very fresh!! I think it cost around RM10 per glass. Can't really taste the coconut but it was good.

You see the 2 slices of crusty bread? That was the multigrain bread if I have not mistaken. You can choose either fluffy or crusty type and they will recommend you their famous sourdough bread. 2 slices for RM1 if I've not mistaken. It comes with butter. The jam was an add on. Forgot what jam it was but I know it was a citrus homemade jam. Quite good, very fresh tasting and light on sweetness.

Talking about butter, Huckleberry is so damn awesome when it comes to butter. The next time I'm there I'd just order bread and butter because the combination of both is enough already! The bread was so good and so cheap (I should have bought a loaf back!) and the butter damn yums!!!

You see that pasty with nuts on top? The one with a knife on the plate? That is super yummy as well!! I think the name of the pastry rhymes with sticky nuts. The bun was so soft and there was a generous serving of nuts of top! The sweet stickyness that glued them together is heavenly! I'm thinking honey. Or maple syrup? Dunno, lol. My sis found that too sweet but it was such a balance for me because the bread was a little bland. My favourite! Gosh everything here is gonna be my favourite!

The triangular pastry was an apple pastry I think. As expected, my favouite! HAHAHAHA The thing is everything fits my sweetness threshold (I don't have a sweet tooth) and is just overloading with BUTTER! I love love love butter. Butter is an ingredient that is just so rich tasting here and they never skimp on it!

CAN YOU SEE THE DEFINE FOLDS OF THE CROISSANT??? It's just crazy! My sis loves that cheese and ham croissant! That was tripple yums because its buttery croissant AND ham AND cheese! What's there not to love right! Can down 3 of them on shot if I'm not on a budget teehee 

Especially if you order butter folded pastries like this! The BUTTERRRRR. Wah, can die now looking at it while I write now. Think gotta go back this weekend!

The pastries are priced from around RM5- RM10 but they are worth it. Trust me! All the buttery flaky goodness, you will soon forget that you spent RM40 on pastries for lunch! LOL

Döner Kebab, Pattaya

Haha didn't expect to take this long to show you the DAMN yummy kebab that I had in Pattaya! So I was in Pattaya for 3 days 2 nights, just a quick getaway. Went for a pretty good seafood dinner on Day 1 and had a chance to go the the fmaous Casa Pascal for buffet breakfast before flying back to Malaysia!

I had this kebab after our trip to Koh Larn, an island about 45 minutes away from Pattaya. We had lunch there but it was just this small portion rice with red curry at the side. Red curry's ingrediants were 3 strands of chicken and a few more strands of long beans:S

Doner Chicken Kebab

In front of The Avenue, Pattaya

Doner's Kebab food truck!

It's just a humble little food stall with one rotating meat station but his kebab sure packs a punch!

He was very generous with the fillings! Gave me so much chicken that's normally used for 2 portion of kebab!! And the best thing is that it's only 60 Baht!!! Very yummy, very worth it!

So give it a try if you're around the vicinity! He'll asked if you want to eat it on the spot or take away. I told him I'm eating it now so he wrapped it half opened like in the picture above! This kebab was intended as a tea time snack but it was so filling that it became my dinner.

That's why I always say that theres no such thing as a bad place to visit. Pattaya may be a little slow- mo for me but that Doner's kebab is probably the best kebab I have ever eaten in my entire life! Serious.

P.S. I just googled and "Doner Kebab" is a Turkish dish made from meat cooked on a vertical rotisserie. That means this kebab stall doesn't really have a specific name:S Good thing I took a picture of his stall so you guys can find him! 

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.