Eats: Easter & Oriental @ Menara Rajawali

So last weekend, Hubs made plans to meet up with one of his expat friend who was back in Jakarta for a short stint. We decided to go to Eastern and Oriental since neither his friend nor myself have been there. Some of our friends who have been there absolutely raved about the food.

From what I read, Eastern & Oriental is a collaboration between a well-known chef i.e. Will Meyrick who has two award-winning restaurants in Bali with the people behind Loewy and Union, another two very successful F&B outlets in Jakarta. I've only been to Loewy once but have been to Union couple of times, simply because Union is pretty near where we stay. Union is one place that is so popular for its red velvet cake that getting seats there is nearly impossible without reservation in advance. They do entertain walk-ins but it's a long queue. It would be a blue moon night if one walk in on one fine day and finds them able to sit you immediately!

Clearly, Eastern & Oriental is the place to be seen. At least for the moment. Decor-wise is very much in line with the theme from Loewy and Union, ala early 20th century Paris. Clientele in Eastern & Oriental tended to be more chic society whereas Loewy is more business/professional and Union is more laid-back, hang-out type.

It was around 7ish by the time we reach there last Saturday. We didn't make any reservation and the hostess was able to fit us in for dinner between 8 till 930pm. We took that immediately. Meanwhile, she ushered us to wait at the bar first while the wait staff prepared our table.

While at the bar, I ordered one of their in house creation, a mocktail made up of coconut juice (which I realised belatedly is coconut milk) and guava sorbet with a hint of kaffir lime leaves. When first presented, my initial reaction was "Uh oh" Coz it looked like one whole glass of coconut milk! Cholesterol alert!! But when I took a cautious sip, it was surprisingly nice. And I love the hint of kaffir lime leaves which kinda "cut" the "fattiness" of coconut milk. To be honest, the main reason I ordered this was because I'm a huge fan of pink guava. And the abundance of pink guava in Indonesia means that a lot of the pink guava juices, and in this instance sorbet are freshly made.

After about 15 minutes wait, we were shown to our table and our server for the night is surprisingly well-trained. With Hub's friend being a bule (local slang for white man), our server made effort to converse in English and I would say she spoke pretty well. Obviously, one can see that the owners try to infuse a sense of uppity to the establishment by having the servers introducing themselves and mentioned that he/she will be the server for the night. What's more surprising is that they are pretty well trained in terms of food knowledge. Our server was able to recommend some of the more popular dishes and the restaurant specialties as well as advising us to only take 2 portion of rice because the one serving of rice is good for 2 small eaters.

And these are what we had that night. Picture quality slightly below my expectation because we had company, and I'm sure Hubs's bule friend must be thinking "Oh gawd, not another Asian with her food-snapping antics before digging in!" ;p

This is braised duck with green nahm jin. All of us love this dish a lot. I thought it's almost like the braised duck that my mom occasionally makes. And the green nahm jin is the little jar of chutney on the side, which is made up of (I suspect, based on my taste buds) cilantro, garlic, some green chillies (but not too much because it wasn't spicy at all), lime juice, fish sauce and palm sugar. Lovely!

Next up is the massaman lamb shank. I think this is Hubs's favourite. I've never been a big fan of massaman curry because so far, all the massaman curries I've eaten are quite big on the cinnamon flavour, which I'm not particularly fond of. But taste wise, it's good and the meat fell off the bone.
Another winner and that's according to Hubs.

Between the three of us, these two plus a stir-fry vege (which I didn't manage to snap a photo of) were just nice. A mention about the stir-fry. I liked it how they incorporate thai basil into the stir-fry, giving it a very nice taste overall. If you are fan of basil, make sure to order this.

Overall, Eastern and Oriental is a winner and we definitely will be back again. :)

p/s A visit to the toilet is a must. Because one gets a crash course on how to converse in Thai. And I'm seriously not joking! 

****
Eastern & Oriental
Menara Rajawali,
1st Floor, Jl. DR Ide Anak Agung Gde Agung Lot#5.1
Kawasan Mega Kuningan.

Eats: Iga Bakar Panglima @ Gandaria

So on last Thursday night - our official first night in our new place, we decided to walk around the neighbourhood to check out what's available for quick meals.

Hubs brought me to this roadside stall-lookalike place called Iga Bakar Panglima. He has been here before and said that the barbequed ribs are pretty good.

The place is very basic, as you can see here and the menu is also very basic as well. Most of the people there ordered the ribs but they had steak as well. So ribs it is for both of us, with a choice of BBQ (originial), blackpepper or lemon hot for sauces and potatoes or corn for the carbo/veg.

The ribs came out really good, soft and came off the bone easily. I really like my lemon hot sauce, almost like a hot sweet and sour flavour. Compared to Hubs who had the blackpepper sauce, I could still taste the smokiness of the coals on the meat. Methinks this little shack certainly give Tony Roma's a run for their money, because the last time we had that in Gandaria, I wasn't too impressed.
 

****
Iga Panggang Panglima
Jl. Gandaria Tengah 2 No. 30
Kebayoran Baru, Jakarta Selatan
Jakarta

Moved again!

Hubs has a habit. It's been 5 years since he moved to Jakarta in 2008 and for the past 5 years, he/we practiced annual migration. I reckon we're a bit like the wildlife in the Serengeti. LOL! So in total he/we have stayed in 5 different apartments and this mark our 6th apartment.

But in all fairness and honesty, we both realised we needed to get out of our previous place. Like badly. For different reasons of course! For him, it was because of the lack of natural sunlight, and me purely because the furniture ensemble was thrown in more in the spirit of recycling rather than eclecticism. Hehe.

It's exactly one week since we moved and settled into our new place. We really like this place a lot. A tad smaller, takes some getting used to, but just nice for the both of us. And of course it has a lot of natural sunlight streaming in through the use of big window panes.

And I didn't realise how useful that was until last night. Hubs was out for an event. So it was me and the TV for company. Suddenly, the electricity went off and I was left sitting in the dark and wondering "Are you kiddin' me?" And it happened just when I was about to charge my soon-to-be zero phone battery and had no torchlight. 

Had no choice but to use the phone as torchlight and as I was moving around the house, I realised it wasn't that dark after all! How cool is that!

Anyway, it turned out that most probably the air-conditioner in the hall shortcircuited our unit, as other units had electricity. The building reception and engineering have been helpful to come over and figure out what happened. And I have all their numbers on speed dial now!

And also getting quite good in explaining in bahasa Indonesia of what happened and hope that they understood me. I think they did! ;p

Eats: Degustation at Amuse Restaurant, Perth

While we were visiting family in Perth recently, we had the opportunity to drop by the best restaurant the city has to offer for a belated Valentine dinner celebration.

Making last minute reservation at Amuse wasn't easy. When Hubs's uncle first called to make the reservation on our behalf, he was informed by Amuse that the restaurant is fully booked for February and March and the earliest seating was April! That's how popular they were. Hubs's uncle put us on waitlist, just in case someone cancels. And lady luck was smiling on us! :)) Couple of days later, we got our table at Amuse for the night of 26th February at 630pm! Yay!!!

When we finally got there, I was expecting a swanky, upmarket restaurant. However, Amuse is housed in a single storey house that has been converted into a commercial lot. Its location on Bronte Street in East Perth is very unassuming, looking like its more suited for apartment complex. Amuse on the inside has a minimalist design - simple white chairs with fuss-free wooden tables in walnut and white wall panelling.

Once we were seated, we were presented a sealed envelope which contains the menu of what we are going to eat that night. Amuse presents a 10 course degustation menu at AUD 130 per person with optional wine pairing at AUD 80 per person. When Hubs's uncle made the reservation for us, he had requested a wheat free menu for me. And so I'm really grateful to see that my menu for that night had been specially tailored to my needs. Hubs got an "Omnivorous" menu. Lol! The staff who served us that night was also attentive to check again with us if there's anything that we don't eat before we commence our gastronomic journey that night. :)

This is our first course for the night. On the left: Rosemary flowers, sour cream and blood limes on crisp (which for me was a wheat-free option) and on the right: Carrot, walnut and hyssop

And the third part of our first course: Pumpkin, curry leaf and beurre noisette. Everything on this course is lovely, and we especially love the pumpkin served out of a jar. I took my time to spoon bits by bits and was almost disappointed when I finished the pumpkin.

Next came the bread. Hubs got a sourdough (on the left) while mine was a wheat free bread, served with olive oil and butter. I tasted almond nibs and some spices in mine and I'm so overjoyed to be able to eat bread again after such a long time. Lovely though it was, I didn't stuff myself because I wanna leave a lot of stomach space for the next 9 courses!

 And now to the main courses. Both of us really liked it how the Chef slowly builds up the palate from light to heavier tasting stuff towards the end of the mains. First up is a bit of a salad - Tomato, goats's cheese and tomatillos.

This was followed by Marron, fennel and avocado. Both of us were excited by this dish simply because a day earlier at Araluen Botanic Park, we spotted a lobster-like looking creature, taking up residence in a freshwater pond. My sister-in-law's girlfriend pointed out to us that it was a marron, a freshwater crayfish. As you can see here, there's a tiny marron claw that's cooked while the rest were sashimi style. Can't say which one I liked best, because both were very yummy.

Next up was Egg, mushroom and pine nuts. I gotta say this is probably gets my vote of best dish of the night. It's actually runny eggs with mushrooms, pine nuts and bits of deepfried chicken skin as garnish. To top it off there was a toasted bread (again wheat-free option for mine) stick. Opening the jar was magical. I opened mine first and hence did not know what to expect. As I lift the lid, I was hit by a waft of smokey-flavoured steam, almost like opening up a magical box. Lol! All the ingredient went really together in this dish, especially the chicken skin. Yum! Hubs being the pragmatic, joked that "I can't believe we are eating telur setengah masak!" Well it was an ingeniously done one, methinks.

A fish course was up next - Goldband snapper, beetroot and leek. We both didn't like this dish very much. I personally felt that the texture of the fish was a bit rough. And of course, I don't really fancy beetroot.

The Pork, prawn and popcorn is next. The prawn is fresh and succulent although I didn't particularly like the pork and thought that it was a bit heavy for this dish. The dusting of crushed popcorn added a nice texture to the dish. 

Our final main course was Venison, rustleberries and wattle. When the venison was presented to us, we heard words like berries, and coffee in the explanation and really wondered how all of this would taste in one single dish. And surprisingly, they did really well. The venison was perfectly cooked, and went really well with the rustleberry sauce and coffee wattle crunch.

 Before we started our desserts course, we were served a passionfruit meringue as a palate cleanser. Although tart but it wasn't too sharp to taste and certainly cleanse our palate before the desserts. :)

Our first dessert course was Grapes, coconut and ginger. At first look, we both thought those whitish chunks were pop corn. But actually they were pops of coconut and ginger ice cream. And hidden among them are carbonated grapes. Absolutely clever and fun to eat!

Next up is Pear, pecan and vanilla. Again another amazing feat of a dessert. Everything on this dessert is perfectly done and round up the experience.

And the finale piece, Tisane and treats.  When it was first presented, I was more intrigued by the plates of stones. Cleverly disguised among them are two pieces of white chocolate, shaped and coloured like little pebbles. If you haven't guess which are these, they are the two lighter grey "pebbles" right in the center. The other treats are sugared lemon jelly and sugared blueberries. And with a peppermint tisane to complete that night experience.

In total, Hubs paid AUD 250 for the meal. It has been nothing short of an amazing gastronomic experience. We were served really well by the staff - they took time, including some of the chefs who served us our meals to explain each dish and one can really see Amuse use all Australian produce.

I think Hubs's summed up his experience really well - "Whenever I watch Masterchef, I've always wondered what do the judges mean when they say 'Everything in this dish comes together.'' Certainly that night, we left wondering no more. :)

Catching up with times. Eeek!

In a few days time, we are flying to Perth to witness Hubs's sister's graduation. Of course with it, comes the usual "do you need anything from Malaysia" so that I can get it over the next few days and bring along with us to Perth. One of the pressie that Hubs intend to get for one of his nephew is comics because that's what the boy is into now.

Over the weekend when I was at the malls, I realised the comic scene has evolved. I think... In Popular bookstore, there's a lot of those manga/anime type that's translated into English and Bahasa Malaysia. I just couldn't find any of those thin Marvel comic "magazine".

I decided to try my luck at Borders. When I was there, I realised that they have called them as "Graphic Novels" these days. And the one thing that stood out in all these comics is that they are no longer sold in thin magazine like how they used to be when we were growing up, that one have to buy like 20-30 of these thin magazines in order to complete the series. The Marvel ones that I saw in Borders are at least 0.5 cm thick and certainly felt like the entire series were bound into books. And they weren't cheap. The going price seems to be RM 60 plus but felt more upmarket because they looked like they weren't printed on newspaper type of paper.

Anyway, I haven't buy any, because I wasn't sure if these were what Hubs is intending to buy for his nephew. But at least we know where to get it before we leave.

On a separate note, at a different Borders outlet, I noticed this rather disturbing comic. I didn't look through the content, but the cover itself is a cause for concern. A lot of parents would think nothing much of their children reading comics. After all, it's just drawn cartoons of action figures. But having seen this, I personally feel that as modern parents, one just can't afford to be too laissez faire. I'll just let the picture do the talking.

Now that's what I call customer service!

Just before Christmas last year, while window shopping at Borders @ the Curve, I stumbled across Chef Michael Smith cookbook. Now he is one chef whose show I love to watch. A lot. Because he made cooking looked so simple and easy. And I love how he talked the viewers through, in his easy-going and laid-back manner. And most of all - I love his walk-in pantry. Rows after rows of dried herbs and ingredients that's so easy to look and reach out for. That is my homemaker's ambition - to have a walk-in pantry like that. LOL!

Anyway, since I love his show so much, I also told myself that if Chef Michael ever publish any cookbook that I can easily get my hands on, I'm gonna buy it. So imagine my delight when I saw the cookbook in Borders. But it's all wrapped up in clear plastic. So off I trotted to the service counter and asked for assistance/permission to take a look inside.

The guy who served me, I would say I'm really really impressed by his customer service. He's a Malay chap, really really chatty and with a quirky demeanour to hoot! Come to think of it, his demeanour actually reminded me of Harith Iskandar. So he started asking me who's this chef and la, la, la... And I went into how much I love Chef Michael's show and his walk-in pantry. He also asked me if I'm a serious buyer of the book. I said I would like to take a look before deciding. He opened the wrappers anyway and told me that if I decided not to buy, just leave the book back at the service counter.

After browsing through, I was 50/50 on whether to buy or not. But I guess I fell for the friendly customer service that I received and decided Heck! Just buy it la. When I was paying for the book, again more small talk, and he asked me if I have Borders loyalty card. I said I wasn't sure, went flipping through my purse and his sharp eyes saw it before me and help me to fish it out. And then he made extra care to deactivate any sensors in the book. I mentioned in passing that as I was coming into Border earlier, my shopping may have a sensor that triggered the alarm. He went the extra mile and offered to deactivate it for me. But somehow there wasn't any hidden in my shopping.

He then asked could it be my bag? I didn't think so but handed it over to him to deactivate it. And to my surprise it was my bag. When he handed back my bag to me, I looked thoroughly inside to search for the sensor strip but just cannot find it. It was so weird! Until today. Apparently it was hidden in my purse all this while. 

My thoughts on Chinese New Year 2013

This is a very unusual post about Chinese New Year. Unusual in the sense that I'm not blogging about all the preparations required to usher in CNY. But rather how I feel about CNY this year.

I've been spending a bit of time in Malaysia for the past 3 weeks or so. With all these extra time, I decided to drive back to my hometown in Kluang, Johor to spend some time with my parents. And since it's near CNY, it's also time to go and help them with spring cleaning.

This year's spring cleaning has been rather unusual. Just before I was due back in Kluang, my mother fell really ill. She had high fever consecutively for 3-4 days that refused to subside. By the time I hear about it, it was the night before I was due back in Kluang. My father had decided to check her into the hospital hoping that the doctors could test her for dengue test. The doctors however didn't, because apparently in order to do the test, the patient has to have fever and malaise for 5 days. I was a bit worried because I feared it could be something worse like meningitis.

Anyway, by the time I reach home, my mother seemed to have regain a bit of her strength. Her fever had subsided somewhat. And as the days passed, she was getting better and on the mend. However, a hacking cough plagued her. And for the life of me, I cannot recall an occasion when I was growing up that my mother coughed this bad. In fact, my mother has never cough at all.

And of course with the cough and the fever that she was recovering from, my mother just couldn't pluck enough energy to do major spring cleaning. My father did most of it, while I helped out as much as I could. This is my realisation that my parents are old.

Then there was a funeral that I had to drive both my mother and grandmother to attend in Segamat. My mother's grandaunt had passed away. Visiting the grandaunt's home was a surreal experience for me - seeing it from both child's and adult eyes and remembering of how the house used to look like compared to present time and the pervasive smell of rubber cup lump from memory. And the numerous grand aunts and uncles that I vaguely remember and seeing that one by one they had aged as well. Accompanying them to this funeral, just nailed it deeper into my consciousness that my parents and grandmother are old.

The final affirmation came when I left Kluang last Saturday to come back to KL to catch up on work and wait for Hubs arrival from Jakarta. When I finally exited the highway to turn off to my own home, I felt this familiar yet strange lump of sadness and feelings of homesick. It caught me by surprise. It has been a long time since I felt this way. The last I remember feeling like this was when I was 18 years old and studying in KL. Everytime my sisters and I had to leave Kluang after a semester break, we always felt homesick and can't help to shed a tear or two that we had to go back to KL for our studies.

And that Saturday night, while browsing and viewing some of the annual, schmaltzy CNY festive commercials that place a lot of emphasis of family unity, filial piety and all the works, I came across this video, posted by one of my friends on Facebook. Its title - A letter from Mom and Dad.

Personally, I thought this was THE best infomercial about cherishing one's parents I've seen for this CNY, although I can't really call this a commercial because it isn't. For me, it is a bittersweet explanation, realisation, come-of-age, the dawn of a new awakening, lightbulb moment (call it what you want) for all the experiences that I've encountered the week before. That my parents ARE old. They are NOT getting old.

CNY is upon us in just 3 more sleeps. I wish you who happen to be reading this a very prosperous year and more importantly, a blessed and blissful family reunion and family time ahead.