Sunday 28 June 2015

Bikini Restaurant In China


Recently a Chinese restaurant attracted huge crowd and a lot of attention on the day of its opening (June 19), after photographs of its waitresses wear only bikinis went viral online.


The restaurant  is located in Shenyang, a city in China's Liaoning Province and serves congee.


While many males netizens expressed their excitement over the new eatery, one commented that the restaurant seems to serve "flesh" rather than food.


Photos show the bikini-clad waitresses parading down the aisles of the restaurant as customers stared at them in bewilderment and disbelief.

People would spend more time looking than eating in this restaurants!



Would you bring your husbands or boyfriends to eat in this restaurant?

Sunday 21 June 2015

May Garden Penang

When writing the post 'Happy Father's Day', it reminds me of a place in Penang which was famous for Cantonese roast dishes 燒臘 where I patronized with my colleagues many many years ago.

May Garden is a restaurant located in the prime location of Penang Road right next to the popular Cititel. The restaurant is particularly famous for its roast suckling pig.

The main entrance of May Garden restaurant from Penang Road.
May Garden restaurant is very spacious inside which can easily hosts a decent size banquet or wedding dinner.

The popular roast suckling pig - the skin is so crispy!



 

Happy Father's Day

Like many other major celebrations of the year, we decided to dine out today to celebrate Father's Day. Of course it has to be father's choice so I chose to have roast pork and duck for dinner.

Went to Chin's Noodle House at Leeming Forum for dinner in this stormy, and rainy night. Outside temperature was 11 degrees when we reached there at 5.30pm and the sky was already dark due to winter right now here in Perth, Australia.

In contrast to the cold and windy outdoor, we felt very cosy indeed inside the restaurant. I could hear instrumental music played with mainly Jacky Cheung's songs in the background. The irony was that we were the only Asian among the Aussie customers in the restaurant at that time.

Combination vegetable and beancurd claypot.

Roast Pork & Roast Duck Combo



The food was great, environment was soothing with beautiful music in the background and the bonus was cut fruits for dessert on the house. 

A great meal doesn't have to be expensive. It is already a blessing as long as you could enjoy a wonderful dinner with your family in a relax atmosphere. 

Wednesday 10 June 2015

Penang Popiah

Local food enthusiasts concur that the best popiah to be found in Penang is at Ong Leng Hin's stall at the Padang Brown hawker center; his popiah is generally deemed second to none.

Popiah, or fresh spring rolls, is Hokkien in origin, but local influence can be detected in the use of chilli sauce. Brown bean paste is also used to flavour the spring rolls.

A savory filling of stewed julienned sengkuang (yam bean), diced beancurd and spring onions is wrapped in a paper-thin crepe. Some cooks also add crab meat for an extravagent twist and shallot crisps for aroma.

For out-of-towners, it might be a bit of a challenge to locate Ong's stall, as it has no sign! Loyal customers all know where to locate the stall and its reputation has spread far and wide via word of mouth.

Visitors should look out for the "Penang Cafe Coconut Water" stall. You'll find Ong's stall right next to it.

Ong's family recipe for popiah has been finding favor with Penangites since the 1950s. As a child, he used to help his father at the same stall he now runs.

Ong begins his day at 7am, stewing the julienned yambean and other ingredients in crab stock for four hours; he is one of the few remaining popiah sellers in Penang to still use crab stock in his recipe.

Unlike the Vietnamese spring roll, the Penang version is much juicier as Ong's yambean filling is moist. Some customers like their popiah doused with lots of extra yambean gravy.


 

Thursday 4 June 2015

Lonely Planet: Penang Is 2014 Top Culinary Spot



British dailyThe Independent reported that Lonely Planet has listed Penang as the top culinary spot for the year 2014. It is indeed impressive that The Pearl of Orient beats other top culinary spots in the developed countries like Victoria in Australia, North West Spain, Lake District in United Kingdom, Puglia in Italy, Georgia and Oaxaca in Mexico to bag the crown.

Lonely Planet's commissioning editor Robin Barton said Penang was known for its hawker fare and some of the "must tries" include char kway teow, Hokkien mee, and asam laksa.

Malaysian hawker food has spread worldwide via food trucks and pop-ups but nothing compares to the origin of it all - Penang.

"Its food reflects the intermingling of the many cultures that arrived after it was set up as a trading port in 1786, from Malays to Indians, Acehnese to Chinese, Burmese to Thais. The state capital Georgetown is its culinary epicentre," said Barton.

He encouraged food hunters to explore the Esplanade Food Court, where good hawker food comes with great seafront location.

Thursday 28 May 2015

Movie: Zone Pro Site 總舖師


After disappearing from the film scene for 16 years following Tropical Fish (熱帶魚) and Love Go Go (愛情來了), director Chen Yu-hsun (陳玉勳) returns with Zone Pro Site (總舖師), a comedy centered on bandoh (辦桌, lit: setting up table), the traditional Taiwanese outdoor banquet typically held at special events such as weddings, festivals and babies’ one-month-old celebrations.

With an ample budget of NT$70 million and seven investors including Warner Bros, Chen Yu-hsun’s comedy has the look of a summer blockbuster with an A-list cast of actors, sleek production values and abundant supply of good-natured humor. But what makes the film stand out is its attention to the emotional side of the story, which revolves around the art of the Taiwanese banquet catering.

A long time ago, there were three bandoh master chefs whose names alone evoke awe. However, as times changed, the tradition of banquet catering gradually waned, and the chefs who catered them quietly faded away. On his deathbed, Master Fly Spirit — a master chef played by renowned director Ko Yi-cheng (柯一正) — passed on the family recipes to his daughter Wan (Kimi Hsia, 夏于喬), who desperately wants to escape the catering business. Young and sassy, Wan tries her luck at modeling in Taipei, to little avail.

The ill-fated model soon finds herself on the run from two debt collectors, amusingly played by Chen Chu-sheng (陳竹昇) and Chen Wan-hao (陳萬號), who hold Wan responsible for her boyfriend’s huge debt. Disillusioned, Wan returns home to Tainan and discovers that the family business has been reduced to a noodle stand after her mother Ai-fong (Lin Mei-hsiu, 林美秀) loses a bid for a big outdoor banquet, and subsequently sinks into debt.

The mother and daughter get a break when a former customer asks them to cook up a table of old bandoh dishes that have long fallen into oblivion. As luck would have it, Hai (Yo Yang, 楊祐寧), a self-proclaimed food doctor who turns unsavory food into delicacies, comes to their rescue. As they learn to recreate the traditional menu, love buds between the two young cooks. Hai, however, disappears one day after a quarrel with Wan.

Meanwhile, with a partially completed menu of traditional bandoh fare, the mother and daughter decide to enter a national bandoh competition to pay off their debts. Facing competition from Master Ghost Head (King Jieh-wen, 喜翔), a master chef recently released from prison, and Hai, the chef’s favorite protege, Wan takes up the challenge and discovers the true spirit of bandoh.

A boisterous melange of influences and ideas, the film fluently dabbles in different territories but is never too outstretched that it falls apart. The three master chefs, their legendary prowess and the different paths they choose while searching for the meaning of bandoh, read like a synopsis for a promising martial-arts flick. Crossing over to the realm of Japanese manga, the film playfully features sequences of manga-style hyperbole: An old man recalls youthful puppy love after eating fried rice noodles; another dish is so tasty that it literally blows the assembled gastronomes into outer space. Not to be outdone, a team of zhainan (宅男) — a term that refers to homebound nerdy guys immersed in comics, cartoons, computers and online games — always come to offer assistance to the young heroine the moment she needs help.

The most fantastic setting in the movie is underground, where Master Silly Mortal — the most elusive master chef played by cultural glitterati Wu Nien-chen (吳念真) — dwells and cooks for outcasts and vagabonds. It is one of the rare moments in Taiwanese cinema that make good use of Taipei’s subterranean labyrinth of interconnected subway stations, railways and tunnels. The result is a well-crafted fantasy world where large underground murals portray the history and custom of bandoh.

As the delightfully messy script requires, the film enlists a large troop of characters and cameo roles by some of Taiwan’s most distinctive talents. Leading man Yang enchants with his deadpan comic delivery, owing much to his character’s funky accent, which is ingeniously designed to tone down the actor’s good looks. Comedian Lin invests a healthy dose of sprightliness and vigor to her role as the loudmouthed, artless mother, supported by the more farcical humor properly handled by veteran actors Chen Chu-sheng and Chen Wan-hao as the two debt collectors-turned-little helpers.

Despite a large cast of new actors and veterans, performances are surprisingly even; every role is given a moment to shine. Even veteran thespian King’s supposed sinister Master Ghost Head is a fun character, apparently hailing from the disco era with his bell-bottom pants, greasy hair and a theme song by Mando-pop legend Liu Wen-zheng (劉文正), who thrived during the 1970s and 1980s.

But Chen Yu-hsun knows well that humor and whimsical characters alone can’t touch the heart. Amid constant glee, the film nevertheless clings to grassroots emotions and the central motif which is embodied in Wu’s Master Silly Mortal, who believes that bandoh is never about making money or procuring fame but about giving everybody a chance to contribute and connect with each other. Mutual understanding and reconciliation between characters are reached in the grand finale, without which the climax-reaching bandoh competition would merely be an empty spectacle. Ultimately, Zone Pro Site proves that Chen Yu-hsun is a director worth waiting for.

Wednesday 27 May 2015

The Best Nasi Kandar In Town

A small little stall tucked away from a corner kopitiam, opposite the Metro furniture warehouse at Burmah Road, this is my favourite place for authentic Malay food in town.

It is a popular place for office workers around the area at lunch time everyday with so many dishes that customers are often spoilt for choices.

Ikan Rempah - the mixture of spices stuffed inside the fish is simply delicious.



Black Pomfret always tasted so beautiful in curry.


Dip one of this beautifully deep fried golden brown chicken into the fish curry sauce - wow, the taste will explode inside your mouth!

Simple dishes at affordable prices, suitable for a group of 3 to 4 people. The food of common people is sometimes better than those in restaurant as it is cooked with passion. When budget is limited, people always find creative way to cook a simple dish that can satisfy all our senses.