For TC, har mee or udang mee, which was not spicy enough and not nearly as red as the version seen at Satay.  He thought it was only OK, sadly.

An order of roti canai, as is my usual. Crisp, pillowy, chewy, and just all around great, I do really enjoy their version.

Trying to be healthy, we went with green beans sauteed with belacan – slightly spicy but very flavorful, lots of umami taste from the ground shrimp paste.  Really good and properly cooked, I enjoyed this a lot.

And for me, I forget the name of this dish (TC, help?!) but it was basically udon stir fried in a soy sauce gravy. I really enjoyed it, even if he chided me for it not being a real Malaysian dish… and not particularly unique, haha. Still very tasty!

Last but not least, our beef satay, which was meaty, tender, fragrant and really good. I enjoyed it a lot!

Funny enough, a few short weeks later, FeistyMom wanted Malaysian for her birthday, so Snorlax, FeistyMom and I headed to the same location for dinner.

We ordered half a Hainanese chicken; the meat was slightly warm, and FeistyMom suggested it was freshly poached (this is a dish normally served cold). To no detriment here – the white meat was juicy, tender and delicious – and you know I don’t eat white meat normally, but I found myself gobbling this up. Fantastic; I’ll have to order it by the half more often… so good.

As I said, my standard order of roti canai, and it was great as usual.

Clay pot noodles served in a clay pot (who knew?) in a thick broth that was reminiscent of egg drop soup, with a lot more sweetness from the corn than you might expect. Shiitake mushrooms, strips of chicken, squid, and big shrimp – just a fantastic dish. I found myself eating bowl after bowl of this long after my stomach requested that I cease & desist… chewy egg noodles coated with that broth, I really must order this more often as well.  (TC… when are we going again?!)

My choice of char kway teow went mostly ignored in favor of the other noodle dishes. I asked for this to be slightly spicy, and it was pretty spicy for my sensitive palate.. but still good.

Snorlax requested and received ‘wat dahn ho fun’ or something (slippery egg broad noodles) – underneath the pool of sauce, which has a beaten raw egg mixed into it, are stir-fried broad white rice noodles. Though those fake-crab looking sticks on the side were awful (tasted like rice cakes but bad), the rest of the dish was absolutely delicious. We both had a lot of fun ‘fighting’ over bits from the plate, and just eating this happily… so good.

Then our beef satay came out; the only fail of the night. These were mushy and tasted OFF, like weird and bad. We did not eat more than a few bites each before we decided it wasn’t worth the stomach space; sadly, FeistyMom suggested something had gone wrong with the dish or maybe it’d turned. Regardless, the rest of the dishes were so great that I didn’t really notice the lack of satay in my belly that night.

As you can see, I visit Penang fairly frequently and really enjoy it; I don’t foresee that changing any time soon. That location has been there for a while, and while the quality has been inconsistent over the 15 years I’ve been visiting – I think they had a bad chef at one point, who appears to no longer work there – it’s now returned to serving some really excellent food.

I’m already planning my return visit! Clay pot noodles, yum!

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Post tags: feisty family, noodles, roti, satay

Our first dish was roti canai, of course, though we were surprised when the waitress asked us how many. Since I always order one and it’s enough for everyone to share, we said one, but when it came I think I understood: instead of thin, stretchy pancake that we could pull off and eat as we pleased, this came as one thick pancake that was… different. Neither of us preferred this to the other type, but we ate it… it was only okay. Maybe that’s personal preference or what we’re used to, but when I order roti canai, I definitely expect thin pancakes.

Next, of course the rendang I’d been seeking. I thought this was good – TC REALLY enjoyed it, while I thought it was simply good. It didn’t hold a candle to what I’d been eating, which might not be fair since those were all made by Top Chef caliber chefs… but it was just okay. Meat was tender, fragrant and flavorful, but not quite what I sought.

TC also ordered the ‘char kuay teow’ or seafood stir fried noodles, and asked for it to be spicy. It wasn’t very spicy – I was able to eat some without a problem – and while I thought it was sufficiently tasty, TC said it definitely wasn’t the greatest and he’s had better around the corner at Penang. Ah well.

And the last dish to come out was beef satay… which was again, sufficiently tasty, but not the best satay ever. I’d order it again if I was here, but I don’t know that I’d return here any time soon… no hurry.

Yvo says: While TC really liked the rendang, nothing really stood out. I thought the food was tasty but there was no benefit to going here over going to Penang around the corner (Penang even has a parking lot). I might return to see why everyone raves about this place and order different dishes, but honestly, it was on par with/slightly ‘worse than’ Penang (in quotes because it wasn’t bad, just not quite as good)… which means I’m more likely to return to Penang instead.

© Feisty Foodie for The Feisty Foodie, 2012. | Permalink | 7 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: rendang, roti, satay

You may remember last year when I went to Hop Kee with a bunch of friends to celebrate Lunar New Year. Well, this year, we decided to plan a little better, and go to one of my tried-and-true places – High Pearl a few days before Lunar New Year eve (when it would be super busy). (This is why I was happy Snorlax chose a different place for his birthday dinner – otherwise, I would have been here twice in 3 days, which isn’t a bad thing, but I thought I’d be repeating a lot of the same dishes.) As you can see by Hungry’s post on this meal that goes through it dish by dish, there were more mediocre dishes than otherwise. Here I shrug and say – I know what dishes I like and are good here, and I didn’t choose to insist on not ordering the dishes I didn’t think would be good. I’m not upset about what we ate, but I didn’t feel that our meal showcased all that I love about China Pearl (fka High Pearl). No big deal – I still enjoyed the meal with friends!

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Post tags: cantonese, DLS, lunar new year

I’ve posted a number of times about High Pearl, so this time I only took a photograph of one dish – though the other two dishes we ordered are things I’ve never posted here, whoops! (two noodles dishes; when I go to High Pearl with my brother, we inevitably eat rice with our dishes, so noodles aren’t ordered, but I went with just FeistyMom this time and she was like, order whatever you want, so I totally did! Seafood crispy pan fried noodles and wet fried beef broad white noodles, yum!) – the last time I went to High Pearl with my mother (and brother), the table next to us ordered the above, and I asked my mother what it was.  “Jha dai cheung (fried crispy large intestines)- we used to order that all the time, your dad loved it… but we had to stop because it’s so bad for you.”  (My dad had gout.)  Interestingly, it ties into the very same post I just linked – talking about how I forget things about my father every day that passes. 

In any case, this time, as we decided what to order for two people, I said “Oh! how about that dish you said we used to always order? I wanna try it.” and FeistyMom gamely agreed, even though just two noodle dishes would have been plenty of food.  Actually, even one split between the two of us would have been fine (my appetite is still not quite what it used to be), but she insisted we order them all since I wanted to try the intestines.  They arrived hot, crispy on the outside, meaty on the inside, along with this interesting dipping sauce that was thick, sweet and spicy.  I enjoyed eating what I could – they were quite fatty, so only a few pieces could be consumed in one sitting.  I don’t know that I’d order this all the time, but High Pearl did a good job making them look appetizing – it was also laid over a bed of pickled daikon, which helped cut through the fattiness – and I can definitely see ordering this once in a while with people who want to try it or already know they like it.  Very tasty.

© Feisty Foodie for The Feisty Foodie, 2011. | Permalink | 6 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: intestines

Sometimes, when I get an idea in my head, I become fixated on it and that’s all that can be done, no way around it… and so it was recently when I decided I wanted sushi/sashimi on Lunar New Year (February 3rd this year).  Time constraints being what they were – I had tickets to see Al Pacino in Merchant of Venice that night – I quickly ordered some takeout sashimi from a local place that a friend mentioned as being yummy.  Even more yummy?  All sashimi/sushi a la carte was $1/piece, including uni and toro!  Unfortunately, they didn’t have any toro, so I didn’t get to see how much of the very expensive fish they’d have given…

Aiming for the number of pieces to be 8, I ordered two each of the following: salmon, white tuna, uni, and inari.  Unfortunately, it didn’t occur to me that they’d send me the inari as ‘sashimi’ (sushi means rice…), so I received four slices of empty sweet-marinated fried tofu skin, doh!  Still, it was very yummy, and if I ever order this again from here, I’ll be sure to say “Sushi, please!”  As for the uni – in the back in cucumber cups – well, as expected, it wasn’t quite the freshest and was even a bit fishy.  I didn’t get sick, so it wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t good, so I won’t be ordering that from here anymore.  The other sashimi – salmon and white tuna – were both sufficiently tasty, so I might have my new local Japanese joint from which to order…

I also ordered two rolls, which was a lunch special at $7.25.  Spicy tuna crunch, which had very little crunch and very little spice, was tasty enough, but I’ll order something else next time.  (Regular price of that roll is $5.75!)  The other roll was eel avocado, and satisfied my eel desires.  The lunch special came with a miso soup, and I found it tasty enough. 

Yvo says: No complaints here, a very standard menu for a local Japanese takeout place.  Perhaps next time I’ll try the cooked items, but honestly, the website looks just like the website for Fuji (I live between the two, with Fuji just a touch farther away from me than Tomo)… if they’re related, then I’ll probably stick to the cold stuff at Tomo!  I’m happy I found a cheap local takeout place for my Japanese fix though.  Yay!
recommended for what it is (don’t go out of your way)

© Feisty Foodie for The Feisty Foodie, 2011. | Permalink | 5 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: sashimi, Sushi