FOOD PORN: A visual delight!

About time for another trip to Malaysia! My blogs have been sporadic over the last couple of years mainly due to lifestyle changes and also laziness! During that time, I have never stopped taking pictures of food wherever I went and I will take this opportunity to post a mixture of images from previous trips to Malaysia dating back to 2009.



If you are an experienced blogger, perhaps you can advise on how I can make the process easier and quicker so that I can update more frequently. At the moment, I find the process quite laborious.... What I do now is:

1. I load each photo into photoshop to resize it (otherwise, 5mb per image will take too long to load!)

2. Then I upload them to imageshack.us

3. Then I write my blog

4. Then I click on each thumbnail of the photo I uploaded into imageshack and copy the url tag and paste it into the html code of the blog I am writing. I can only do this one at a time as imageshack does not display ALL the html tags on one page. If I can find a way of displaying all the tags on one page, it will make life a lot easier!

5. Once done, I save it and publish the blog.



So, if anyone can make this process easier, I will be able to upload more updates in the future.

Below is an Esquire Kitchen special - Kung Po Chicken. A "must have" whenever I eat there.

1-Utama branch.

A steamed pomfret at Oversea Restaurant @ Asiajaya, PJ. Fresh but quite bland as it lacked seasoning.

A Yook Woo Hin (Petaling Street - Chinatown KL) speciality - Char Siu. You won't find much better in the city.

Another Yook Woo Hin dish - Beef ho fun. Absolutely delicious! Super tender slices of beef in a rich egg sauce over a bed of smooth flat rice noodles.

The two pics below are the display shelves at Jin Xuan Hong Kong Dim Sum @ Damansara Jaya.

See my full review here.
Ji

This lovely Sang Har Meen was taken at Paramount cafe at Sungei Wang Plaza. I found out about this place from Lyrical Lemongrass' blog here.

The two pics below were taken @ Uncle Duck restaurant @ Berjaya Times Square in KL. Considering the name, the duck was decidedly average and the black bean beef ho fun was one of the worst I ever tasted!

4 dishes from Sri Suria cafe in Amcorp Mall in PJ. All looked lovely, but tasted worse than most hawker vendors. Worst of all, two out of the five of us who ate there had diarrhea the next day! Not a busy restaurant even on s Sunday, so the food must have been not too fresh.

Nasi Lemak - probably their best dish.

Fried Rice - bland but looked nice!

Chow Kuey Teow - terrible! No wok-hei .. must've been fried in a skillet!

Wonton Noodle soup - again, bland!

This was my half eaten lunch at Lumut bus station. Beef Rendang and water spinach. Cost a lot less than in KL and tasted very nice!

Sapporo Teppanyaki, Manchester

This was the first time I had ever been to a Teppanyaki restaurant in the UK. Its only my second time in a UK Japanese restaurant. The first was an awful experience 10 years ago and it had put me off them.

On this occassion, it was a works do and I thought it was a good time to try again. The fact that this restaurant was rated the number 1 restaurant on Manchester on Tripadvisor gave me some optimism!

Unlike most city centre oriental restaurants, this one was not located in or around Chinatown, indicating to me immediately that they cater mainly for western diners. When I saw the menu, my thoughts were confirmed. I was a bit disappointed that there was no squid in the menu, but understandable as it is not a popular ingredient among Brits.

However, as the evening progressed, the whole dining experience was rather interesting. It was not like anything I had ever experienced before. But before that our starters arrived. I had a rather large portion of bbq spare ribs. Unlike your typical Chinese restaurant ribs, these were really tender and succulent. I suspect they have been twice cooked .... steamed and then baked. Great start so far.

Before the chefs began cooking our meals they went throught a few unusual rituals, which were very entertaining and engaging for the diners. However, I am certain there was nothing traditional about them and certainly does not appear to have anything to do with Japanese dining rituals, but please do correct me if I am wrong.

Firstly, the chef heated some scalloped potato slices and tossed them in the air, to each of the diners to catch with their mouth. He will keep trying until you catch it, leading to food all over the floor!

Next, he juggled some of the cooking utensils, like the bartenders in Cocktail juggled bottles. Then, just for show, he lit up the flat pan with some alcohol.

When it comes to cooking the food, we could see exactly everything they put into it. I kept waiting to see if there was going to be a secret ingredient but there was nothing obvious.

And here is my portion. This alone was £17. To their credit, all the ingredients were super fresh and you could have extra portions of rice if you wanted for free. It may not look much, but I assure you it was more than I could eat.

I must say however, that the food tasted very home-cooked, and not difficult to reproduce yourself. The flat pan meant that there was no "wok hei" taste in the food. However, I ended the night satisfied enough, as the price we paid was for the entertainment as well as the food. It was definitely worth experiencing, but I dont think it is something you can do on a weekly basis without wearing out the novelty value.

Location:

Sapporo Teppanyaki

91 Liverpool Rd Manchester M3 4JN