There has
not been much new as far as east Asian food is concerned in the restaurants of
Manchester over the last few years. However, here is one… I am Pho is the name
of the first ever Pho (Vietnamese Beef Soup Noodles) restaurant in Manchester. There
has always been a large Vietnamese community in Manchester, and I have always
wondered why a place like this has not sprung up sooner.
Anyway, I
have decided to give this place a try last month. It was located in Chinatown,
next to the strip club, so if you go in the evenings, don’t let the sight of
the burly bouncers put you off.
One word of
warning … do not park your car outside the strip club. The bouncers will lean
and sit on it. Because they look big and mean, they know no one will tell them
off and they don’t care that they annoy the car owners.
Once in the restaurant
you will notice that the layout was more like a café than a restaurant, but
that is fine, because it felt clean and comfortable. However, the prices were
not café prices. You could go to most Chinatown restaurants and order most
noodle dishes at around the same price… about the £7.50 mark.
On the table
is a range of good quality sauces and dips.
Of course, I
ordered the signature dish, beef pho -
with the beef rare, so that it is cooked in the soup. There were other
dishes on the menu but 80% of them were a variation of the pho soup noodles,
with a few rice dishes and the customary Vietnamese summer / spring rolls as
sides.
The verdict:
The soup was
light … very light. It tasted refreshing but lacked flavour, as if it was a
little bit too diluted or not enough beef was used in the stock.
The noodles
were fresh as opposed to the dry / reconstituted type, which is better than the
only other Pho in tried in Manchester, in a café in Ancoats.
The beef
were sliced thicker than I would have liked it, making it slightly tough. They
(the beef) somehow tasted rather detached from the soup .. hard to explain, but
you know the taste you get when you feel that the ingredients do not belong to
the dish because the taste is too different? Maybe this is because of the lack
of beefy taste in the soup.
The portion
was generous and adequate for most hungry diners. I would return if I needed
another pho fix, but not too often as I do not think this is good value. I
think under £5 would have been a fair price for this dish which does not
consist of any expensive ingredients.
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.
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!
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.
Last night I watched a fascinating episode of Gordon's Great Escape. In this series, he travels around south east asia to sample the food and learn how to cook some of it from the locals. Along the way, he will feature some bizzarre foods that most people do not consume, at least not in the west.
The episode on Malaysia was perhaps a little bit tame compared to the last couple of episodes due to the lack of unusual food. The only "weird" food featured was a bulls penis curry soup. We did see the harvesting of birds nest, but this was mainly for the export market and its not something commonly found in roadside cafes.
However one amazing revealation I noticed was that Gordon does not appear to know how to cook rice! He had no idea how to use a conventional rice cooker and made a mess of his coconut rice. Who would have thought!!
Gordon pictured struggling with nasi lemak
If you are in the UK, you will be able to watch this online here.
At around the 40 minute mark, you will see him struggle with his rice!
Its been awhile since I blogged but been so busy recently. Here's a quick and simple dish I cooked tonight. Thought that the tiger prawns looked nice in the rice, hence I uploaded this picture. Personally, I think having too many prawns spoil the taste a dish. In future I won't use more than 4 or 5 large ones, and add other ingredients instead to enhance the taste of the rice.
At last I have managed to find a cheap compact mobile phone with a camera AND a battery that lasts up to 2 weeks between charging. Now I can take pictures anywhere I eat and do not have to plan ahead to take my camera with me.
One such occassion was when we were passing a branch of Wong Wong Bakery near Openshaw in Manchester. It was actually a little cafe attached to a Chinese warehouse and serve a limited amount of dishes to a mainly Chinese clientele. Hence their dishes are authentic and near restaurant quality but a bit cheaper.
This is the most expensive dish on their menu coming in at £7 for a large single portion. A stir fired mixture of fish balls, fish cake sliced pork, char siu, siew yook, roask duck, prawns, squid and straw mushroom over a bed of crispy noodles. Taste great and better than some more upmarket restaurtant in Chinatown.
Here's a posting to get me back on track with the theme of this blog, which is cooking.
Sambal tumis with seafood, especially squid is one of my favourite Malaysian dishes.
I managed to pick up some prepared seafood from a local supermarket and thought I'd make some fresh sambal (chilli ) sauce to cook this.
The ingredients for the sauce are red chillies, onions (preferable shallots which I did not have at the time), garlic, toasted belacan (fermented shrimp paste) and tamarind juice.
Its best to pound it manually in a pestle and mortar but I was lazy and used a blender. I added salt and sugar during the blending process.
Then heat plenty of oil in a pan, brown some sliced onions, then add sauce and fry till fragant.
Then add seafood and fry for 3 - 5 minutes. Not too long or it will turn tough and dry, especially if you are using octopus.
And finally here is the dish. Would have looked better with some coriander garnish, but I had none at the time.
Its been 2 years since their last album The Circus was released and here is the long awaited new album to be released on Monday 15th November. This time, we have the return of the FULL line up, which includes Robbie Williams. I do not really have much time for pop music anymore these days but I will always have time for this lot, who I regard are the purest purveyors of pop music. Read on to see what I thought of the aibum.
The Flood The current single and opening track reminds me of the opening track from TT's first comeback album, Beautiful World, called Reach Out. I loved that song as I do this. Watch the embedded video below. Great video!
SOS Mark leads with some from Robbie and Gary in a high energy dance tune. Sounds quite dated like something from the 90s, not unlike something from Pulp. Not exactly a bad thing for TT fans.
Wait Sang by Robbie and would be at home in one of his solo albums. A mid tempo electronic dance tune with a catchy chorus, like No Regrets. Definitely one to please the Robbie fans.
Kidz Mark on the lead again! Does Gary not sing anymore? Peculiar song, quite unlike anything they have ever done before. Its like a chant all through the song but not one that others would chant along. One of the weaker numbers and I doubt it will be a future single.
Pretty Things More electronic shenanigans from TT. Robbie takes the helm again, or at least his voclas were the most prominent as they were harmonised right through the song. A fairly mellow song that reminded me of Joan of Arc by OMD in tune and
Happy Now A fairly pedestrian song that reaches no highs nor lows. Still with the electronic theme, it has a subtle fat synth bass right through the song and just plods along like the album filler it is.
Underground Machine Robbie on the leads again. Some guitar riffs perpetuate throughout this number which tells us that they are no longer a boyband. A mature sound which may not appeal to TT fans of the old .. or even those who latched onto the bandwagon since 2006.
What do you want from me Another Mark lead. Starts of rather mellow but soon picks up pace with a fairly addictive dance beat. However the title and melody does not make this a completely upbeat and happy song.
Affirmation Not sure if this is Jason or Howard singing here. Similar to the previous song in pace but lacks its catchiness.
Eight Letters Finally a song with Gary in the lead! TT does not sound the same without him leading! Also the only real ballad in this album. Now this is the TT that fans have grown to love over the last 20 years! They have definitely left the best till last!
.... and dont forget the customary secret track at the end of the album!
My verdict...
Is this a Robbie Williams album? If you have been in outer space for the last 20 years, you might have thought that Robbie has always been the lead singer of this group. Also, I suspect that Gary did not write most of the tracks .. yes I know the group was credited with most of the songs for the last two albums but we clearly knew who was behind the composition of most of the songs in reality. So, despite my tepid reaction to this release, I must say that I did enjoy it and you do too they please go out and buy it to support the group.
We had a short break in Barcelona last month and managed to get a lot of photos, so I will spread it out over a few postings.
The highlight of our trip was a visit to the Nou Camp for a UEFA Champions League match against FC Copenhagen. I planned the whole trip by obtaining information from various forums on the net and hence, I have decided to start this posting with a pictorial guide on how to get to the Nou Camp. This appears to be one of the most asked questions about Barcelona and I took these pictures with this in mind. Hopefully, whoever manages to find this link will find it useful. Feel free to leave a short comment if it has helped you.
All I had to do was provide passport number and credit card number. Then I get a reference number to collect it from the FNAC store in the Triangle shopping mall at Plaza Catalunya up to 72hrs before the match.
Note: UEFA rules state that you cannot buy tickets from the home team if you are from the country of the visiting team.
Of course if you have a passport different from your country of residence, then it would not be an issue!
A Pictorial Guide on directions to FC Barcelona's Camp Nou
First, you need to plot your journey to arrive at the Maria Cristina metro station. You can use other stations too, but the green line is the most popular one with visitors as it passes Plaza Catalunya, the "centre" of all the action in the city. It takes about 15 - 20 minutes from Plaza Catalunya.
When you are exiting Maria Cristina, follow the signs for the "Av Diagonal" (name of a street) exit. There are only 2 exits anyway, so it is hard to go wrong. Once outside, you will see this wide pedestrianised pavement in front of you, with a busy cycling lane to the right.
Turn to your left and you will see two dark buildings across the road. I think they have "La Caixa" on the top of both.
Walk for about 200m, keeping those buildings to your left across the road and you will soon see some shops on the left, same side as those buildings.
Keep walking for another 50m and you will coome to a set of lights. You can see across the road, a tall hotel called Princesa Sofia. This is where you need to cross the road. EVEN WHEN YOU SEE THE GREEN MAN, STILL LOOK L & R AS CARS AND BIKES WILL CARRY ON DRIVING IF THEY CANNOT SEE A PERSON CROSSING THE ROAD!
With the hotel now in front of you, walk past the front of it and turn left immediately.
You are now on the final 400m leading to the stadium and soon you will be able to see its bright lights, if you are arriving for an evening match.
At the end of that stretch, we are now in front of Gate B
Like any stadium in the world, lots of UNOFFICIAL stalls selling merchandise outside. Most are overpriced and are complete rip off. Fake FCB shirts with Nike logo were going for 50 euros. Can buy a real one in UK for £44! Unofficial scarves start from 10 euros.
If you want official stuff, then you need to go inside the gates, where they cost even more! About 70 euros for a FCB shirt!
The FC Barcelona match experience
1 hour before the match and the stadium was stil sparse. There was no pre-match entertainment.
We got the cheapest tickets and ended up behind the goal, to the left of the dugout, about 6 rows from the top. Despite the height, we had a very good and unobstructed view. The height actually helped as, any lower and the goal would have obscured part of our view.
15 minutes before kick off and the stewards troop onto the pitch. To wave the huge UCL logo.
10 minutes to kick off and the stadium was filling up.
Then the teams emerge from the dugout to massive applause and lots of flashes.
Managed to capture this on video too!
Here we see Messi's teammates congratulating him for scoring the opening goal. However, it was actually quite a subdued affair on the whole. We may have been in the "home" section, but all around us were foreigners. Not a single Spanish (or Catalonian) sitting around us. The visiting team were containing Barca quite well and for most of the match, there was a total lack of atmosphere around our section. Could not really say the same about the Danish fans who were singing, chanting and clapping throughout the match. They may have take up no more than 15% of the whole stadium physically, but they definitely made 80% of the noise!
In the end, Barca won 2-0 in a largely uninspiring match. However the overall experience was still rather exhilarating, in one of the largest football stadiums in the world.
And here is a picture of 80,000 leaving the stadium, heading up the road from the stadium towards Av Diagonal.
So, was it worth it?
Absolutely! I remember back in 1982, watching the opening match of the World Cup that was being held in a distant land (Spain!) and marvelling at the size of the Camp Nou on TV. It was one of those things you see as a kid and never expect to experience it in person. After all it seemed so unreal for someone who has only ever experienced a 30,000 capacity Merdeka Stadium. It was like watching the moon landing. You dont expect to experience it yourself. Yet, now 28 years later, there I was .. Messi, Puyol, Villa, Iniesta .. World Cup winners as well! A truly memorable experience!
I grew up in Petaling Jaya, Malaysia, but have lived in the UK since 1984. I am ashamed to say that I have yet to adapt to the local food and as a result, have spent the last 20 years trying to recreate the food I have grown up with, namely those of Malaysian and Chinese origin. I intend to demonstrate my attempts here, as well as reviewing some of the restaurant / takeaway dishes I come across. Having a busy family and professional life, I probably will not find time to update daily, but will endeavour to keep the blogs interesting and would very much welcome comments, advice and discussion from like-minded people.
