Revisiting Oriental Kopi @ Bugis Junction

We've been wanting to come back to the local branch of Oriental Kopi. As far as we could tell, there wasn't much difference from their Malaysian counterparts.

Think I like their iced kopi better than the hot one. I get the impression that those iced ones seem to be more robust.

Wanted to have a go with their delicious chicken rice and the lime-y chilli here. Couldn't discern any difference between the one in Malaysia and this one so...as far as I was able to tell, they're both kinda equally good.

Dry mee siam's not bad. It has the same texture as their other bee hoon.

The other thing we wanted to try was their rojak. Underneath the blanket of crushed peanuts were cucumber, turnip, guava and pineapple. I'm not a fan of a couple of things. The rojak sauce wasn't great. And then there's the crunchy you tiao which were like biscuits rather than fried dough fritters.

Curry Craft, North Bridge Road

Came across Curry Craft (#01-5041, 467 North Bridge Road). They're a stall doing Malaysian style curry noodles and yong tau foo.

They have home made achar. Not bad tasting. Their rendition includes strips of radish and long beans. Generous with the crushed peanuts too.

Tried a couple of their curry noodles. One basically picks a preferred soup (or not), noodles or rice and a protein of choice for the bowl which also comes with a raft of long beans held together by fish paste and a piece of dried beancurd sheet (tau kee). There's lamb and beef and the lamb got my attention because one doesn't normally find lamb in curry noodles here. Chilli dip on the side's sweet, sour and spicy. Nice.

Both protein were thin sliced. Lamb's nicer than the beef because the latter didn't really register much flavour as a beef. Unlike the lamb which also infused some of it's intrinsic flavour into the very drinkable savoury curry broth.

I guess this is as good a testimony as any on how much we liked it.

GO Unique (有间不一样), Raffles City

GO Unique (有间不一样) is by GO Noodle House (有间面馆). They're at the basement of Raffles City (#B1-12 Raffles City, 252 North Bridge Road, tel : +65 6935 8323). What's different between them and the noodle house is that rice dishes and sandwiches can be found here. 

Pretty happy with their soup noodles with Shaoxing wine. Tasted just like the ones from their noodle house. Got mine with batang and sliced beef and today.

One of the rice dishes they had came with something called Baba Sauce pork belly. I'm not sure what that sauce was made with; there was a caramel sweetness and it packed serious heat. 🔥 I'm gonna come back again for this because I liked the burn and I think I need to understand it better. 😂

Restoran Md. Salleh, Taman Pelangi, Johor Bahru

Breakfast at Restoran Md. Salleh (22 Jalan Pingai, Taman Pelangi, 80400 Johor Bahru).

Found their tea a tad too sweet for my liking. The flavour was also reminiscent of roobois tea.

Roti telur goyang - a kosong with a telur goyang with their dal kuah. In English, a plain roti canai with a wobbly half boiled egg and their lentil gravy. Gravy's a little thinner and less punchy than what I was expecting.

I was wondering if their roti sardine was similar to the sardine prata from Prata Saga Sambal Berlada. It wasn't. There's onions in it so it turned out to be more akin to the sardine murtabak. Sardine's finely minced and spread out so while it wasn't bad, Prata Saga Sambal Berlada's sardine prata beats this. I mean like hands down.

Lontong gravy was on the thin side, lacks the richness and viscosity as the ones I normally prefer back home. But I guess that's how they roll here.

Tried a kosong and telur. As roti canai/prata went, they were competent enough. Hard pressed to find something about it that is memorable though.

Oriental Kopi, Mid Valley Southkey, Johor Bahru

We ended up at Oriental Kopi at Mid Valley Southkey (No 1, LG-054, The Mall, Mid Valley, Persiaran Southkey 1, Southkey, 80150 Johor Bahru) for lunch.

Got their iced chocolate royal because we remember liking it the last time we had it at Bugis Junction. It's as good.

There's a new taro polo bun on menu. I quote them "...crispy #purple sweet potato crust, velvety smooth #Taiwan Dajia taro paste, and a refreshing layer of #thick-cut cold butter. Hot meets cold, crispy meets creamy, a flavor explosion in every bite!?". Oh hell yeah this was good. I haven't heard of Dajia taro until now. As I'm typing this. Pedigree of the taro aside, the execution of the bun was well thought out.

I've been curious about their mala ban mian for a while now. Tasted like how I imagined it. Not bad but also not special.

Their prawn fried rice was very eggy. Very.

Pretty decent tea. The flavour's reminiscent of Thai tea and they don't try to kill you slowly with sugar here.

Heng Wah Kopitiam (興華老店), Holiday Villa, Johor Bahru

Breakfast at Heng Wah Kopitiam (260 Jalan Dato Sulaiman, Taman Abad, 80250 Johor Bahru).

Kopi's not bad. Pretty nice brew even without the gao.

Wanton mee's nice. Love the texture of the egg noodles flavoured with rendered lard (猪油). Unfortunately their fried lard (猪油渣) was stale and lau hong. Pity cuz I liked the rest of this.

There's nasi lemak. Decent rendition with nice toasty peanuts and a slightly watery sambal that appears to have the taste of sardine. Hmmm...

The fried chicken thigh that came with the nasi lemak was chunky, crispy on the skin and was flavoured with turmeric. I thought I detected cumin as well. Meat's moist underneath all that golden brown. Nice!

Steamed bread with some milky dip that had pandan kaya inside. Not bad.

Tea Garden, Subang Skypark Terminal

We've seen Tea Garden around in this trip to KL but ended up eating at the branch at Subang Airport (G15, Lpg Trbg Sultan Abdul Aziz Shah, Lapangan Terbang Sultan Abdul Aziz Shah, 47200 Subang, Selangor, Malaysia) while waiting for our flight back.

Hot Michael Jackson. There was a lot of flavour from the grass jelly in the drink. Not bad.

Unexpectedly and pleasantly surprised by their Tea Garden Special Fried Rice. This was pretty much their rendition of yang zhou fried rice with chicken char siew instead of the pork variety. There were a few whole prawns in the plate instead of chopped up or puny ones. Nice smokiness from the scorched grains and impressively no excessive grease.

Nasi lemak also pretty good tasting. There's achar in this plate which I liked. 

Not bad chicken char siew bao. Tasted like regular char siew bao without pork fat flavour.

Tau huey with gula melaka. We got this thinking it would be a rich and thick drizzle of the palm sugar but it was kinda diluted.

A couple of mall banana leaf nasi lemak at Nu Sentral

Tried a few banana leaf wrapped nasi lemak from Nu Sentral (201 Jalan Tun Sambanthan, Kuala Lumpur Sentral, 50470 Kuala Lumpur).

The one from Bungkus Kaw Kaw (Lot-44, LG Floor) wasn't fantastic. Rice didn't have much coconut richness. This tasted very kampong if you catch my drift. Serviceable but not something I'd eat again. Also no hot drinks here it seems.

The one at Nonya Colors (L3 27) fared better with flavouring of both the rice and sambal as a whole. Hot coffee was decent. Not to also mention that there's a variety here for eats other than nasi lemak.

Original Penang Kayu Nasi Kandar, NU Sentral, Kuala Lumpur

We noticed Original Penang Kayu Nasi Kandar previously at Mid Valley. Seeing them again at Nu Sentral kinda piqued our interest again so here (Unit LG. 30 & 31, NU Sentral Mall, 201 Jalan Tun Sambanthan, Brickfields, 50470 Kuala Lumpur) we were.

This was fried fish role, chicken korma and cabbage poriyal and telur dadar with their nasi minyak at 33.90RM. While I have been told that nasi kandar tends to be pricey, this was much more than I expected to pay. Other than the thin-nish gravy from the korma, food's generally not bad tasting. I need to either choose the dishes or location more wisely the next time.