Nando's, Mid Valley, Kuala Lumpur

I visited this place in one of the lonely and rare instances I had to eat alone. Yeah, laugh. I don't know how much of the fluff of this place is made up or if any of it is true, but on a Monday night, this place was packed to the brim with people ordering loads of roasted spicy chicken which this place seems to specialize in.

According to some painted description on the wall, Nando's came about when the Portuguese forefathers (of whom?!) discovered the African Bird's Eye Chilli known as Peri Peri to the locals. With these fiery little chillies combined with special(hah!) herbs, lemon and a touch of garlic, the original Peri Peri sauce was born. *snigger* Kudos to them some for making an effort to dress up the history of the restaurant on the walls.

Unique to Nando's was a wooden rack on each table containing four different types of their branded sauces for their food. The was the Peri Peri, Spicy Peri Peri, Garlic Peri Peri and the plain old ketchup. Reminding me of Kenny Rogers, I wasn't too sure what could really be interesting so I took some promotion they had of a set meal consisting of roasted chicken, Mediterranean rice (yeah...) with raisins along with a dessert known as vanilla ria and some fruity soda with bits of aloe vera (I think). Topping it up, I went with something in the appetizers section of Liver with Port Roll. Both the liver and the chicken were available with 4 levels of spiciness so I picked the spiciest for the liver and number 2 for the chicken.

Credit where it's due, the chicken was quite tasty in spite of the quantity being churned out from the kitchen constantly. It was a little thin on the meat and was as the whole quite good with the number 2 spiciness. The Mediterranean rice was as I had suspected, butter rice with token bits of corn, green peas, diced carrots and raisins. Nevertheless, it was also quite tasty. Butter usually scores with me.

Here's the Liver with Port Roll. Basically a bowl of roasted chicken liver drenched in their number one spicy sauce which was actually quite spicy. The beef I had with this is that it actually came after I was almost done with my chicken - by which I had wanted to cancel on the order. It nonetheless arrived, portions are larger than what I had anticipated. The port roll is a thick skinned bun which came warm. Would have been great with more butter.

This was the Vanilla Ria. The texture was that of bean curd (tao huay) and the brown powder on the top was apparently not cocoa, but perhaps Milo. Was boring and I never finished it.

Here I am....at 4.30 in the morning....Starbucks

Starbucks at Changi Airport Terminal 2 can be a tranquil place to chill and stone, especially at the ungodly hours of 4.30 a.m. when barely another customer is in sight. So......hot chocolate from the largest coffee franchise in the world and it's a thing they're known for? Signature hot chocolate indeed. Since when was hot chocolate a signature of Starbucks?

Since I had time to kill before boarding, I decided to get something. Here're the Chicken Chipotle Roll and the Ugly Chicken Puff.

Ugly Chicken Puff

Chicken Chipotle Roll

The chipotle roll was basically a puff with some sort of chicken sausage in the middle while the ugly chicken puff tasted pretty much like a curry-less curry puff. Should have known better.

A Tale of 2 Ramly(s)

I had the opportunity to grab Ramly Burgers twice during my diving trip to Tioman over the last weekend. As manly already know, Ramly Burgers over there are quite the different thing from the ones locally. The unique thing about this burger was that there is no fixed recipe. Whether it's a tasty one or not, was very much dependent on the person cooking it. Variations are abound and it's one of the surprises to look forward to when having a Ramly grease bomb. The first burger I got came from a rest stop at Kota Tinggi. It's also the double special with 2 patties and egg. Noticed that the guy preparing the burger sliced the meat patty into halves almost all the way through and spread them onto the pan while adding some chilli powder. This thoroughly cooked the patty, a step which many of the Ramli "chefs" get by using another method of simply making incisions into the meat and pressing them hard on the pan instead. This guy also actually provided tomatoes, sliced onions and lettuce in the bun as compared to the ones made back home that usually only have dried shredded lettuce.

Look it! I'm getting hungry typing this.

Now check out the bite view!

On the way back after the boat trip, we made a stop which happened to have another Ramly stand nearby. I had to get one of them again. This time round, there were no onions. Just a slice of cucumber and that ubiquitous dry shredded lettuce which one of the stall's guys was shredding. Also, these two guys seemed more clumsy during the preparation of the burger than the one I had earlier which was also clearly better tasting. These fellas tend to get flustered at large orders and forget ingredients like the chilli powder for some of the orders. They also seem to be making the bread from some pre-"margarined" burger buns in plastic packs.

Now for the bite view.

Have you been Cheezito-ed yet?

KFC has a "new" burrito called Cheezito which is essentially like the Bandito with cheese. Being a sucker for cheese stuff despite being apprehensive, I decided to check out their new wrap. Not actually expecting anything fantastic out of this since it's KFC but it was convenient. Also so easy to decide to eat them when you don't know what you feel like eating.

As I mentioned, it's a fried chicken burrito with cheese sauce in it. The cheese sauce, whatever it was made of, is exactly the ones used in their cheese fries, which usually consists of cold fries topped with mayo and that said cheese substance. Like the cheese fries also, Cheezitos' cheese tasted flat. It didn't even have the mild zest of bottled Cheeze Whiz. Any doubts about how much of real cheese went into the making of the Cheezito consolidated. Here's a bite view below to see what's in the wrap.

These guys weren't even generous with the cheese fillings in the wrap which included the small piece of chicken enlarged by the crusty batter. Mixed with that mayo, one could hardly tell that there's actually suppose to be cheese stuff inside. So much for being Cheezito-ed.

Strange that these guys are talking about healthy lifestyle when there's nothing healthy in their food. What I had was a great deal of sugar, flour and some chicken with a tiny bit of vegetables and potatoes. Maybe that's healthy for them. I'm also confused about their mention of how they pay particular attention to freshness. Maybe they meant to say that only the freshest ingredients obtainable by their suppliers go into their food factory every day before it is mass processed and frozen. I also wondered who paid for the design of this....tray cover. Green words onto green background.

Off the Eatin’ Path with Anthony Bourdain

Having visited very recently, Anthony Bourdain is up on the press with a take on his eating experiences in Off the Eatin’ Path in New York Times.

$6.00 and 10 minutes

If you recall my mentioning earlier, I talked about the fried rice with beef from Han's. So here it is, another steaming plate of delicious stir fried carbo lunch fix topped with tfried egg. This plate has no ham and shrimps. Both were replaced by slices of beef. I liked the other one better on hindsight. The beef was in the Chinese stir fried style which didn't taste beefy at all. As far as I'm concerned, it could've been pork. 50 cents more, I was hoping for some beefiness which couldn't be found.