Hong Kong Kim Gary Restaurant, Mid Valley, Kuala Lumpur

If you haven't guessed, this was another one of those Hong Kong cafe styled place which served pretty much the same kind of food as the others. With a Korean twist. They also did bibimbab. No clue who the bleeding Beelzebub is Kim Gary. And no prizes for guessing. The place was packed to the brim and I was told that the had business flourished into a franchise. I thought it was probably worth checking out since it wasn't not available back home.

Cream soup and borsch. Well, it's not the real borsch. I would be surprised if they did have the genuine stuff. Tasted just like spicy tomato and vegetable soup. The cream soup is probably cream of corn.

Pork chop and steak baked rice with cheese. There's only rice and some cream sauce beneath the cheese and meat. Nothing special about them.

A closer look at the steak baked rice with cheese. The steak was just a piece of beef, not a real steak.

Yoghurt that came with the sets. I was a little surprised at what was offered. Anlene....hahaha. It's strawberry flavored.

Egg in boiled milk. I kinda like this stuff. Basically a raw egg that's thrown into boiled milk.

Silom, Plaza Damansara, Kuala Lumpur

I haven't figured out whether Bukit Damansara is part of KL or not. Apparently, some people don't consider it so. It kinda reminded me of Science Park. It is also suppose to be one of the prime areas to be living in. That meant expensive housing for the more well to do. So I was told.

Silom is a cafe/restaurant that serves fusion Thai and Peranakan food. That's a pineapple fried rice. One could wonder how is that pineapple fried rice since it didn't quite look the part. Stir fried with the rice were diced chicken, squid, a couple of shrimps, sliced sausages, corn, green peas and raisins. Garnished with strips of what I assume to be radish, cucumber and carrots. I'm not sure what those brown strips of stuff were. This fried rice beat the one at Hans by more than a neck. Seafood, meat, pineapple and real vegetables. Probably a far healthier option too. And it tasted pretty good.

Gandhi Vegetarian Stall, Bricksfield, Kuala Lumpur

I was thinking to myself, with a name like that, it's bound to attract some attention. In truth, I would never have found this place if not for my a friend whom was in turn introduced to this stall by his colleague. Bricksfield as I've heard is Kuala Lumpur's equivalent of Little India. And Gandhi's isn't exactly located where the pedestrian is the thickest, so this is one of those hole in the walls which requires some familiarity to locate. But it's also just about 10 minutes walk from KL Sentral station.

I was told that this place was well known for their delicious vegetarian food. The original owner is retired and the eatery is currently managed by his son who is also a competent cook in his own right.

Since it was a first visit, I left the ordering to the friend has been here on enough occasions for the boss to aloha him. So dinner was the ikan bakar, chilli chicken and apple laila. The former two dishes don't contain meat of course.

We were served with rice and curry which was refillable on request. Ended up eating a lot of rice because the curry was good stuff. Before I even knew it, I had eaten more than usual. I kid you not. It might not have been the best curry in the world, but it's pretty DFG.

The ikan bakar was a mock barbecued fish. Having had vegetarian "meats" before from Chinese places, I've got to admit that this by far takes the cake of being the one that tastes the most like real fish meat. It has a had crusty and spicy exterior akin to the charred sections of barbecued stingray and it's really good.

This chilli chicken is made of bean curd skin (tao ki, for those that know it by that). It is arranged to look like chicken wings and for the moment when it was served, I had actually forgotten that this wasn't real chicken, thinking about how inconvenient it might be to have bones in my food. Heh, it looked pretty convincing as chicken wings with the fried skin soaked in gravy very much like braised chicken. Also spicy and great tasting. The gravy tasteed like kung pao chicken.

We ordered the apple laila having no idea what it was except that it probably has apples. The name sounded interesting. The dish was actually lightly stewed apples in a starchy gravy with lemons and chilli. Lightly stewed because it still maintained a crunchiness. It was very appetizing and I've never had anything like it anywhere else.

The damage for dinner was just 30 ringgit for the food, lime tea and plum juice. For what it's worth, that was definitely good and inexpensive. One of the gems in a run down looking district worth taking the trouble to locate. Gave me that "I forgot this all doesn't contain meat" experience like Original Sin did.

Madam Kwan's, Mid Valley, Kuala Lumpur

Madam Kwan's an upmarket restaurant that does Asian/Peranakan food. I was told the first time I was brought there (the outlet at KLCC) that they were famous for their nasi lemak and nasi bojari. Since then, which was about 6 years back, I've visited them once each time I'm in KL for the tasty Nasi Bojari.

The dish was a simple plate of nasi kuning (a yellow and similar to coconut rice), assam prawns, shredded beef rendang (quite tender), a fried chicken thigh and half a boiled egg. Nothing too exotic. But rather expensive for Asian food in an Asian country ($19.90 ringgit which is about 10SGD). But it was good enough to make me come back almost every time I can make the trip.

Just Dessert, The Curve, Kuala Lumpur

Just Dessert was a Chinese dessert shop that also served snacks. We was informed that it was only a little over a month old in operation. This brightly lit shop located at the second storey of The Curve's restaurant boulevard. Quite similar to the ones we have back home.

The below was the Snow Frog Mango. A mango smoothie with some bits of mango flesh at the top. I couldn't taste any of snow frog in the drink, but I did detect some soft translucent stuff which might have been it.

Italiannie, The Curve, Kuala Lumpur

This place is American Italian, evident by spaghetti and meatballs. According to the waiter, the bread served was baked in the restaurant and thus would be fresh. Funny thing was, it didn't even arrive warm. Sounded to me like too much was made at a time and there wasn't enough distribution going on for constant fresh batches.


The appetiser for we got was Mussels Lombardi. Mussels simmered in white wine, olive oil, topped with garlic, oregano and parsley. The mussels looked a little small but were otherwise quite fresh tasty.


This pasta was known as Shrimp Fra Diablo. Essentially fettucine in pomodoro sauce and sauteed shrimp tossed with pine nuts, spinach, asparagus and chilli flakes. And topped with feta cheese. Whew! I wouldn't say that it was amazing but it was interesting combination. The feta cheese was a nice touch. The shrimps were ordinary.

Interesting as it looked, I probably wouldn't be re-visiting the next time. It seems that this place is run by the same management as TGI Fridays (located somewhere too in the vicinity).