Happy Birthday, Val!
It seems that we have resorted to a single candle on birthday cakes ever since we passed the 21 birthday mark.... all those years ago ;)
How better to kick start a brand new year with some good, solid Malaysian hawker food? Somewhere in the depths of SS17, lies a corner coffee shop known for it's chicken and char siew rice. Late as we were, we just about managed to bag one of their whole deep fried chickens (minus the batter) served with a heap of deep fried garlic and a plate of char siew. The chicken was nicely moist and the pork had a good combination of meat and fat. If I had to choose between the two dishes, it would have to be the char siew. Yes, I've had better but it's been so long since I had decent char siew and this really did it for me :) This was definitely no pink dyed bit of dry lean pork. It was lovely pork belly with it's layers of meat and fat roasted just so with a lovely caramelised exterior and moist, tender interior.
Dinner was with my father and it meant only one thing - LOTS and LOTS of food! He booked us a table at one of his current favourite restaurants, the VERY oddly named Extra Super Tanker in Damansara Kim (the area on the left opposite Taman Tun Dr Ismail if you're coming from town and going towards 1Utama - if that's any help - because I hadn't a clue myself! :) At the corner of a very quiet row of shops is the bustling restaurant. Such an odd place for such a restaurant - the area is a little dodgy at night, my sister's bag was snatched as she walked to her car a few months previously. My father had reserved us a private room, which was great against the general hustle and bustle of the place (though I privately think my father was still nursing a slightly sore head from his late New Year's eve night out ;)
As the food was all pre-ordered, we just sat back and enjoyed the dishes as they were brought in. First up a double boiled soup, which unfortunately none of us knew what exactly was in it. It had chicken, a few Chinese herbs and some odd looking .... what we thought was at that time, gourd. The soup was good, the gourd was very odd... alright, it was terrible. Cut into little blocks of about 3 inches wide and about half an inch thick, it consisted of layers of gelatinous matter and thin brittle bone. It was so bad I didn't even bother to take a photo and it wasn't until we had finished the soup that we managed to ask the waitress what on earth it was. Shark bone. Shark bone and chicken soup? Hmmm... interesting!
Seafood scrambled eggs served with lettuce. The egg mixture is piled onto the lettuce and eaten like a wrap. The eggs were nicely light with chunks of crab meat, beansprouts, pine nuts and topped with dry fried dried scallops.
Apparently there is a pork rib speciality on the menu but my father decided to try something a little different - baby back ribs stewed with Chinese herbs. Oh my god... I thought I had been transported back in time! It tasted exactly like the Beggar's Duck served at the Oversea Restaurant chain years ago at the height of the chain's popularity. It was great... the sauce was yummy and the meat was falling off the bone tender.
Another recommendation was a whole de-boned fish (the carcass made it to the table deep fried serving as a 'plate' for the meat) fried with wood ear fungus, ginger, garlic and spring onion. I still haven't managed to figure out what fish this was - it's texture was a little like plaice and it was a flat-ish fish. I guess my father wasn't a great help that day :) The waitress recommended dishes over the phone and he just said yes. The fish was good, a little too big for us though ... as for once my father found a little self control in ordering. There was perhaps, just about enough food ;)
The food here is really quite good - such bustle for a suburban restaurant at all times of the week really does say a lot about the how good it is. The prices are pretty reasonable but the price of the fish did take me a little by surprise. The waitress had recommended it as "reasonable" to my father ... sigh maybe the pound is so low that it makes the heart ache - £30 for just that one dish. Alright I may moan and groan but I'll probably be paying a whole lot more if I found the exact same dish here in London, but I very probably won't order it anyway ;) Ahh a good meal for a solid start to a new year!
Extra Super Tanker Restaurant
48 SS20/10, Damansara Kim, 47400 Petaling Jaya
2 comments:
Wow, that cake looks good! Can share where you got it from? Was is as good as it looks?
Kimguan - I believe the cake came from Delicious. My friends bought it but if my memory serves me right .. it said Delicious on the box :) Hope it helps.
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