Groove to the rhythm, baby

A few weeks ago, one of the Sundays happened to be Mother's Day. So, I figured, "Hey, why don't I offer to take my parents to Las Vacas. That way, I'll seem like a super nice son AND I get to devour steak?" So, really, it's not Mother's Day as much as it is Nick's Day.

I've been meaning to go to Las Vacas for some time now. I was supposed to go with He Xiang and a few others recently but something came up. So, anyway, we trotted out there only to get turned away because the place was fully reserved. Lol. So, lesson learned:- Always make a reservation for Las Vacas. The phone number, graciously provided by me again, is 03-78740711. It's located at at 23, Jalan SS5A/ 11, Kelana Jaya in good ol' PJ.

So, anyway, persistent fellow that I am, I made a reservation for the following week and took my parents there.



It's located by the FAM House, on the row of shops behind the row facing the FAM House. Quite ulu location, in all fairness. But hey, I'm fine with it and so should you. Anyway, it's a butcher shop, first and foremost, but it expanded its business to the restaurant sector with an awesome kicker. Pretty fricking wise business move, I'd say.



As you can see, ambience isn't really its top goal. Simple tables and chairs, simple table cloths (paper, really). But I have to say, if you're looking for a quiet romantic dinner, I think this place does okay as well, simply because it's quiet. For the record, I'd be very cautious about bringing a date here personally, simply b'cos she'd be convinced after the meal that she was dating a T-Rex instead of a human being. I can't decide if this would make me happy (since my goal in life is to be a T-Rex) or sad cos y'know, I lose the girl and all.



MEAT!!!!!!!!!

Now, here's the reason why this place gets top billing from me. YOU CAN CHOOSE THE SIZE OF YOUR CUT OF MEAT! So, let's say you're feeling ravenous. You go to a regular steakhouse. Your portion is limited by their choice, not yours. Here, you can choose however much you want. I decided to go for 500g worth of Rib-Eye. (The standard is 300g). I always believe that if you're willing to pay a mutually agreed amount for something, you should be able to get what you want. And so, I got more steak than I would at other places.

And voila:-



500g of pure awesomeness, medium-rare. (For those not using the SI scale, it's about 1.1 pounds). And honestly, it's sheer ambrosia. The biggest advantage of getting a bigger and thicker cut is that the center of the meat is super juicy. Seriously. When you chew it, you can actually feel the juiciness of the meat. And this sounds wrong, but there's nothing better than meat juice (I recognise the double entendre). And it's made to perfection, in terms of temperature of the meat and the texture of the meat. I thank the cow who sacrificed itself for my lovely meal. Really, I do. Your life was not in vain.

I mean, look at this!



Okay, the brown stuff is steak sauce, not meat juice. The one caveat I would like to add is that for those of you who prefer stuff like black pepper sauce or mushroom sauce or whatever silly sauce that comes with your steak, this place is no-frills. As in, you just get the steak without any sauce cooked with it. Which, to me, is fricking brilliant and adds to its ranking. I mean, you eat steak for the juiciness of the meat, not b'cos it's covered in something retarded like black pepper sauce or something.

They also have other options if you don't feel like having a pure steak. They have burgers, though I'd obviously never get them here (not for quality reasons or whatever, just that I'm getting me some steak). My mom, for example, loves lamb, so she got lamb chops or lamb shoulder or something like that. Wasn't paying attention. Hard to focus as a carnivore with all the awesome beef meat lying around.



She let me try some (i.e. I was all like, "MMaaaaaaaaaaammmmmmmmm, can you let me try your food?" Cartman style). And the lamb was pretty good actually, as it should be from a place that deals with meat for a living. And very reasonably priced too.

Oh, and you're wondering why my dish is so bare? As in, just a steak on it? Well, this comes with the dish, but I had them put it on a separate plate for obvious reasons.


Stuff I don't eat. Well, I eat the bread. So, don't worry about a pure meat eating. You lot still have some salad to go with your meal. Though why anyone would think about that crap when eating awesomeness is beyond me.

Anyway, this place is fricking fantastic. I give it the highest ranking I can give, which is Ambrosia level. The price is pretty steep for the beef, the lamb is reasonable, but I assume you'd only be coming for the beef, so it's Firebolt Broom level. It's good to come here once in a while and pay premium price for premium food.

Monte's Steakhouse at BSC

I've been on a quest to search for a great steakhouse in Malaysia. I went to a couple really good ones in Boston, namely Smith & Wollensky (twice), Grill 23 (twice) and the place whose name I can't remember that Hue brought us for our Potstickers Thanksgiving dinner. I have a slight preference towards Grill 23, but then again that's just pure bias. In all 3 places, I always got the Porterhouse, which is pretty much a large cut of T-Bone.

Now, before I started this blog, I had a Porterhouse at Jake's Charbroiled Steaks (which I will go to in the future and review again) and that's pretty much it as far as my steaks experience in Malaysia goes. Granted, I've been to TGIF's and Chili's and had steaks there, but those don't really count.

Anyway, my original plan was for dinner with KS, Alex, CM and Aaron at this steakhouse in Damansara Perdana called Eagle's Nest Steakhouse. Problem is, when we went there, we couldn't find it, ultimately concluding that it must've closed down some time ago. So, we then decided to go to a place that Alex recommended, Monte's at Bangsar Shopping Center.

Located on the (Malaysian) First Floor at BSC, a reservation is apparently a must-do. Fortunately for us, it was still Chinese New Year week, and we managed to get a table for 5 with no problems. The ambience is pretty neat, again, fit for a romantic dinner, a dinner with friends or a family dinner.



A bit like Victoria Station, it's not a pure steakhouse per se. It also serves seafood, chicken dishes and lamb and my favourite part of it, OSTRICH! I've never had ostrich meat ever and wouldn't mind trying but I was really craving steak that day. Plus, if I didn't like it, it'd be a pretty expensive mistake.



As you can see from the menu, the prices are on the high side. Again, unsurprising as this is in Bangsar and it is supposed to be an uppity sort of place. Alex ordered the Sirloin, CM and Aaron had the Rib-Eye, KS had the Tenderloin and I had the Awesome (to be displayed shortly).

I admit I'm still pretty shitty at this food-blogging thing b'cos I forgot to take pictures of our starters. I ordered a Calamari for the table, which was good, crispy and of a generous helping. CM had some soup (can't remember, proving again how shitty I am) while Alex and Aaron shared a salad, which, for the purposes of this food blog, is inconsequential.



The Rib-Eye. Here's where I deduct points. While Aaron's Rib-Eye was done properly (medium-rare), CM's was inconsistently done. Some parts were medium-rare, as ordered, but some parts were medium and, blasphemously, medium-well. Judging from Aaron's perspective, the Rib-eye was pretty damn good, but CM wasn't as satisfied, clearly.



The Tenderloin. Really good. Done properly (medium-rare) and consistent throughout. Gotta love seeing the redness when you cut the meat open. KS was kind enough to let me sample a small portion of his, and yup, it was delicious. Juicy, tender, all that is good with the world.

Now, for the Awesome:-



MY SURF AND TURF! You see, I'm a sucker for Lobster, even though it could kill me by means of high cholesterol overdose. Given that it's so rarely served in most places in Malaysia, I had to have it. And so I did. The portions given were, in my opinion, fairly generous, and the Lobster was boiled well, with some cheesy dressing which turned out to be, as the Famous Five say, scrumplicious! Naturally, the Turf portion didn't match up to the Surf, but taken on its own, it's still a very decent bite. Consistently done, it meshed really well with the Lobster meat. Though one may consider it pricey, obviously given the lobster, at RM70, I think, relative to the other steaks, it's reasonable.

But I do have to take some points off here for the service, or lack thereof. Like I mentioned earlier, there's a possibility of inconsistent grilling of steak as experienced by CM. And, my Surf and Turf was ordered with all French Fries, and none of the potatos stuff (still okay, and pretty good, actually) or the salad nonsense (unacceptable). Somehow, the waiter goofed it and I ended up getting the potatos, a slight salad, and no fries.

Despite that slight caveat though, Monte's is a place I'd defo go again. Good steak is really hard to find in Malaysia, so, the fact that this place serves good steak is more than enough reason for me to come back to it. I give it a 8/10, though the score could have been higher if the service was better.

As a digression, I think it'd be funny (and maybe quite unnerving) if they served snake meat here and called the dish "Monte's Python." Hilarious. What? Just me?

Moussandra - Spanish cuisine and tapas

I love the Spanish. Seriously. I mean, ever since Fernando Torres joined Liverpool, I've been all about the Spanish. I even learned a song in Spanish:-

Su brazalete demostró que era un Rojo, Torres Torres
Nunca caminarás solo, Torres Torres
Compramos al chico en la España
El coge el balón, marcará otra vez
Fernando Torres, el número nueve del Liverpool

I had my first taste of Spanish food in Boston, and I got hooked on paella. That stuff is awesome. So when I found out about this place in KL Plaza, Jalan Bukit Bintang, I had to go try it. And so, I went with He Xiang and her boyfriend, Eugene (a little awkward considering I hate being the third wheel. Which reminds me, we're recruiting a 4th! Non-vegetarians, please enquire.) to check out this place. Its location is rather shady, considering KL Plaza isn't really that popular anymore. It's kind of like the exiled cousin of the shopping centers along Jalan Bukit Bintang.



I made reservations earlier in the day, but really, there's no real need to. Then again, I went during CNY week where traffic in KL on a weekday was really smooth. There was one other couple who was there (NB: That girl wore one of the shortest dresses I've ever seen). I like the setup of the place. It's got a pretty neat ambience for both a nice couple-y dinner or dinner with friends (or dinner with a couple where you're the third wheel).



Anyway, the food is pretty pricey. I mean, it is downtown KL and it is supposedly exotic, so you kind of expect it that way. Here are the menus - tapas and main courses.





As you can see, they have a good variety of tapas, even when we disregard the vegetarian tapas. We settled on Datiles Con Bacon, and Albondigias St Climient and some other vegetarian thing I don't remember. He Xiang, if you could kindly remind me what I did not eat, that'd be great.





The balls of the lamb. Pretty good, but nothing that special. It's a workable appetiser, but not something you HAVE to get.



Now, this Bacon thing was amazing. Seriously. Even its smell was phenomenal. If you do go, and you do get this, make sure you smell it before eating it. We unanimously agreed that this was the best thing we had that day.

For our mains, we decided to order 2 things and share 'em. We chose the Paella (with no vegetables) and the Mixed Souvlaki.



The Paella was very good, imo, fit for a meal for 2 people. Since it's very good, I gave it the nickname Paella ala Xabi Alonso since Xabi is a very good player. If it was phenomenal, I'd call it Paella ala Fernando Torres. Clearly, I've run out of jokes and am making stupid ones just to pretend that I'm funny. Anyway, they were generous with the meat in the Paella, which is, naturally, a good thing. The rice was done well, sticky enough and meshed well with the meat.



Going along with my footballers analogies, the meat skewer is kinda like Luis Garcia. (Btw, for those of you who know football, this is a fantastic analogy). The meat is really, really good (i.e. very, very talented), though if I were picking at nits, the beef was a little tough. The chicken and the lamb portions were very well done, very tender. Problem is, the portion is a little on the small side(i.e. We don't see his talent enough b'cos he's so inconsistent). Although we were sharing for 3 people, it still seemed as if the meat wasn't enough.

All in all though, I thoroughly enjoyed my meal. The tapas, Xabi Alonso Paella and Luis Garcia Souvlaki were overall, very good. Definitely a place I'd go to again without hesitation. Hopefully without having to be a lamp post. And hopefully, being able to come up with better jokes in the future. My overall score for it is 8.5/10.