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.

Santini

I've always thought Santini was a French name, but hey, it's this Italian restaurant in Tropicana City. So, y'know, you learn something new everyday.

I think it's best to describe this place with a theory, called the Tipping Point Friend Theory described by my favourite sportswriter, Bill Simmons. Here it goes:

"Every group of female college friends goes between eight and twelve girls deeps. Within that group, there might be three or four little cliques and the backstabbing is through the roof, but the girls get along for the most part and make a big deal about hanging out, doing dinners, having special weekends and everything else. Maybe two of them get married early, then the other ones start dropping in their mid-20s until there's only five left - the cute blonde who can't get a boyfriend because she's either a drunk, an anorexic, or a drunkorexic; the cute brunette who only attracts assholes; the 185-pounder who'd be cute if she lost weight; the not-so-cute one with a great sense of humour; and the sarcastic chain-smoker with 36DDs who isn't quite cute enough to land anyone but hooks up a lot because of the 36DDs. In this scenario, the cute brunette is the Tipping Point Friend - as long as she's in the group, guys will approach them in bars, clubs or wherever. Once she settles down with a non-asshole, now all the pressure in on the drunkorexic and if she can't handle it, then the girl with 36DDs has to start wearing crazy shirts and blouses to show off her guns."

My point is this: Santini is like the sarcastic chain-smoker with 36DDs who hooked up often but never found a serious suitor. Simply because there's not much competition for 'upscale-type' restaurants in Tropicana Mall and they're suddenly the hottest friend in the group. Does this mean they're hot? Of course not.


Some average pizza.


Some average thingy.


Some average thing.


My average lasagna.

See, maybe I'm being overly harsh. But really, the portions are small, the food isn't great and it's overpriced. The reason I didn't elaborate on each dish (as you know I am wont to do) is simply that you'd be reading the same thing for each dish (which I probably have written before). So, yeah, in terms of pricing, it's at the Puerto Rican Specialty Factory level for rather disappointing food. Like the chain-smoker with the 36DDs, Santini hooks up often (gets a lot of one-time customers) but doesn't land anyone permanent. It gets a 4/10 on my ranking scale.

Betty's Midwest Kitchen

I recognise that I haven't updated this site for a long, long time. In your defense, yeah, one month is a bit too long. In my defense, I've suddenly found myself indispensable to Lord and land. So there.

Usually, when someone mentions the word/name "Betty", I think two things. Betty Cooper from the Archieverse and Betty Draper from Mad Men. In the spirit of Betty, I shall provide a twist on this review. Yes, that's a deliberate attempt to keep you reading for at least a little bit.

For the record, I'm clearly biased about my Betty's, as you will surely figure out.

So, firstly location. Betty's is located at Jalan PJU 1/43, Aman Suria, Petaling Jaya, Selangor. Basically, head towards Tropicana from Bandar Utama, but before that short short tunnel just before Tropicana, hit a left and it's on the row of shop houses on your left. It's pretty simple to find. Rating: 6/10 Betty Coopers.

Next, service. Apparently, on weekends, you can't make reservations which is fair, but you can on weekdays. I have, in the spirit of human-hood, generously provided the phone number for the place:- (603) 7880-0196, should you want to go on weekdays. Anyway, we went there for He Xiang's belated birthday dinner. It was meant to be a surprise, but as per usual, our most reliable friend, Cheap Shit Chew wrecked the whole operation. Anyway, there were 10 of us, which meant a really long wait for a table given that the place is pretty popular. As I remember, we waited for about an hour, which you know, just isn't really that awesome. So, I'll have to give this 7/10 Betty Drapers.

Ambience. See, I love all things classic Americana. Malt shops, diners, Elvis, the 'idea' of baseball, Archie comics etc. So, it's nice that they try to decorate the place Americana style. But, if you really think about it, a 'real' Americana feeling wouldn't try too hard to be Americana. While I have to give them props for effort, I'm taking some Betty Coopers away for trying too hard. 4/10 Betty Coopers.



Eventality. This is a word I just made up to mean "Event Versatility". Basically, what this is is a measure of what sort of event would be appropriate to have at this place. So, I really like that it's a very family-and-friends sort of feel, but it's probably not somewhere you want to bring a date, unless of course, you're like my college roommate. Overall, 8/10 Betty Coopers.

Of course, I realise I've made you read something like 500 words without mentioning anything about food, which would be fine, except this is a food blog. Now, we'll go through this in ascending order.



Meatloaf. I didn't have this so I can't really say too much about it but word from my Asian correspondents (we're all Asian, so I guess the Asian there was redundant but still) was, "We should've got something else." Fair enough. Just like how Don Draper should've gotten someone else, I'll give this 7/10 Betty Drapers.



Country-Fried Chicken. Okay, this I had. And it was a particularly facepalm moment. See, I thought I was ordering Country-Fried Steak which I hadn't had in some time. But well, I guess I've wired my brain to see everything as steak. So when I realised that, "Oh, crap, I'm having Country-Fried Chicken instead of Country-Fried Steak", it was way too late. Anyway, the Fried Chicken itself wasn't too bad. It was just average. Granted, I'm clearly biased towards KFC so it was never going to be a winner here. The mashed potatoes were fricking awesome, texture and gravy just perfect but y'know, you don't go to a Laker game to see Derek Fisher do well. So, I'll give this 4/10 Betty Drapers, only b'cos the mashed potatoes redeemed it somewhat.



So, apparently this place is famous for its ribs. Natcherly, we had to try it out. We ordered 2 sets of ribs to share between us. And I'd say the ribs are fairly decent. But that's just it, it's only fairly decent to the point there's not much to say about it. It's like the Steve Finnan of ribs (In fairness, I love Steve Finnan, but let's just say I had to learn to love him). So, this gets 2/10 Betty Coopers.



Now, I'm not the best judge of this one since it's called "Dogfood" on the menu. It really is just cheese fries, but given its moniker on the menu, the final ranking can only be appropriately given by my buddy CCW. Nevertheless, I thought this was brilliant stuff. I miss good ol' cheese fries. Sure, it probably shortened my life by half a year, and increase the probability of me having heart problems in the future, but hey, it was worth it. As much as I would like to give this 10/10 Betty Coopers, Betty Cooper wouldn't shorten my life by half a year and increase the chances of me having heart problems. So, this gets a 8/10 Betty Coopers on the Betty Cooper scale.



This last one is pretty much the bomb. Pigs in a blanket. So unhealthy, but so damn good. It's basically a sausage (pig) wrapped in a slice of bacon (blanket). This in itself makes it worth going to Betty's. It really is an explosion of everything that's good in this world when it enters your mouth. You know that speech the Sam Gamgee made at the end of the Two Towers about how...ah, screw it. I'm typing it out. Chokes me up. Every single time.

"I know. It's all wrong. By rights we shouldn't even be here. But we are. It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger, they were. And sometimes you didn't want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it's only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn't. They kept going. Because they were holding on to something."


Sam Gamgee.

Anyway, I think it's fair to say that when Frodo asks him, "What are we holding on to, Sam?", one of the appropriate answers to this question is "Pigs in a blanket from Betty's Midwest Kitchen." So, while this is superbly unhealthy, but it's probably illegal to give this anything but 10/10 Betty Coopers.

Deserves a second picture tbf.



Look at the cute little piggies, about to be devoured by the big bad wolf.

So, aggregating it all up (leave the Math to me, unless, y'know, you do macroeconomic modeling for a living - yes, I'm smirking at you now), this gets a very nice 8.5/10 on my scale (we've left the Betty Draper and Betty Cooper scale behind now). It's let down by the Betty Drapers, but as usual Betty Cooper saves the day. Price wise, it's a Mid-Level Exception, about 20 bucks per person (we did split the check though). Also, I'd suggest that if you come here, you're better off ordering the sides and sharing them rather than ordering individual dishes. It's just more fun this way and the sides are better anyway as shown by Dogfood and Pigs in a Blanket.

Good Evening, Bangkok

See, I love Malaysia. However I feel about Boston or New York City or whatever, I'm happiest at home. I mean, when I compare what I have here versus what I have there, it's no contest, really.

The mall in which I pretty much grew up has always been one of my favourite haunts. 1 Utama has everything. Cinema, fairly-stocked book store to just laze for a couple of hours, Intenci...oh wait, nevermind, and Good Evening Bangkok.

God, I love the place. It's located on the Ground Floor of the New Wing by the Rainforest area. I've been going there for a few years now, mostly with Zulie and Liyana, 2 awesome eating buddies. And we all love this place.

We usually get the same stuff. I think a must-have is the Seafood Tomyam Soup (not the clear one, just get the regular one). One bowl can be shared between two people. Personally, I prefer sharing with Liyana cos she doesn't eat seafood. Awesome. The soup is spicy enough such that there's a kick to it, but not overly spicy to the point where you don't really want to have more of it.



The soup alone is enough to have with rice, actually. But, natcherly, we go for more. The other thing we generally get is Pandan Chicken!



The Pandan Chicken here is usually very tender and somehow blends perfectly with the Tomyam soup. I mean, they're both equally good on their own, but together, it's like magic. A good analogy would be that the Chicken is like Xavi and the soup is like Andres Iniesta, and together, they form a potent combo. No? Not feeling this analogy? Nevermind, moving on...

Since we had a Fourth for this outing (Vanessa), we got a 3rd dish (well, 4th, but I hardly count their stupid Kangkong as a dish. It's like saying Edward Cullen is a real vampire) which was the Green Curry Chicken. And holy shit, it's good.



The curry is spicy. And good spicy too. Blending the curry, with the soup, and using that as gravy for the chicken, and it's like the feeling when you win a huge poker pot, your team wins the European Cup and you score the girl of your dreams, except all three things happen simultaneously, and in your mouth. That sounded dodgy, but I'm just saying it's awesome.


Xavi + Iniesta + Messi = This

The downside though is that this place is pricey. It costs about 40 bucks per person per meal, so it's a little expensive to be going there often. Plus, if you went there often and kept ordering these, your brain would explode from pure delicious-ness. But every now and then, it's a grand place to go for some great food at the world's greatest mall (completely objective).

Overall, I give this a barnstorming 9/10. And oh, as was suggested by my buddy, Zain, I now have an arbitrary price ranking for the restaurants. Just to be a bit creative, here are my 4 categories:-

C.Chew = Cheap = RM 15 and below
Mid-Level Exception = Moderate = RM16-RM25
Puerto Rican Specialty Factory = Pricey = RM26-RM50
Firebolt Broom = Expensive = RM51 above

So, clearly, as I told you the prices earlier, this one is classified under Puerto Rican Specialty Factory. As a parting shot,THE DORKS WILL ONE DAY INHERIT THE EARTH SO TAKE THAT!

Claypot Chicken Rice in DJ (2)

I would've posted this up a lot sooner but my internet was down over the last few days. Somehow, I survived the immensely traumatising ordeal. Seriously, 5 days without the internet is no laughing matter.

Anyway, this is the second of the two Claypot Chicken Rice stores in DJ that I mentioned. This place used to share a coffee shop, also in DJ, with some other stalls but gradually became too popular (always a good sign) and thus moved out to become its own store.



And my friends, this one is really good. It's open for lunch and dinner with the exception of Wednesdays (no idea why). It's a little pricier than the previous place, but it's completely worth it. Well, with a couple of caveats.



Firstly, this place is packed. Really packed around dinner time, i.e. you have to stand and wait for a table. Therefore, it's not difficult to see that you have to wait a really long time for the food. This is what turns a lot of people off.

Let's suppose you decide to wait since, like I said, it's completely worth it. But then you think, "Hmmm, I've been waiting a long time. Maybe I should ask the lady." Well, that's a terrible idea. The boss, Irene, has a temper as long as the attention span of an ADD kid. 'The customer is always right' be damned. She will tell you off and tell you to be patient. She will yell at you and tell you to wait. She will not-so-politely tell you that if you're tired of waiting, you can leave.

How does one get around this, one might ask. Well, there are three things. Firstly, wait for it, but that's not really optimal. Secondly, you could come really early, but I understand that you have to make your contributions to society. Thirdly, give her a call, and order in advance. Call her (number in the picture) about half an hour to forty-five minutes before you intend to eat and it's all good. You will escape the wrath of Irene.

When my family goes, we usually order 2 large, 1 small (for the 4 of us) with Extra Chicken. A large one is like this:-



Whatever it is, they don't stinge on the chicken, unlike the other place. The chicken is always tender and is optimally complemented by the cap. Brilliant stuff.



Avoiding the caveats I mentioned earlier, this is a fantastic place for dinner. 9/10 on my scale. I promise you, you will feel fulfilled after this meal.

Claypot Chicken Rice in DJ (1)

As far as I know, there are 2 Claypot Chicken Rice shops in DJ which are pretty reputable. Of course, loving Claypot Chicken Rice as much as I do, I went to both of them.

The first of these two places is Busy Corner. It's pretty popular during lunch and dinner time. It's located along the same row of shops as Blitz and ProXTreme, at the shoplots right behind KDU, by the PETRONAS.



As you can see, the price is fairly inexpensive. RM12 for a Large bowl (fit for 2 people) is decent. Of course, I didn't try the Black Pepper Steak and the Prawns one, so I can't tell if the meal is worth the extra cost.



It really irks me when there's still some semblance of vegetables after I distinctly told them, "NO VEGETABLES." I find it a bit difficult to believe that they don't consider onions and chung as vegetables. Nevertheless, it still looked fairly enticing. But, of course, the hottest girl in the room has a wart on her butt, or so I've heard before.



They're not very generous with the chicken. The chicken-to-rice ratio is pretty low. Between my buddy, Heng Lean, and myself, there were maybe just 3 (rather small) pieces of chicken to be eaten with the rice. The rice in itself is just okay. The gravy isn't great.



Another view that seriously demonstrates the low chicken-to-rice ratio. On a positive note though, the service is pretty quick. We got our bowl within something like 5 minutes of ordering. But, be warned. We wanted to order 2 small or something like that only for the person to tell us that they didn't prepare smalls, just larges. I probably made up the words 'smalls' and 'larges' but whatever.

Don't get me wrong, it's an overall decent (read: average) place to get a quick meal. It's like a slightly-better-than-an-average-McDonald's-meal meal. Emphasis on slightly. For the sake of clarification, when I mean an average McDonald's meal, I mean something like the McChicken set or the Chicken McNuggets set. Something generic like that.

For a quick meal (i.e. While waiting for friends to play computer games), it's a fair pick. But, it's not somewhere you want to be going regularly or if you're looking for a tasty meal. As such, it gets a 6/10.

Pak Cik Nasi Lemak

There's this sports theory that goes by the name of the Martian Premise. It was coined by Bob Ryan, a sportswriter for the Boston Globe. Basically, it says, if the destruction of Earth could only be prevented by a 48 minute basketball game versus an all-Martian team, what team would you send?

Borrowing from that idea, I'm switching it around here. If Martians invaded this planet and the only way they wouldn't destroy the Earth (after stealing our unobtanium) was to enjoy a truly Malaysian dish which ranked a 10 on the scale of 1 to 10 where 10 is sheer ambrosia, what would you feed them?

Well, my answer is this:-



Nasi Lemak. Not just any nasi lemak, the Pak Cik Nasi Lemak by the mosque and roundabout in Uptown. He's open every morning from 7.15 to like 9.30 (that's when he's sold everything, probably even sooner on weekends). His wife is in charge of another 'branch' in Damansara Jaya, behind KDU, opposite the PETRONAS station.



So why do I like this place? Well, I have been coming to this place for nasi lemak ever since I grew teeth. The Pak Cik has always invited me to his open house for Hari Raya. But my obvious bias aside, the sotong for this place is out-of-this-world (which is why it's perfect for the Martians). While both the badan and the janggut are both great, I personally prefer the janggut. The gravy for the sotong is immense. I'd say it's good enough to replace the standard sambal that people have with nasi lemak.

It's a little bit expensive for stall-based nasi lemak, but then again I always tambah nasi and tambah sotong, which costs me RM5 total. So, if you don't want extra stuff, it's probably about average, RM3-ish. If there's going to be a weakness, I'd say his Chicken isn't that great, just about average, but hey, you don't watch the Cleveland Cavaliers to see Jamario Moon, you go to see Lebron James. Yes, I just compared the best basketball player today to squid. So, yes, for nasi lemak sotong, it's actually a great price given the awesomeness of the food.





Seriously, after this meal, I'm 100% sure the Martians would be happy and would call off the invasion. The downside of this is that they might abduct the Pak Cik to feed the Martian population though. Which makes me wonder if I really should introduce them to this. I mean, would I risk the destruction of Earth or be forced to see the Pak Cik and his nasi lemak go? I'd probably choose not to destroy the Earth, but I had to think about it.

All aside though, on a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 is Bittergourd (I've never had it, but I heard it's unbelievably nasty), 5 is the average McDonald's meal, and 10 is sweet nectar of the Gods, this is a 10.