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Thanks to my Foodsters’ guide…hubby and I have been trying a few new places for the past few weeks. I’ve been procrastinating on writing down my reviews…finally found the time today! Here goes…

Checkers (19 Lrg Setia Bistari 2, Bkt Damansara; 03-20953304): This was one hard restaurant to book…my first 3 attempts failed cause they were already fully booked! I finally grew a bit smarter and attempted to call a day earlier…*blush*…and we finally managed to get a table. It’s a really small restaurant, about 6 tables or so. Sam, the owner, recommended the following dishes: Porky’s Best, which are pork ribs with bbq sauce and hot mustard sauce, scampi, Mexican pork, and spaghetti with pesto sauce (can’t remember the actual name of the dish…must really bring a note book along when i go for my food trips!).

We went with my parents, so we were able to order more than usual…share-share la! The spaghetti arrived first…and we all hungrily dug in. The clams were really fresh, and the spaghetti was good enough to impress my dad (he really likes pasta!). Dish one…thumbs up! The Mexican pork and Porky’s Best came next…the Mexican pork was lovely. Soft succulent marinated pork meat…it totally melts in your mouth. According to Sam, this part of the meat is usually impossible to buy from the butcher…it’s apparently the most tender part of the piggy, and the butcher will usually bring it home to his family instead! True or not, we all dug in! I personally preferred the Mexican pork to Porky’s Best…probably because I found the latter to be a tad bit on the spicy side. By then, we were all quite stuffed…but we still had one more dish to go. The scampi was brought to our table with a huge loaf of bread. It looked amazingly good…and trust me, it tasted even better than it looked. The prawns were fresh, the bread was crunchy on the outside, soft and hot on the inside…perfect for soaking up the soup/sauce the prawns were cooked in. Plenty of tomatoes for flavour…and surprise surprise…melted cheese! Suffice to say, we cleaned out the whole dish…bread, soup, cheese and all! Unfortunately…our gluttony prevented us from ordering dessert….=(. A definite “must go back” place!

Bon Bon (20 Jln Telawi 2, Bangsar Baru; 03-22831100): We decided to bring my parents here for a belated Mother’s Day celebration. Although the restaurant was on the less happening side of Bangsar’s Telawi area…parking was still a huge problem. We finally parked somewhere near Bangsar Village and took a long walk over. The ambience of the restaurant was very much like a typical Italian/semi-posh restaurant. The funny thing was that we were the ones there throughout the course of our dinner…no other tables were occupied as far as we could see! Anyways….on to the food review. We ordered garlic bread to share, seafood soup and baby octopus salad. My mum had gnocchi with mushroom, dad had chicken breast, hubby had lamb shank, and i had Aglio Olio angel hair pasta. And ze verdict isss…..garlic bread was good….very garlicky, and piping hot. The soup was not too bad…plenty of seafood inside, but nothing to shout about. Don’t know about the octopus salad though…wouldn’t touch it with a foot-long pole. Mum’s gnocchi was pretty good, but I liked the mushrooms more than the gnocchi itself. Hubby loved his lamb shank, dad said his chicken breast was so-so only….and I totally fell in love with my pasta. Angel hair is somewhat skinnier than normal spaghetti, so it just doesn’t give you feeling that you’ve eaten too much. There was plenty of garlic and olive oil…it was just scrumptious. As usual, we were too full for dessert…so we left shortly after finishing dinner, and took a long long walk back to the car.

Gusto Bar and Bistro (15 Jln PJU 8/1 D’sara Perdana; 03-77242878): I read a review some time back about this restaurant, and when I saw it while flipping through Foodsters’ guide, we decided…why not? So off we went in my Honda Jazz…(I drove!)…=) The restaurant has an open air concept…most of the tables were out on the deck with only a few in the air-conditioned area. We decided to sit outside for a change…fresh air never killed anyone, right? Our first dish was an appetizer of fried prawns with aioli. Pronounced ay-OH-lee, it’s a light mayonnaise style sauce laden with fresh garlic. The prawns were lightly battered and not to oily, but for me, the aioli was the star of the dish. We both ordered soup as well. Hubby had….oh dear. I forgot what he had. Never mind…will update when I find out. I had seafood soup which turned out to be so-so only. For our main course, I order salmon with mango, while hubby had the recommended black pepper rib eye steak. Unfortunately, my salmon turned out to be half cooked and had to be sent back to the kitchen…=( Hubby said his steak was mediocre… really nothing much to shout about. Oh well. The ambience was quite nice though, although we did have a few mozzies buzzing around. This is a place to come with a group of friends on the weekend for some western/Italian food and light conversation. Unfortunately, we didn’t manage to order dessert cause we were too stuffed (it happens EVERY single time!!). When we left, a few tables were already occupied and the mozzies were up and awake. We ended taking a long walk around Ikea to walk off all the food….appetizer, soup and main course sits pretty heavily in one’s stomach, y’know? =)

Greenview (468, Jln 19/3 Petaling Jaya; 03-79549263): Foodsters’ guide recommended this restaurant for their butter crabs and the Sang Har Meen. We went there on a Saturday night..and even though we arrived at 7pm, there were some tables that were already finishing their dinner. My parents ordered the 2 recommended dishes plus steamed bamboo fish (Soon Hock) and fried asparagus. The Sang Har Meen, which is basically prawn noodles with egg gravy, arrived first and we all eagerly dug in. The noodles were just crunchy enough and the prawns were big and fresh. Hubby loved the gravy and went back for multiple helpings…=) The fish and asparagus were nothing special…something you could find in any normal Chinese restaurant. The crabs, however, was pretty interesting. It tasted like butter prawns…and the fried bits of egg (or something that tasted like egg) went perfectly well with white rice. Mum and I aren’t big crab fans…more due to laziness to use our fingers than anything, so the dish was mostly finished off by my dad and hubby. One of the crab was chocked full with crab roe….not something I would eat but I could see hubby liked it quite a lot. We finished off dinner with a huge bowl of ice cold longans and sea coconut. The portion was so large that we had two bowls each! All in all, it was a good dinner…definitely a place to go with your family (so that you can order more dishes!)…and definitely a place hubby and I want to try again! Oh…and we also ta-paued (take-away) the remainder of the crab for the cat that always visits our apartment’s parking lot…hehe…

New Paris Restaurant (62-66 Jln SS2/72 Petaling Jaya; 03-79559180): We stopped by at New Paris for lunch on the day we were supposed to collect my car. I had sweet and sour pork rice and hubby ordered boneless pork rice. But what really attracted me was when the waiter walked past our table with a huge plate of butter prawns for another table…I was practically drooling! Anyways, lunch was cheap and good (though the soup we ordered tasted really funny)…will definitely go back for dinner one day, even if it’s just to try the butter prawns! =)

Cheow Yang (157, Jln 2/6 Petaling Jaya): The last time I visited Cheow Yang was ages and ages ago. Foodsters’ guide recommended the roast pork rice, so we decided to give it a try. To my surprise, the rice came with chinese sausages (lap cheong)…one of my favourite ‘bad-for-health’ food. Hubby went all out and ordered lobak, century egg, weird black stuff, more chinese sausages and a bowl of prawn mee. After all that, we still weren’t full enough…so we wanted to buy a couple of yau char kuih (fried chinese crullers) from the stall outside (apparently it’s really famous for yau char kuih!). Well, someone high up there must have decided that we’d already eaten too much cause it was all sold out…=( Nevermind…all the more reason to go back…..hehe…

Restaurant Shang Ri-La (Damansara Heights, behind Klimts): Both my mum and Foodsters’ guide recommended a coffeeshop named Seng Lee at that area for the fried kway teow. But that coffeeshop was so packed and hot when we arrived that we decided to walk further down to Shang Ri-La (also recommended by Foodster’s as well for the duck wan tan mee and the fried kway teow). Since both hubby and I are not big fans of fried kway teow, we went for the wan tan mee instead. Predictable, hubby ordered the duck mee, while I went for char siew kai si (roasted pork and chicken strips). It took quite long for our food to arrive, but it was well worth the wait. The noodles were springy with just the right amount of sauce and I was pleasantly surprised to find mushroom strips as well. Hubby also enjoyed his duck mee…it was quite a big portion, actually! And after lunch, we stopped by the stall in front of Seng Lee to buy rojak (a Malaysian fruit ’salad’…the stall was recommended by my mum) to eat back home. The rojak had really thick sauce, so it didn’t get all wet and diluted from the moisture in the fruits by the time we reached home, unlike some other stalls. Also another ‘must-go-back’ stall!

Tung Poh (3 Jln 2/30 Petaling Jaya): We just had lunch there today. I actually wanted to try another restaurant in SS2, called ‘Shall We Meet?” but hubby shot my idea down. This shop is supposedly famous for their steamed fish head with plenty of garlic ginger sauce. And that was exactly what we ordered in addition to fried spinach in soup and fried crispy pork. We didn’t expect the fish head to be so huge…but the meat was succulent and sweet, and the ginger garlic sauce just added an extra ‘kick’ the the meal. The food was very ‘ching’, ie. light and not oily….and it had a very home-cooked feel to it. The crispy pork tasted somewhat like over-fried bacon…but eaten with the cucumber chunks, it tasted pretty good. There were pictures of other dishes up on the wall…would definitely like to come back again with my parents so that we can try more stuff. And a plus point…they had really nice soya bean….thick and not too sweet….=)

And some recent places that we found on our own:

Bakerzin (Bangsar Village): Amazingly light strawberry shortcake, fluffy crepes, some chocolate dessert thingy (forgot the name…)…a great place to come for afternoon tea. The prices do burn a hole in your pocket though…=)

Superbowl (1 Utama, old wing, near Barn Thai): Come here for the super smooth Tau Foo Fa. And I really mean super smooth!

Shall We Meet (SS2, same row as Novel House): Yet another Hong Kong eatery…but this one has an interesting noodle menu. You get to choose your combination of toppings, ie. shredded pork, fried sausages, eggs, etc.), your choice of noodle and your choice of sauce. Talk about not knowing what to order!! The rest of the fare is pretty standard….French bread with butter, etc. etc. The menu contains pages after pages of different type of food, from rice to noodles to Nissin noodles to dessert to ice blended drinks…definitely not a good place to go if you are an indecisive sort of person!

And something for laughs. We found this in a hardware store in 1 Utama. Reminds me of my mum’s old car where a secret compartment had the label ’secret compartment’ in the front for all and sundry to see!

It’s bad enough the first picture had the key hider labelled ‘key hider’…but EXTRA LARGE key hider?!?