Kuala Lumpur - Weiss Brau

I don't drink beer as much as I used to, being gluten intolerant I didn't realize it was really effecting me until recently and that I tend to feel so much better (in comparison) after a night of drinking cider or wine or spirits instead. So whilst I'll drink it if it's there, if there is another option (like cider!) I usually opt for that instead.

However, one weakness I do have, after spending 6 months in Germany back in 2008, is German beer. Like, the real stuff. And I will jump through hoops (on fire? Maybe) if I can get it on tap.

Which is how we ended up in a German restaurant in Malaysia on an exceedingly disgusting humid evening.

Rough, rustic walls and dark solid timber, solid, sturdy furniture, you don't need a lot to capture the look of a charming old pub in the Aldstadt. Although to be honest I generally found them a bit brighter and with more wood rather than concrete on the walls...but who's really to be picky here?

So let's get back to beer for a bit. Why do I like German beer? I think the biggest thing for me is that it's a whole lot less gassy than pretty much every other beer, it goes down like water for me. It's not overly sweet, not overly bubbly. I love the dark beers, as long as they're not too bitter, which you don't really seem to get in any other country. Not like this anyway.

So of course I could not resist tucking into the Erdbringer dark beer, it really went down like sweet water, so easy to drink!

My Dad opted for the huge-ass Hoegarden, which I hate from the bottle, I reckon it tastes really smokey, but on tap, I adore it. I love the spicy yet fruity tones in it. Although in my eyes, German beer still wins over Belgium, if purely because it's less gassy. I suppose since I don't drink soft drink (unless I'm having it with alcohol, which is still not that often), I'm not so adjusted to bubbles. What do you guys reckon? Any of you beer drinkers or do you have a different poison?

Naturally with a good dose of beer, you need a good dose of food as well. We contemplated a long time whether we needed the sausage platter or not, but ended up just choosing a few dishes to share...which fortunately was the right choice as we were very comfortably satiated afterwards. I insisted we get the bratwurst, not incredibly memorable. I have fond memories of the bratwurst I used to get from a stand, right outside of the main train station in Dusseldorf, so naturally have quite high expectations. It wasn't bad in flavour, but the texture put me off a bit, it was a bit too soft, reminded me a bit more of a weisswurst (which are from Bavaria, typically had for breakfast and typically boiled).

We also go the the Nurnbergers, which I think are more along the lines with what I was expecting of what they called the Bratwurst. I did enjoy these more, they were a bit meatier (albeit smaller) in taste.

Lastly, we were very excited to order the pork knuckle, both my parents had visited me at various times while I was in Germany and I had exposed the both of them to beautiful and huge, roasted pork knuckles with delicious crackling skin. When this was presented in front of us, we were baffled, it was so small! Although the price reflected that I suppose, although it wasn't as good as I was hoping it would be either. The meat was a bit tough and definitely not crispy. Shame!

Being in Germany tuned in my taste buds to falling in love with good, hot mustard. I always enjoy having it with my meat when I can. However I was kind of baffled I could get disappointing mustard, I mean yes, sometimes it's too mild for me, but it's never really been off putting. This one was not just mild, but the texture was really not very pleasant. It was very watery and more liquid like than I expected. I like a dollop of mustard on my plate thank you, not drizzled over my meat like a sauce!

So Weiss Brau, a little bit disappointing with the food, but at least there was beer to drown my sorrows in. Tasty, tasty beer. I need to find somewhere that has this stuff in Melbourne, any suggestions?

Weiss Brau

Pavillion

168 Jalan Bukit Bintang

55100 Kuala Lumpur

Malaysia

Bloggiversary!

Hi guys! I'm still behind in getting reviews of places in Malaysia up (even after I've been home in Melbourne for two weeks...) and am hoping to get Melbourne places up again soon (working on it!)

However, this little post is just to intervene and say...

It's my Bloggiversary!

My blog is officially one year old, which honestly is just baffling to me.

I could never have thought that I would actually continue actively doing this for so long! It all just simply started from a brother's tutor holiday project. Take pictures of all your meals.

The habit kind of stuck with me, especially since I was traveling a fair bit and my family, even though I guess I wasn't fully aware of it until more recently, really are crazy and passionate about food and we always end up eating quite interesting things.

So as I started enjoying eating out more as family took me out, I continued the trend back home in Melbourne and started going out with my friends for meals and taking pictures of everything for facebook.

Lo and behold, someone says I should write reviews, make a blog of all the places I eat at. And well, here we are now.

Whilst I still have many things I would like to do with this blog (work more on the layout for one), I am quite amazed at how much blogging I have actually done and definitely have continued to be encouraged and pushed by my best friend David and my wonderful boyfriend Brad, who always unwittingly end up being my dining partners most of the time. Twas David who strongly suggested I start using my Nikon DSLR when eating and it's one of the best things in my opinion, I continue my love of taking photos and I get to eat as well. Awesome!

Evan (who would dine with me waay back in late Uni years), myself, Brad and the ever lovable David.

All my other friends and family have also been so amazingly supportive, my family often helping me rearrange the food or helping compose a picture by finding a neat way to lay out the cutlery around the dish, and of course, being patient enough while I run around taking pictures of everything before the food is eaten! I have honestly been so surprised at how well friends have taken to me quickly snapping pictures before meals, I have never been once rushed or teased about it.

I have also loved getting to know the food blogger community and it really is a tight knit community! It's always inspiring to read other blogger's views of things and motivating to do more work on my blog!

So here's to another year of eating and eating very well!

Kuala Lumpur - Restoran Sri Paandi

When I was in Malaysia, I kept insisting to my day, the first day I arrived that I wanted Indian food, specifically South Indian food. My dad wanted to take me to a place called 'Raja's' but my uncle insisted we should go to this other place instead, specifically for the banana leaf rice.

Apparently there are two Indian places on this street, one opened then another...with the same name as the first. It apparently got a bit messy, lawyers were brought in and this restaurant got to keep the name and seems to be the busier of the two places.

So it's kind of hard to keep track of everything that we ate. It wasn't too busy, but we were a table of about 20 people and I don't think the restaurant is used to dealing with so many customers at once! As a result, the service was quite gruff and very brusque and there was a lot of shouting and nodding and hand gestures going on throughout the night, although since I wasn't ordering (since the rest of my family can speak bahasa and hence, communicate far more effectively), to me it was really quite hilarious and there was a very lively bustle. Although I would definitely wouldn't plan on bringing a date here anytime soon...

Aaah...I love fresh cold coconut juice fresh from the coconut in Asia, so sweet and so good for you!

It's kind of difficult to explain the food here. It's South Indian, so less of that tandoori and rogan josh and more dahl curries and dosai. Throughout the night we ordered an assortment of roti and dosai, then pots with a cariety of dahl curries would be placed on our tables for us to ladle onto our trays.

Then of course for the meat lovers the servers would come around with a tray, with several small plates of lamb or chicken curry.

Or fried chicken. These in particular were absolutely delicious, you know they're totally coated in oil and absolutely terrible for you but you can help but devour it in about two bites. They're super crispy around the outside and just delicious. The plates being so small and with so many of us there, we were constantly ordering more plates!

Whilst the roti was lovely and came out fairly promptly, the majority of the dahl was fairly mediocre, except for one that I think had tomatoes in it as well, with a great bit of bite. The curries also seemed to take a while to get to us and always got to us fairly cold. Overall not very memorable. The dosai also took absolutely forever to get out to me, I was quite annoyed by this as I really was quite ravenous!

So I earlier mentioned banana leaf rice, which is pretty much as literal as you can get...almost. They give you a banana leaf instead of a plate, they put rice on it, a couple of condiments including beanshoots and cucumber raita and of course, an assortment of dahl curries. Not so many places do it this way anymore, instead using plastic mats or just resorting to plates, which doesn't quite have the same feel if you ask me personally. Oh and of course, you eat with your fingers.

And when you're finished, wrap up your plate and pop your drink on top, so they don't accidentally come around and top you up with more!

Whilst definitely a fun experience and quite a novelty, the food itself certainly wasn't spectacular. Doubt I'd go back and will definitely get Dad to take me to Raja's next time....

Sri Paandi

36 Jalan Tun Mohd Fuad 1

60000 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Kuala Lumpur - Al Amar

I have favourite cuisines I tend to fall onto, I love Japanese food....I love Spanish tapas....I love home made Chinese food...and I do hate to admit it a little bit, but they are the very trendy cuisines you tend to find everywhere at the moment. But I promise that's not the reason I love them! What do you guys like eating?

While I was in Hong Kong, I had a friend who said her favourite type of food was Lebanese food and I was taken aback for a bit. Had I had Lebanese food before?

One of mum's favourite food magazines, is one called 'Flavours' in Malaysia, for those playing the macaron game, it's where she got her recipe for macarons and it's the only recipe that's almost always given her macarons shells feet. Excellent magazine!

This month, they had some of Malaysia's top chefs, vote on their top 30 or so restaurants, I flipped eagerly through trying to see if there was anything nearby me and lo and behold, the best Lebanese? Al Amar, right across the road in Pavillion.

It's sumptuous, it's magenta (or maybe a crimson?), its huge! I love the mixture of the ornate lamps and decor, with the pristine white tablecloths and all the cutlery perfectly in line. It's really an interesting contrast.

My family and I were pretty much the only people in the restaurant and we had a sweet girl from Myanmar as our waitress. The menu was quite sizeable, cold mezze, hot mezze, salads, things of the grill, platters...it's a pain when your eyes are bigger than your stomach isn't it?

Whilst my mum and I settled for some lovely mint tea (which I didn't realise had caffeine in it and kept me up all night...) I convinced my brother to get the non-alcoholic apple flavoured beer. Out of curiosity. It really just tastes like fizzy apple juice, but it was very refreshing. Don't know why they bother to sell it as non-alcoholic beer though...

Ah the bread. Oh the bread. I could smell it coming from two feet away, that warm, fresh from the oven smell was absolutely intoxicating. And aren't they just adorable? I thought they sort of looked like little cushions. They were lovely, fluffy and hot, a little pocket of hot air inside them. I don't normally swoon so hard over bread...but my goodness.

We started with two cold mezze dips, this one was the hommos, more commonly spelt hummus, a chick pea cream made of mashed chickpeas mixed with tahina sauce and topped with olive oil. This was just delightful, isn't the presentation just gorgeous? There was a nice citrus zing to it and the texture was just to die for.

Isn't this one presented beautifully too? I absolutely adore the colour! This was the Mhammara, spicy chilli and tomato paste mixed with tahina and topped with walnuts and bread crumbs. This really had a spicy bite to it, and was very much in your face, but oh so tasty. Tomatoes! I think I had this one first and then the hommos, it did initially make the hommos taste much less impressive, but the hommos subtle taste really comes out afterwards, would definitely recommend both of these!

In an attempt to be healthy we decided to get a salad, this was the Fattouch (I think), apparently a traditional 'must have' comprising of tomato, cucumber, lettuce, radish, served with their special sumac sauce. I honestly always forget you shouldn't get salads in Asia. They're always quite uninspiring and quite bland. This was really just a bowl full of lettuce with some extra stuff on top.

Then our hot mezze arrived! This was fried chicken liver, topped with pomegranate molasses. Aaaah. I get my love of offal from my dad. Whilst obviously not as fine as foie gras per say, it was still really quite rich. I didn't quite get the sweetness of the molasses, the meatiness of the liver was really all you needed. Perfect mouth size bites to pop in your mouth and purr happily about (or maybe that's just what I do...).

My dad's very well chosen choice, the Makanek, lamb sausages. These were piping hot and just had a wee bit of spice to them. Nothing negative to say about these!

My brother decided we should get the chicken chawarma platter, which I turned my nose down on initially, who needs french fries at a Lebanese restaurant? However though, the chicken itself was scrumptious, torn about and tender, my mum and I kept picking at it with our sneaky fingers. There was a nice char to it and it was served with a delicious garlic sauce. I'm assuming aioli.

My brother demonstrates how to stuff the flat bread provided and eat it.

We were nicely full but my brother also decided that we needed to have the lamb Kabbseh. Sadly, after the salad, this was the most lack lustre dish of the meal, shame it had to come out last. Meat wasn't so tender, with that kind of stewed texture, rice was underwhelming and flavours overall, not impressive.

We decided not to have some dessert....although we did indulge in a little shisha/hookah/whatever you call it. I don't do it on a regular basis!

An impressive interior, nice efficient and quiet service during lunch (I think I've seen belly dancers around this place at night) and overall quite tasty food. I would definitely stick to the mezze's next time and just get an assortment of them rather than getting the bigger items on the menu. Them seem to get the little guys right.

Al Amar

Top Floor, Pavillion

168 Jalan Bukit Bintang

55100 Kuala Lumpur

Malaysia

Kuala Lumpur - My Popiah

Ah Popiah, one of my favourite little Malaysian snacks, that I have actually yet to come across in Melbourne. Which is a shame. But at the same time, a bonus as I then have a perfectly good excuse and feel no shame shoveling them down my throat when I am back in Malaysia.

It is typically a street food, but obviously in the city which is now dominated by malls, someone will naturally come along, pick it up, put it in a fancy suit and put it in a place them office workers might find it.

My mum and my aunt stumbled upon this first and were surprised that I hadn't seen it yet! So after lunch and a bit of shopping in Pavilion, we descended in to the 'Food Republic' food court and bought some to take home.

Mmm, free samples! Basically what popiah is, is a thin crepe-like wrapper, which is filled with a sweet sauce (usually a bean sauce, sometimes hoisin or a shrimp paste), sometimes a hot chilli sauce, finely grated and steamed turnip and a variety of other ingredients, which tend to change from store to store. It's pretty much the healthiest Malaysian street food you'll probably come across!

My popiah has the classic mixes, but of course, being fresh and funky, they've got some 'fusion' and fancier flavours in there as well.

We opted to get the 'crunchy' which has a very very generous sprinkling of dried shallots, along with the radish, some cucumber and peanuts and the 'seaweed' where they put in a few strips of dried seaweed.

I love that it's freshly made on the spot, these ones hold together pretty well and are just delicious, I get mine with the spicy chilli sauce as I love the that spicy bite! The crunchy popiah was exceptionally delicious from all the dried onion/shallots and the mix of textures between the soft steamed radish and the ultra crunchy (they're seriously not kidding) shallots.

Some pictures of the process!

Mmmm, sweet sauce....

A dash of peanuts....or more than that....

Bit of cucumber and more condiments...

Nearly ready....

Roll them up...

And take them home to devour! Omnomnomnom!

My Pohpiah

Pavillion

168 Jalan Bukit Bintang

55100 Kuala Lumpur

Malaysia