HAPPY LABOUR DAY!!!

Yay! No need to work so hard tomorrow cos it's May 1, Labour Day!

HAPPY HOLIDAY GUYS!!! :D

Simple Dinner @ Pa Ka Seng Seafood Restaurant, Setapak

Deardo and I decided to spend our Sunday in KL a few weeks back and asked Vivian to meet us there where we had a little sisterly time enjoying great food and shopping. 

Trying out new dresses at H&M! Don't ya love my new mint dress? 

At night I suggested that we send her back to Setapak where I also used to stay at during my two years college time. So much of flash back of memories going on my mind just by strolling past the mamak store, restaurants and the condos I used to live in. Of course, Setapak and Wangsa Maju has developed quite a lot since then with so much more condos and choices in terms of F&B! So... We randomly picked Pa Ka Seng Seafood Restaurant to have our dinner before sending Vivian home.

Totally stole this from a random blogger! Thanks yaw~! :p

The restaurant is very clean and new-looking but with a lot of people dining that night. Since we had quite a pricey lunch at Morganfirled's, we only ordered those not-so-pricey dishes for dinner.

Yuen Yong Tilapia Fish in Marmite and butter oats flavours. RM30.

Mantis Prawn with Salted Egg. RM15.

Claypot Tofu. RM15.

Stir-fry Mixed Vege. RM12.

To me, the most impressive dish was the Tilapia simply because I've not tried Tilapia cooked so complicatedly in my life! And because it was cooked both in Marmite and butter oats flavours, the fishy smell that normally comes with Tilapia are all gone! That was a really unique and yummy dish! :) (Actually I kinda miss it now that I'm typing this... ) The mantis prawn with salted egg was not too bad too, only complain is that the portion is a little too small. The Claypot Tofu and Stir-fry mixed vege were both slightly above average as well.

My Sunday night dinner companions! :)

With a pot of Chinese tea for three and two portions of rice, the bill came up to RM77.40. Not the cheapest seafood dinner in town but still very reasonable, especially considering the fact that the food were of satisfactory level, restaurant is quite clean and service is fast too! 
Vivian told me she knows of another nice place for dinner near her place and it might be cheaper too! Time to make another trip to Setapak! *rub palms~*

Pa Ka Seng Seafood Restaurant
21, Jalan Bunga Kantan,
Taman P. Ramlee,
53000 Setapak,
Kuala Lumpur
Tel: 012-299 1685 (Mr. David Phoon)

Awesome Pork Ramen @ Menya Musashi, Isetan 1 Utama

I remember the last time we went to a really nice place for the most awesome Ramen was at Santouka Hokkaido Ramen at Pavilion. Needless to say, the Ramen was super good but it was also too expensive that we have not gone back for a second time so far.

And then Deardo found out about Menya Musashi through a colleague and one night after work we decided to give it a go. Situated in Eat Paradise, Isetan in One Utama, it is quite hard to identify this particular restaurant because well there are too many Japanese restaurants in that area and there are more than one that sell Ramen. So look out for the entrance, which has the name in Japanese, in stead of English!

We had to order and pay at the front counter before sitting down. And then we sat down and look around and wow~ Such interesting deco! It's basically a Samurai themed restaurant with a lot of cool paintings of Samurais and I was especially amazed by their Samurai lights hanging on the ceiling! They have their branding on all bowls, cutlery and serviettes, which is pretty cool too. The kitchen staffs, who aren't Japanese were yelling some taglines once in maybe every 10 minutes, which is cute even though I have zero idea what's the meaning and whether they even pronounce the Japanese line correctly! 

Good branding and deco speaks volume in food industry nowadays! 

And then came our food... 

The Special Shiro Set! 

My Shiro Ajitama Ramen! Look at the 'kaw kaw' soup! 

You can add curry powder and chili oil if you want to! 

Well the Ramen are differentiate by flavours and ingredients (although they all comes with pork). For instance, spicy or non-spicy and with egg or non-egg. Deardo ordered a Special Shiro Set at RM35. It comes with a Pork Ramen, a Terryiaki Chicken Rice, a salad, Gyoza and green tea. Quite a good deal  if you ask me. I went for a Shiro Ajitama Ramen, which comes with a hard-boiled egg and cost us RM24. Personally, I love the Ramen soup heaps. The thick pork broth and its fragrant made the bowl of Ramen so freaking delicious and unless if you are not a pork person, the bowl of Ramen is really super awesome! I almost finished the entire bowl of soup! The Terryiaki Chicken Rice was yummy too though not the best I've had lar. The Gyoza was just so-so. 

We had a satisfying dinner, that's for sure! :)

The bill came up to RM70.75, including green tea, service charge and government tax. While I think the portion aren't as big as the one at Santouka, there isn't anything else I would complain about the Ramen here. Plus, it is also slightly cheaper to eat here! So I'm definitely going back to try out maybe the spicy Ramen and also their very special dry Ramen! To those pork Ramen fans, here's another place you shouldn't miss!

Menya Musashi Ramen

2nd Floor,

Eat Paradise

Isetan Bandar Utama City Centre

Go Watch Warm Bodies!

Hi all!
Been pretty busy at work but sometimes at night or over the weekends fortunately, I got to catch some movies and I've been keeping those reviews for a while now. Time to share!

Life of Pi
I shall skip the storyline here cos I think most of you know (if you've seen it or read the book) or refuse to know (because you haven't watch the movie or read the book). Life of Pi is a beautiful movie, and by beautiful I mean the story, cinematography and C.G.
Obviously the story is very imaginary and fictional that I won't normally buy but the message behind the story is good and the way it was presented was brilliant! I mean, I must really salute Ang Lee for making a relationship between a human and a tiger so touching that it made me teared so much (p/s: even Deardo teared a little)! I think that's called Ang Lee's magic touch -- he always make characters so lovable, even when it is a fierce and dangerous animal like a tiger. 
Although everything looks and sounds so fictional, the C.G. was very well done! Amazingly real-looking tiger (which I heard was doTne by a group of Malaysians, well done guys!) and super gorgeous scenes and effects... Contributed well to a very nice movie well done.
Now that I've watched Life of Pi, I actually think it should be the winner of Best Film at the Oscars rather than Argo. But then again, the Americans always love all these heroic themed movies wurt! Anywayz, this is definitely a movie worth watching!

Django Unchained
I'm not a very Quentin Tarantino fan but as I watched the bits of the movies at the Oscars I thought hey the movie sounds cool now! So I took up the challenge to watch this freaking 2-hour-plus long movie...
No doubt, it has one of coolest script-writing I've ever seen. So quirky, cool and hilarious at times. Plus, the story, which happened in 1858 where Blacks are still considered slaves in the U.S. shows how the underdog rises is kinda like you know the 'Shirlexia type of movie'. It is definitely quite entertaining BUT urm, seriously a bit too long that I had to even fast forward a little...
The movie has a wonderful cast too in the likes of Christoph Waltz (undeniably great in this movie), Jamie Foxx and Kerry Washington. I especially love the final scenes where Jamie Foxx bomb up Leonardo DiCaprio's (yes Leo is in it too!) house and Kerry Washington was waiting outside... Fuuuhhh... The scene was like so grand, cool and funny at the same time!
Oh yea, love the old school cowboy music too!
If the movie can be slightly shorter it would be perfectly perfect!

Zero Dark Thirty
Also another freaking long movie! Aarrrhhh...
Looking at the synopsis, I thought it was going to be a 2.5 hours movie with a lot of talking (or screaming) and Middle Eastern music playing at the back. But to my (or Deardo and I) surprise, the movie is pretty interesting and pretty action-packed.
As audience, I think Deardo and I really enjoyed the fact that although Maya (the main character) is fictional, all the happenings and incidents in the movie were actually based on true story. From 911 to the blast in London, etc, made us so wanted to refresh ourselves on the terrorist attacks that have happened over the past few years. Up till the final scenes where they decided to just check-into the house and kill Osama bin Laden, we were really holding our nerves watching it! It's like watching CSI or something, tracking from some lead to another lead until they finally got it right! So kan cheong!
I would like to pay my respect to Kathryn Bigelow because I think it is super cool for a woman to direct such a war/action/controversy movie. Seriously, that woman rocks! Jessica Chastain rocks too but yeah I don't really think that was her best performance, yet.
While there were some torturing scenes which I don't fancy watching at all, the movie is really entertaining and not boring at all despite its length. A movie you shouldn't miss!

Warm Bodies
Oh come on, Shirlexia watching a zombie-human love story? You gotta be kidding me!
Trust me, this is waaaaaaaaaaay better and waaaaaaaay less cheesy than Twilight ok! I think the story is quite a fresh breath of air to the current zombie/vampires craze as it actually let us see everything from a zombie's perspective. Seriously, this is the first time there is a movie where a zombie is the main guy and you have him telling you about his story, about the zombies around and how he fell in love with a girl. The script was hilarious and sarcastic! Love every bit of it!
But you know what, the most awesome thing about the movie gotta be the OST! Both the original scores and the oldies that they chose to use for the movie are like super nice!!! 
I am loving Nicholas Hoult a lot now cos he is the most geeky, cool and funny zombie I've ever seen! He makes me feel like having a zombie bf isn't too bad at all! :p
If you want me to rate this movie, it is going to be a sure 5/5 man!
(You know what it means when almost the entire review is in red right? :p)

G.I. Joe
Er nothing really special about the movie, honestly!

This Must be the Place
Very artsy kinda movie which is a bit odd yet can be quite sarcastically funny. Still, Sean Penn and Francis McDormand were awesome in it!

Done!
To close the blog post, I've decided to share one of the tracks from Warm Bodies that is one of my favourites now... Enjoy! :)

The Evolution of My Voul-au-vent

I ran out of bread for breakfast for a few days and suddenly a light bulb just popped-up over my head from the brilliant part of my brain... I still have leftover puff pastry from the Christmas party last year! I made the Voulauvent pastry late at night and used them for breakfast over two days with different fillings, which are certainly super easy to make compared to my Seafood Voulauvent!

The Egg, Ham and Corn Mayo Voulauvent

I made the filling a day before to make sandwich so these were leftover which I kept in the fridge. Super easy to make. Just boil some eggs and mash them, add in some pre-boiled frozen corn, cut ham pieces, chopped onions (trust me, onions make the filling extra nice) then pour in some mayo and mix well. Add pepper and light soya sauce to taste, then sprinkle some paprika/curry powder to sort of garnish it a bit. 

 The Smoked Salmon Voulauvent

This is a totally lazy and random recipe and it was really a gamble cos I didn't know how it would taste like when I was making it! Usually I think people will use cream to make the dressing but I was lazy and didn't have cream at home anyway. So all I did was... Cut the smoked salmon into strips, add in some alfafa, pour some ranch dressing onto them and mix well. I added some coarse black pepper and chopped parsley to taste and that's it! 

It would be useless if I praise my creations myself but Deardo who took a break from oats because I was making all these breakfast for him love them heaps! Even the smoked salmon one which I did for the very first time! So the Deardo is happy and the home chef is happy too! :)

HAPPY WEEKEND GUYS!!! :D