Kyoto - 中村藤吉 Green Tea Ice-Cream

Note: After procrastinating for more than 4 months, I finally have enough motivation to start to blog again (hopefully). The motivation came from my colleague, who asked me for help to plan his trip to Kyoto. As I struggle to recall the name of the train I took from Kyoto to Osaka, I told him it has been a year and I've forgotten the details, only to realize immediately that only 4 months had passed. If I don't write now, I'm going to forget everything! I couldn't take the pressure and panicked. But you don't have to write everything, Mr. Chin said, just write whatever you like. So I took his advice, and here goes.

This is something one must eat in Kyoto station - Nakamura Tokichi Honten 中村藤吉 is the name of the shop.

Located on the 2nd floor in Kyoto station.

 This is a must-eat - green tea ice cream topped with fresh red bean and some unknown flour-like balls.

 

Satisfaction.

This was 350 yen (approx. RM11) which was almost the price of a Haagen Dazs. I had Haagen Dazs green tea ice cream once but I thought it was no match for this. This was the soft and creamy type and Haagen Dazs was the hard frozen type. And besides, red bean is the soul mate of green tea flavour. It brings out the taste of green tea yet suppresses its bitterness - perfect! It still makes me drool merely by looking at the pictures!

Coffee Ritual

It's been a long long time since I've eaten some nice food. And I mean, NICE food. Went to this place near Digital Mall, Petaling Jaya. Good environment, friendly waiters, and most importantly, DELICIOUS food. =)

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Coffee Ritual

35, Jalan 14/20, Section 14, 46100 Petaling Jaya, Selangor.

03-79561080

http://www.coffeeritual.com/

Monday to Saturday: 10.00 a.m. to 11.00 p.m.

Sunday and Public Holiday: 9.00 a.m. to 10.00 p.m.

Location: opposite of Digital Mall

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Upon entering the restaurant, the smell of coffee bean filled the air.

They have a series of coffee brewer collection.

(Forgive the blur-ness. Mr. Chin forgot to switch the camera mode. Unlike me, He's neither a professional photographer nor a professional blogger.)

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Feeling ashamed and refusing to show his face due to the blur-ness of picture took.

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ENOUGH OF CRAP !!!

The main objective of this post is to introduce the FOOD !!!

Mr. Chin ordered a 3 course meal set. For starter, he had a carrot soup.

Totally irresistibly delicious. *dreamy*

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Bread to go with the soup.

When dipped into the soup, what can I say? Perfect combination. And most importantly the bread was steamy hot. The butter melted completely when spreaded on it.

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Mr. Chin's... erm... Forgot what's this... Had to add RM2 on top of the price of the set meal.

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Of all things, Mr. Chin ordered a nasi lemak with curry chicken set. Awkwardly goes with western style appetizer, dessert, and coffee.

The nasi lemak is just okay.

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Curry chicken looked delicious. Though the potatoes were a bit too hard. Probably because this dish was not ready by the time we got there. It was supposed to be a lunch set but we ordered at 11:30 a.m.

Nevertheless I kind of like it.

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For dessert, we had plain crepe (how do you pronounce this word?) with vanila flavoured ice cream. This is quite expensive cause had to add RM5 on top of the price of the set meal.

But I feel it's certainly worth its price. One taste of the ice cream and another of the cream I could tell those were quality stuffs. Superb !!!

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The set lunch costs RM25.60.

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This is my cuppocino. =)

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Turkey toast crepe.

There was ham inside. And the sauce tasted black pepper. Don't be fooled by its small portion. This dish is actually quite filling. =)

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This breakfast set costs RM13.60.

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Many strange-looking coffee brewer arranged everywhere in the restaurant.

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And their brand name or manufacturer's name is Tiamo, which means "I love you" in Spanish, isn't it? Haha...

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When we were looking the restaurant owner (I think he's the restaurant owner) kindly explained to us the function of the equipments.

There was this tall thing that resembled the titration process we learnt back in high school. The owner told us it was to make iced coffee.

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Coincidently the owner was making some that time. The top flask was filled with ice and its bottom was equiped with this titration thingy that allows the liquid to flow drop-by-drop into the middle flask which was filled with coffee powder.

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We were told they need 8 hours to fill up the bottom flask. And this was still off the menu. =)

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No idea what this is.

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May I say that, this place is totally worth going. And totally can try this out sometime.

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Am planning to bring Wu Shin'n, SukTeng or ShinTien there whenever they come visit. I'm sure they'll like the food.

Shogun, 1 Utama

Went to Shogun, 1 Utama for buffet dinner last Saturday.

Rate was RM60++ per pax.

Ya ya... Shogun...


Steamboat was served as per table.

The salmon in it was not very good. We practically didn't much of anything in the pot. The most we had was the soup. =P

This was give to us one serving per person. Had no idea what this is. Attempted to ask the waitress but she was not very informative.

Sushi!!!

The unagi was HUGE!!! Had two servings of this.

Scallop!!!

Scallop with cheese and mayonaise and don't-know-whats. Didn't really like this.

More scallops!!! DELICIOUS!!!

I'd already lost count of how many of these I had.

Yessssss... Scallop again...

Oysters!!! Served with lime, of course.

More oysters... I think I had five of them...

Snails. I had no idea why the hell they serve this. Do Japanese eat snails too, like the French?

Don't misunderstand. I only took one. Didn't have the courage to eat two.

That is me trying to dig out the edible part from inside the shell.

This is what it looks like without the shell.

Yucks... Nasty... It tasted as bad as it looked.

*vomit*

Lala soup. The lala was so bad I didn't eat any of them. The one in Saisaki tasted so much better.

Cod fish miso soup. This is not bad at all. Thumbs up!!!

Chawanmushi. This one is also bad. The egg was not smooth at all. I've tasted better ones.

*vomit*

Mango rice. The mango was fresh. I wished they'd serve only mango without the rice.

Ice cream. The one that looks like shit is green tea flavour, whilst the slightly better looking one is sweet corn flavour.

*vomit*

Last but not least, my all-time favourite drink - Milo.

Aaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh...........

Honey green tea. Also my all-time favourite. =)

All you can eat. Summed up to RM138 for two pax including tax. Not very worth it, I would say.

I'd still prefer ala carte, considering that I'm not a big eater. Also, ala carte usually gives you better quality, although more costly.

Anyway, will be looking forward to my next Japanese ala carte meal. I'm thinking... second visit to Ikkyu perhaps. =P

Sakae Sushi & Autumn Quattro

Friends and I went to Sakae Sushi in KLCC to celebrate Manyee's birthday. I like that they gave us a small room for 11 of us and they have this computer screen at the side of the table where we can directly place our orders without having to wait for the waiters to come. It was very efficient.
The ocha (Japanese green tea) that were provided were of tea packets, which I found rather "cheap" for a restaurant that expensive. Lingyue and KC ordered a Japanese steamboat which contained scallops (quite a number of it), all types of vegetables and mushrooms. The soup was rather salty. Despite the fact that they ordered it for themselves, the steamboat was shared among us and I managed to grab one piece of scallop before it reached their hands. =P
Looks very nice, which was exactly the reason we ordered it. But I don't really fancy this. Poh Leng's girlfriend, Hui Tao said that the sashimi tasted exceptionally fresh.
Manyee ordered this. If I recall correctly this is some kind of chawanmushi with crab meat. I've always loved chawanmushi. This tasted so good!
This is the bento I ordered. Unagi (I don't recall a single time that I didn't order unagi in a Japanese restaurant) and chicken with rice and miso soup. The chicken was good (though a bit too salty) while the unagi is just okay.

My chicken and unagi. =)

Zilin ordered scallops and chicken served with rice and miso soup. Not bad.After dinner we went to Quattro (which means the number 4 in Italian) in Avenue K (opposite of KLCC). There were four sections, each named after a season - spring (lounge), summer (restaurant), autumn (club) and winter (bar). Due to the birthday girl's (a.k.a clubbing queen) request, of course we went to the club.

We reached there at about 11:00 p.m. The place was half empty, and the music they played were... from the 80's and 90's. They even played the soundtrack from Grease. We girls were like... what the hell? The guys were simply watching football from the huge flat screen TV on the wall as it was Manchester United versus Fulham (or was it Chelsea?) that night. But when the place was starting to get crowded the music kind of switched. They were playing Kathy Perry, Beyonce, Rihanna, Usher... the normal clubbing songs. And the choices of songs are actually quite good.

We opened two bottles, one of them a Henessey. That was the first time I tasted Henessey and I find it so much better than Chivas (which we usually order). I've tasted several other brands of whiskeys (which I don't remember) but Henessey is the best yet I had. There were about 8-10 of us and two bottles could barely fill our stomachs. Two bottles of whiskey, one night of clubbing (and football), RM75 per pax. It sure as hell is one expensive past-time.