Little Tree Cafe @ Kuchai Lama

Hadn’t met V for sometime and finally ‘negotiated’a suitable time for a meet-up, I wasn’t sure what was V’s inclination in food, but her simple pre requisite was ‘ anything, as long as it’s tasty’. Hmmm…should I suggest somewhere tried and tested ? or venture to the unknown ? Well, venture to the unknown won, hands down.

As we stepped into Little Tree Cafe, we found it  to be a cozy and comfortable, where you could yak in low voices for hours or get busy with  your laptop as they offer free wi-fi. The cafe occupies 2 shoplot, which must mean rather good business ?

We weren’t sure what to order and asked the waiter to recommend something. V was having Little Milan Chop, I wanted rice ( yeah, typical Asian) and asked for the  butter chicken lotus rice

For drinks, they have  health tea series, premium Italian coffee and fresh juices.  I ordered  the  Refresher – which was Celery + cucumber + sour plum. The strong taste of celery overpowered the other ingredients, very refreshing. Do not order this if you don’t like celery, duh !

V had Rainforest – which was a combination of guava + green apple + sour plum ( and maybe some other stuff), this was rather good. V was rather happy with her drink. (our drinks were RM7.50 each)

 

Butter chicken with lotus rice ( RM9.90), this was prettily presented. The rice topped with shredded dried seaweed came in a lotus leaf parcel, and a rather generous portion of bite sized chicken pieces drenched in some creamy gravy. The rice was fragrant, rather like chicken rice. and the chicken was interesting, the taste is not unlike  the taste of butter prawns complete with curry leaves and all. This was nice.

 

The Little Milan chop (RM15.90)  is a undercover chicken dish…hmmm…the chicken is sandwiched between 2 slices of ham and generous amount of cheese, the dish also came with a dollop of mash potato +cauliflower + broccoli  . this was creamy cheesy rich, the gravy was tasty, the combination of the ham+cheese+chicken was rather good. V was smiling ear to ear and will start to recommend Little Tree to her circle of contacts.

 

Overall, I would rate this as good , in terms of food , service and environment.

Thanks for the treat V !!

Location  :

 No 13 & 15 Jalan Kuchai Maju 8,

Jalan Kuchai Lama

56200 K.L

Tel 7983 1380

( Little Tree is at the next  block of shop lot behind Jojo’s kitchen, you can refer to the location map to JoJo here )

Biz hours : Mon- Fri 10am – 1 am

                   Sat – Sun 10 am – 2 am

Kedai Makan Xiao Fei Xiang小飛象茶餐廳@ Serdang

After looking at the shop signboard with the two friendly elephants ( and one of them was pink by the way) I was going to give up having a meal at Xiao Fei Xiang ( in mandarin = little flying elephant) .Perception : this would be a kiddie kinda place , serving kiddie kinda food, with lots of noisy kiddies. Anyway, I braved myself and after studying the menus on the glass doors, the elephants seemed to  offer a large variety of food ( western, local, Chinese ) . and the thing that sealed the deal was – after pushing through the glass doors, on the left side of this  air-conditioned establishment , were a row of partitioned  ‘rooms’ or maybe tents would be a more accurate way to describe these.. where you sit on the floor, with soft flowing chiffon curtains , low table, cushions.. For those of you that prefer the more conventional sitting arrangements, there are plenty of tables to choose from.

 

The menu include :

The Rice menu : curry leaf pork, sweet and sour fish, kung po cuttle  fish rice, salted fish and chicken rice, butter prawn rice etc, and 7 variety of fried rice and 4 variety of cheese baked rice.

Noodles menu : shanghai noodles, S’pore fried noodles, black pepper seafood udon, hokkien noodles, dumpling soup noodles…

Spagetti and paste menu, western cuisine, snacks ( chicken wings, lamp ribs, fried squid …)

 

For drinks I had soya bean milk and longan (RM2.80), which tasted like soya bean milk, the taste of longan wasn’t present in the drink until I bite into the succulent ( tinned) longan pieces.

 

Kong Nam mee ( RM6.90) – interesting to see cucumber shreds in the noodles, other ingredients include  fried egg shreds, onion shreds, slices of chicken and prawns. I find the combination  a bit weird, cucumber , onions and noodles doesn’t seemed to ‘jive’ with Chinese style noodles ,it was somewhat like laksa plus Cantonese koay teow sorta thing, once we got over the weirdness of this, it was bearable lah

 

It was fun sitting in our little tent , (made me felt like Genghis Khan), and I got to make faces at some inquisitive kids from the neighboring rooms peaking though the cloth walls , the down side is that it is rather difficult to catch the attention of the waiters from inside the tent, so one would have to pop one’s head ( and limbs) out from the curtains to flag them. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wanton soup with 5 pieces of wanton ( RM 5). The soup was a bit salty but the wanton was not bad. Smooth and slippery wanton skin and the minced filling was well seasoned and the texture was springy. We liked this.

 

Four vegetable king with rice 四大天王飯 ( RM5.90) ,ahh…this met my expectations..yummmmyy.. the four kings were : petai, four angle bean, long beans and ladies fingers. And in the company of the kings were ikan bilis, onions and brinjals. The vege were cooked just nice, and brought up the different texture of the ingredients , the crunchiness of the petai and the beans, the softness of the charred brinjal,  cooked in sweet, sour and spicy gravy..this went really well with rice…i loved this..only grouse would be that the ikan bilis was a bit  too chewy .

 

Overall, pink elephants and all , an enjoyable meal, and the price was quite reasonable –( there were no service charge or sales tax).

 

Business hours : 11:30 am – 11.00 pm

 

Restaurant Xiao Fei Xiang

27-1 & 28-1, Ground Floor,

Jalan BS 4/1, Taman Bukit Serdang

Seksyen 4. Seri Kembangan

43000 Selangor

Tel : 8945 7619

There is a branch in Taman Setia Rawang ( tel 6092 9218)

 

From Serdang main road , passed BP ( left) , passed  the market ( on your right) , go straight until you see Public bank on your right , and at the traffic light, turn right, go straight ahead ~ 500 m until you come to some double storey shoplots on your left… find the pink elephant.

Hailam Kopitiam @ Kuchai

We were at another food outlet at Kuchai area the week before and saw there were quite a large crowd dining  at Hailam Kopitiam, so, I made a mental note that this would be a  potential makan place to explore.

We were greeted and welcomed by uniformed waiters and waitresses as soon as we stepped on the kaki lima belonging to Hailam Kopitiam, and I tell you ah..there were really a large number of waiter and waitresses, we counted 14 of them..

We weren’t sure what to order, so we referred to the ratings / recommendation on the menu ( come to think of it, how trustworthy  do you think the self- ratings are at most of the eateries? are these really based on customers’ feedback ? )

 We decided to go for Hailam Chicken Chop with mushroom sauce- other variations of the gravy include original, black pepper or rending , Hailam fried mee hoon and otak-otak rolls and for drinks we ordered cincau (RM2.80).

The place was cosy, marble table tops, wooden chairs, wi-fi, the place was about 2/3 full at the time of the visit.

 You can view their menu by clicking here http://www.hailamkopitiam.com.my/menu.htm

 The otak-otak roll (RM 4.2) didn’t have any star ratings on the menu, but it sounded interesting and we like Otak-otak , so we had to order this. 4 (flat) spring rolls  piping hot, just scooped off the frying pan was my guess, arrived at our table . This was oozing with hot oil as we bite into it ..OUUcchh…the skin was too thick and floury and err..what’s this at the centre… it was a spicy-ish paste thingy err.. forgettable …maybe that was why there weren’t any star ratings guarr..

 

Hailam fried mee hoon (RM 6.80) came with prawns, chicken slices, fishpaste slices and some vegetable, this was pleasant, I especially like the gravy which had a strong fried onion smell…blends well with the mee hoon.

 

Hailam Chicken Chop ( RM6.60), I had high expectation of this ..didn’t the Hainanese ‘invented’ chicken chop ? firstly let me comment about the chicken,  the meat was tough, stringy and tasteless..umm.. and as for the mushroom sauce –..there were a lot of chopped button mushroom in the sauce ( good point), but the sauce itself was kinda tasteless  and one dimesional ( bad point). When I ate the chicken with the sauce, all I could taste was the fried batter and the saltiness of the button mushroom.. ..maybe I ordered the wrong sauce and got some tough ‘pencen-ed’ chicken.

 

Overall, a so-so meal lah…

 

 

Hailam Kopitiam Sdn Bhd

 No 20, Jalan Kuchai Maju 8,

Off Jalan Kuchai Lama

Taman Entrepreneurs Park

58200 KL

Tel : 79821563

www.hailamkopitiam.com.my