Next Stop @ IOI Mall, Puchong

It was a day of hectic shopping, I guess shoppaholics might cringe at the use of ‘hectic’ and ‘shopping’ in the same breathe, but shopping can be tedious sometimes..oh, you don’t agree ? oh nevermind lah. You say not tedious, then no lah.

Anyway, after a few hours of tedious shopping, it was time for lunch and we walked with more purpose in search of food.

 Walked passed a few shops..then we saw a bunting displaying a variety of food in the same shop-  that all of us have something that we liked. Meaning western stuff for that fler, noodles for the other  fler and everything in between for yours truly. After taking our seat in Next Stop and a closer scrutiny of the menu, we found that the set menu looked interesting ( and reasonable priced), so everyone had to forfeit their intended meal and  and we did a commune thingy by ordering the value set A – which is for 2-3 pax.Set meal ( 2-3 pax) 29.90++ .which consist of :

1.Pork ribs- choice of following styles : Home style ,  pumpkin or  marmite- but they  ran out of the 1^st two, and gave us another option of  sweet and sour chicken, we wanted pork instead of chicken and they said that’s doable.

2. Vegetable  – kailan in oyster sos or kangkong belacan

3. Taufu

4. Soup of the day

5. Rice

After placing our order – we waited and waited and waited, after a long long long wait ….we saw that the people at the table next to us cancelled their meal and the other table beside us were also complaining to the waitress of the long wait , so did the table adjacent to us .  I approached the counter and asked when will the food be served,  and was told that it’s ‘coming soon’ . It took more than 30 mins for the first dish to be served. 

Sweet n sour pork – pretty tasty , the thickness of the batter covering the pork was just right,  not too thick until you feel like chewing on flour rather than meat.Onions, capsicum, tomatoes came with the porkKailan – there were so much sauce over the kailan that I think it would have drown the kailan if they were alive. The sauce was sweetish and artificial, the kailan was rather fibrous and too leafy. Tofu – the sauce was nice, lotsa garlic bits on top of the smooth steamed tofu. Uncomplicated and nice.Soup- nothing to shout about, the soup of the day was the old cucumber soup, but I couldn’t really tell, it taste like the soup that usually come with chicken rice. Call me a purist but i have never come across old cucumber soup served with spring onions and fried onions. Overall, based just on food, can be considered a moderate meal .  Based on service- The long wait is definitely something that the management should look at improving.

T.G.I Fridays @ IOI Mall, Puchong

I hadn’t been to IOI Mall for many months and was pleasantly surprised that there had been some extension and with that additional shopping and  a few more eateries and one of them was TGIF… Yayyy.. My first TGIF experience was at Section 14 ages ago and I still remember the immense joy and satisfaction I experienced from that first mouthful of TGIF’s mud pie – a piece of heaven…Hmmmm…

I was curious about the origin of the phrase and  looked up ‘Thank god it’s friday’ on Wiki- and found that  ‘ The term was originated by the Akron, Ohio disk jockey Jerry Healy on radio station WAKR the early 1970s’ . So, now you  know.

From their official website ( click here) , the first TGIF in Malaysia opened in 1994 and there are now 13 restaurants in Klang Valley, Johor and Penang.

Restaurants everywhere lure their patrons to order more than what they could eat by promoting combo meals. Well, we were willingly lured by the 2 course meal offered by TGIF – appetizer and entree at RM29.90 ( click  here for details of the 2 course meal ).   Or maybe I should say half lured, as yours truly  didn’t succumb to gluttony and greediness ( ahem)  and opted for a stand alone meal.

For the appetizer we chose to have – Boneless wings – succulent pieces of chicken breast basted in TGIF traditional buffalo sauce . I find the deep fried chicken very salty and cheesy, I don’t mind the cheesy part but it’s the salty part that I mind lah. The celery sticks were good for the conscience as heyy, I am eating my greens too! The fresh and crispy celery was also a good balance to the heavily flavored chicken.

 

And our entrée was – Southwest Adobo chicken  – roasted half chicken with lemon, garlic, cilantro and herbs, served with sweet potato fries and spicy jalepeno chili sauce. The chicken was rather plain tasting and not being a fan of chicken breast, I find the meat a bit tough. But this was greatly improved with the sauce. The best thing about this dish was….the sweet potato fries, a change from the usual fries ( potato), the sweet potato was sweet, soft and yum ! the burning question – where were the goreng pisang ?

 

Sizzling chicken and cheese (RM29.90) , I am a sucker for cheese ( excluding blue cheese..gawdd..how can you people eat this ? !) ,  ..- sizzling skillet of onions and peppers together with garlic marinated chicken breast over melted Colby & Jack cheeses served with cheddar cheese mashed potatoes. This arrived,  sizzling , spluttering and blowing smoke,,and messed up my glasses. Ahh..again, chicken breast …they seemed to be following me everywhere. And again, rather bland chicken. The mashed potatoes was rather good, creamy and rich. The melted cheese was good with the soft onions and peppers  but after the hot  pan had cooled, the melted cheese had kinda stuck  to it and deprived me of my pleasures. I was scraping away on the pan for MY cheese  and then a corner of  the molten cheese lifted and voila, a large piece of molten cheese dislodge from the pan revealing the smooth dark surface of the pan.  I wrapped the cheese ‘slice’ around the chicken meat and YUM…I am not sure what is the protocol of eating sizzling chicken and cheese, i.e should one scrap the pan and feast on the molten cheese, but the thing is, the pan was rather clean after I finished with it.

 Location :

TGI Friday’s

Lot EG001, EG30 & EG31
Ground Floor, IOI Mall (New Wing), Batu 9
Jalan Puchong, Bandar Puchong Jaya
47170 Puchong, Selangor
tel: 03 – 8070 7350

Restoran Shabu-Shabu @ Puchong

We were undecided on what to have for dinner but knowing that the guest has a weakness for food in round-ish shapes, when we mentioned steamboat, it was a resounding yes from  all.

 We arrived at Restoran Shabu-Shabu ( some refer to it as Mizi) at about 8pm on a Saturday and I really cannot believe the number of people that were waiting to be fed. There were ~ 20pax waiting at the ‘reception’ area and another 15 pax seated outside. When you  ‘register’ at the reception, you will also be asked, will you be going for the ‘eat all you can ‘ which is priced at RM26.50 /pax or you go for the ‘pay as you eat’ -where they will charge what you  ate. The most expansive ‘dish’ are @  RM4 / plate , with some priced at RM2 – and the largest variety are the RM1. the RM1 stuff goes around the conveyer and as for the other priced items you would have to order it from the waiters. Doing some quick math, we figured that it would be more economical for us to go for the ‘pay as you eat’ package. And instead of having to have to walk around to choose/ take  your food, the food goes around in a conveyor and you take what you want from the carousel.

One of the tag line on the posters displayed on the wall  promote the restaurant  as  ‘ a meeting place for the young’ – and I think our presence might have drastically increase the average age of the diners. Anyway , overall, the patrons are more of the youngish set but there were also families and white haired aunties and uncles.

 Extracted From wikipedia :

Shabu-shabu (しゃぶしゃぶ,) is a Japanese variant of hot pot . The dish may have originated in the 13th century as a way for  Genghis Khan  to efficiently feed his soldiers. Mongol troops would have gathered around large pots and cooked together.

The dish is prepared by submerging a very thin slice of meat or a piece of vegetable in a pot of boiling water or dashi (broth) made with kombu  (kelp) and swishing it back and forth several times. (The familiar swishing sound is where the dish gets its name. Shabu-shabu roughly translates to “swish-swish”.)

We waited for almost 30 minutes before it was our turn to be called and we had to go up to the 3^rd floor..wow..so horliao one..i guess quite a number of people like round round food ?

Everyone get their own little cooking  pot , I particularly like the control panel, an  on -off switch and another control for  Hi- Lo , no more worries of ‘killing’ the flame and needing to get the waiter to light the stove ( heating is via induction, not gas). There are also some other reminders

 We ordered fried dumplings , fish slices and also pork slices  – which was pretty good..thinly sliced, a few swish-swish..and it’s cooked..( as mentioned earlier, all the food on the carousel are RM1/ plate, for the RM2 and RM4 item- you would have to order them)

 

And from the conveyer you have a large selection- lots of round round food- fishballs, sotong balls, meatballs, ham balls, prawn balls and other balls,  vegetables ( kangkong, cabbages, yau mark, wong dei miu, corn, onions , fungus , mushroom etc), egg, blah blah etc etc. Just eye what you want and remove from the conveyer – as shown in illustration below ( caption : hand of god 😀 )

 

 The sauce/ dip was a mixture of ingredients ,  there were quite a lot of fried onions in it , which was something I didn’t particularly fancy lah. I must say that for the ‘normal’ steamboat where it’s communal and good for bonding and catching up , with this conveyer system- you can’t really kaypo with the gang as everyone sits in a row –  you cut the small talk and concentrate on eating !

 None of us were accountants but these guys sure like to count ! towards the end of the meal these people had their eyes on the carousel and counted the different food  on the carousel – after which.they refused to tell me the figure, as I was trying to sabotage the counting process. A quick check with the waitress wasn’t very fruitful as she wasn’t sure as well , but she was certain that it was more than 100 types of dishes .

And when we checked with her  the record of plates consume per pax- it was  > 40 plates…wow..that was more than what 3 of us ( combined) finished  . What we consumed :   4 of  Rm4/plate ,  7 vege ( these are in the boxes ) and 30 plates-

 Overall – a pretty enjoyable meal and as predicted, we pay for less than we would have  if we had opted for the ‘eat all you like’ package.

 NB: while waiting to settle our bills, these accountants wannabes started to count the total  items displayed on the menu – and inclusive of soup- it worked out to be 157 dishes – ( un-audited figure).

Restoran Shabu-Shabu

No 19, Jalan Puteri 1/6

Bandar Puteri, 47100 Puchong.

( row of shop lot directly opposite Giant )

Tel ;  03 80605221

Open daily  5 – 11:30pm ( last call 10:30)

Also from Wiki  : In the movie Lost in Translation, Scarlett Johansson  and Bill Murray’s  characters eat lunch at a shabu-shabu restaurant. Later on, Murray wryly comments, “What kind of restaurant makes you cook your own food?”