Imperial City restaurant (Tai Thong) - Cheras Plaza

Happy Chinese New Year guys, I know it is a little bit early to wish but with the Chinese New Year decoration covering all the shopping complex therefore I cannot stop myself in wishing you all.

Alright, last few days ago, some of my hometown friends decided to gather together within Kuala Lumpur area, treat it as a reunion dinner for this coming festival. So some of us recommended the Lo Yee Sang event as our reunion dinner, we are having our reunion dinner is held in Tai Thong.

The front entrance of the restaurant

For those who do not know what Lo Yee Sang event is, you may check out the web definition, it is known as “Prosperity toss” event. A little bit information about Yee Sang I found on the web stated that Yee Sang is a traditional dish among Cantonese and Teochews who lives in Canton, it is served during the 7^th day of Chinese New Year or as known as “Ren ri” (People’s birthday), it came from the Chinese history and mythology where the goddess named “Nuwa” created human from mud on the 7^th day in the first month of the year.

People will voice out auspicious phrases while tossing the ingredients to indicate a good year ahead, it may looks like we are playing with our food though. As for Yee Sang’s origin, of course it is from China but Yee Sang gained such popularity because of the “Four Heavenly Kings” chefs from Dragon phoenix restaurant in Singapore. They made Yee Sang more easy and acceptable for most restaurants giving some improvements such as taste and the food presentation. For more information you can view this video. <link>

Alright back to the food we had, Tai Thong restaurant had made it a package when we booked earlier, for a table for 6 pax for RM488++ we got ourselves:

一马當先(popular set)

雪梨三文魚撈生 – Prosperity salmon and snow pear Yee Sang

紅燒乾貝蟹肉翅 – Braised shark’s fin soup with conpoy and crab meat

港式化口蝦餅伴靚燒雞 – Roast chicken with prawn cracker hong kong style

蒜油金菇云耳蒸八丁鱼 – Steamed patin with “Wan Yee” fungus and enoki mushroom

纳坡里盐焗草虾 – Pan-seared tiger prawns with fragrant spice

发菜蚝豉双菇豆根蔬 – Braised dried oysters with “Fatt Choy”, mushrooms, wheat gluten and vegetables

香港腊味扣炒饭 – Fried glutinous rice with assorted waxed meat

西米蜜瓜香露 – Chilled honey dew melon with sago pearls

莲蓉酥窝饼 – Steamed “Nian Gao” with shredded coconut and lotus paste pancake

We waited for the food while updating our life event just like any other hometown friends gathering.

The environment of the restaurant has a Chinese themed elements around it, you can see tanglung hanging, main color is red and the patterns on the wall, etc.

After 15 minutes, our Yee Sang is served!

雪梨三文魚撈生 – Prosperity salmon and snow pear Yee Sang

With all the seasoning and ingredient is added by the waitress, we prepared our chopsticks and position ourselves for the “food rising”. Get set, ready, and here we go!

HUAT AH!!!

As usual, the Yee Sang has the sour taste with some slight sweet from the snow pear.

Not for long the first dish is served

紅燒乾貝蟹肉翅 – Braised shark’s fin soup with conpoy and crab meat

I know and I heard that having shark fin will cause the shark to become an endangered animal and I promise myself I will try to avoid having shark fin soup during non-festival day. Because it is included in the food package and I did not look and ask whether it can be change, so I do felt guilty about this.

Move on to the second dish

港式化口蝦餅伴靚燒雞 – Roast chicken with prawn cracker hong kong style

This is one of the best dish among all, I particularly love its crispy skin, the crispy skin will melt once you place in your mouth and touches your tongue then you will begin to taste the delicious taste of a roasted chicken. The meat is quit hard to tear though but the skin had it cover, great job.

Next the third dish

蒜油金菇云耳蒸八丁鱼 – Steamed patin with “Wan Yee” fungus and enoki mushroom

I did not know what is a patin fish, all I knew was the meat of the fish is very less, maybe that is its kind I guess, anyway the soy sauce mixture of the dish is tempting and you can just eat with plain rice with it, the enoki mushroom is always best to eat, especially with the sauce.

Next dish will be the prawn

纳坡里盐焗草虾 – Pan-seared tiger prawns with fragrant spice

As the named stated, fragrant spice and salt cooked style, the prawn will taste a little bit salty at first then spicy for a moment then slight sweet at the end due to the prawns are salted with a type of grass.

Next dish is the oyster dish

发菜蚝豉双菇豆根蔬 – Braised dried oysters with “Fatt Choy”, mushrooms, wheat gluten and vegetables

For this dish I like the sauce, well of course the oyster is nice too and so is the mushroom, but the sauce made all these ingredients even nicer. The smoothing texture plus the chewy oyster meat, and the smell of the mushroom hmm… oh and the broccoli is soft for your mouth.

Next, the dish we all fear after so many dish….

香港腊味扣炒饭 – Fried glutinous rice with assorted waxed meat

Yes, it is rice, most of us are actually stop eating the rice only, 2 persons contributed the most, of course one of them is me, not wanting to waste food is hard, and it took us very long to finish the rice.

Next is the desserts

西米蜜瓜香露 – Chilled honey dew melon with sago pearls

莲蓉酥窝饼 – Steamed “Nian Gao” with shredded coconut and lotus paste pancake

I personally like the honey dew one, because it is sweet and the sago pearl made the texture of the dessert more mouth smoothing and delicious, the other one which is the pancake does not really tempt me in having a second bite, maybe because I already feeling extreme full and only accept liquid form food, we cannot finish the last dish and we asked to be pack and taken away for one of our friend.

I have a great time with my friends during that night, we laugh at the same old jokes when we were studying in secondary school, time passed very fast, the next thing you know it’s another Christmas and then another year’s Chinese New Year. Nevertheless, I hereby wishing you all a Chinese New Year with both wealth and health!!

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Alexis - Gardens

Hi how are you guys? Shopping complex is full of sales for Chinese New Year items, cloths, hamper, and mandarin orange fruits and more, today my friend and me decided to go to Mid-Valley for movie, shopping comes later because we have not been to cinema for a long time, so before the movie we are looking for a place for lunch, a place where we can chat at ease.

We decided to have our lunch in Alexis restaurant, a stylish, warm, sometimes with live band performance, but no performance for us when we went there, what a bummer.

Alexis - Garden

We sat and order our goods, below is the list of food we ordered:

Main

Roast tarragon chicken (RM 40.00) – served with morel Normandy, savoy cabbage stew & crushed pink peppercorn.

Slow roasted duck magret (RM 47.00) – served with petit orange & fennel salad

Sides

Sautéed prawns with chili & garlic, extra virgin olive oil (RM 25.00)

*government tax and service charges are not included for the above prices.

After around 10 minutes, our food are served:

Sautéed prawns with chili & garlic, extra virgin olive oil 

As you can see those prawns are soaked in the olive oil, with some minced scallion leaves on top, a medium amount of garlic, chili are there but I do not feel the spice, this dish is kind of plain for me, even the prawns mixed with the scallion leaves and garlic, however the prawns is tender when bite, since it is sautéed it should have the freshness in the prawn meat when taste, but I do not get that when we eat it just felt the overall dish is quite oily.

The main dishes is still on their way so we look around the interior of the restaurant, it had changed some since …. I cannot remember but I am sure it changed the position of the table seats.

Nice red hanged menu

The restaurant do serve wine at their bar, located somewhere within their restaurant. Speaking of alcoholic stuffs, one of the dish I ordered the roast tarragon chicken contain alcohol in the making of the dish.

Speak of the dish and it shall appear in front of me

Roast tarragon chicken 

In this photo the crispy skin of the chicken is kind of reddish, but if you see this dish in person, it is yellowish in color, more like a golden yellowish. Notice the side there, the one with the mint leave on top, those are called morel or as known as morchella, morchella is a type of edible mushroom, I did not know what is that when I eat it, but it interested me due to its weird outlook, at first I thought that was a part from the chicken’s inner organ.

Anyway, the chicken has a nice crispy skin and a juicy meat, the meat is not hard to bite either, I would say I like this dish, you might want to dip a piece of chicken around the mayonnaise sauce and eat with the savoy cabbage and pink peppercorn.

And the last one from my friend

Slow roasted duck magret 

Based on the looks of the dish, the duck meat looks tight enough for those who likes to spend their time chewing on the meat, do get me wrong, chewy meat are sometimes favorable by certain people, I consider one of them, I like to chew meat which are juicy, like this duck meat. I only tried one piece of the meat, did not try the salad part at all so I am not sure about how the salad taste like, but the duck meat is nice and chewy for me.

After a long chit-chatting and waiting for the movie while enjoying our meal (except the prawns), we had ourselves a great time with the good environment.

Celadon: Royal Thai Cuisine - Pavillion, KL

Sawadikrap everybody! Today my friend and I went to pavilion (yes again, I know) for some attire hunting before Chinese New Year. Guess what we have for our lunch? Yup you are right, it is a Thai restaurant which I already interested to try it for a long time due to some of my friends’ recommendation, I remember last time when I wanted to go for a try, the restaurant is was having a renovation or something, well without further ado everyone, introducing the Thai restaurant, Celadon: Royal Thai Cuisine.

The entrance of the restaurant is nicely done with their brand new architecture design (I forgot to take photos of it, sorry guys!) if you guys still remember how the previous one looks like. The internal design has been changed to darker color and added some interesting decoration as well.

Cute and colorful

A bunch of people hanging against the mirror

Nice environment

Testimonials from customers

Below are the food we ordered:

Main

Hor Mok Talay Ma Prao Onn (RM 22.90) – Seafood soufflé with coconut milk served in young coconut.

Phad Thai Goong (RM 22.90) – Stir-fried thai flat rice noodles with tiger prawns, eggs and tamarind sauce served with ground peanuts and bean sprouts.

Side dish

Tom Yam Celadon Poh Teak (RM 44.90) – Signature tom yam seafood soup flavoured with lime, lemongrass, chilies and hot basil leaves.

*government tax and service charges are not included for the above prices.

As soon as we finished order we found ourselves still discovering the nice color combination of the place especially the pillow wall, it had it before they renovated but this time, the pillow color pops out more due to its dark color of the cupboard.

Look at the pillowsss

Not too long of waiting, our food is served,

Hor Mok Talay Ma Prao Onn - ห่อหมกทะเลมะพร้าวอ่อน

This is one of the dish only be found in Thai restaurant, a typical Thai dish for a seafood restaurant, in this case I think they added eggs to make it a puffy texture. The important part of what makes this dish so nice to have is the Hor mok chilis (Thai curried fish mousses) mix with coconut cream, it has the smoothing texture and the fragrance of the coconut cream mixed with the texture of the fish mousses, it gets better with the curry paste, oh and it all blends well with the meat of the coconut.

Next with their signature tom yam soup for 2 persons

Tom Yam Celadon Poh Teak - โป๊ะแตก

Keeping it warm for you guys

As the soup is served, as most of the tom yam soup does, the smell of the fresh and exotic of lemongrass is the strongest; this tom yam soup successfully contain and balance the 3 major taste which is sour, salty and spicy, good job there although I expect the level of spicy would be more, maybe they used lesser chilies for this dish but that is okay in general. Besides they manage to ‘tune down’ the level of strong smell of the seafood. Basically the ingredient for this dish include prawns, mussels, squid, straw mushroom, lemongrass, Thai chilies and basil leaves.

Now to the second main dish

Phad Thai Goong - ผัดไทยกุ้ง

Phad Thai Goong’s flat rice noddle outlook or form is more or less same as ‘kway teow’ noodle (粿條面), a Chinese type of food, Phad Thai Goong is commonly served in Thai as a street food, their local food. Most Phad Thai Goong food presentation has a common pattern, the rice noodle as main and then beside there will have some small teaspoon of ground dried chili pepper and chopped roasted peanuts, sometimes you may find some bean sprouts as well. Normally they will just use prawns only but in this restaurant they added 2 extra tiger prawns to add in the food value.

Big and juicy

We start by mixing the dried chilies, roasted peanuts and bean sprouts together with the rice noodle part before we eat. As usual the food texture is dry, good for chewing with the bean sprouts with the fried egg, do not worry about not having enough if you order this dish, this portion can fulfil your hunger stomach for sure.

We had ourselves a good time, we spent long hours there chit-chatting while still amazed by the decoration there. You guys should really come and have a try if you consider Thai food as one of your favorite food and happen to be in Pavillion, until then see you guys next time.

Below is the google map for this restaurant:

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