I am a selfish person and I don’t really like to spend money to buy a coffee and enjoy the hotspot internet at a nicely cafe. But my mindset changed lately when I spent my afternoon at the Muntri Mews Cafe on Wednesday with a little bowl of Chinese desserts and using the free hotspot Internet.

It’s fun to spend time at home when there’s air con and no need to spend any money but I feel that after some times, we will started to slack and rot at home, then life gets boring and dull. It’s actually pretty good that you bring your computer out and spend your usual online activity, online business out there at a nice and cozy cafe, with some light meal for bites.

I was thinking of going to Jing Si Books & Cafe but I couldn’t find any parking around the busy financial district area of Penang. Then I Googled and found about MoonTree 47 but it was closed and I ended up at a cafe of a flashpacker hotel, Muntre Mews. Quite a cozy place for some hideout. Still in search for some nice heritage cafes with nice coffee to chill out during the afternoon of my holidays. Any recommendation?

By the way, I ordered myself a bowl of Cheng Th’ng (RM6.00+), which in fact is similar to the local’s Si Koe Th’ng and I have no idea why they named it that way. A bowl of desserts and Internet was just perfect for an afternoon chill. The Cheng Th’ng consist of longan (dragon eyes), coconut jelly and little small sea coconut bath in a sweet desserts soup and topped with a few cubes of ice. It might not worth the price as you can get similar thing with more ingredient at a roadside store, but given a nice environment and music, it’s a good eat and there’s no bad about it.

Details On Muntri Mews.

However, during my recent purchase of a Japanese food deal, I wasn’t really glad with the experience I had at the restaurant. It is not the wrong of the voucher site, but it’s the food that I don’t really happy with.

I was actually pretty excited with the meal and the deal as it was RM33.90 deal which consist of 13 items for two and it’s discounted at 57& of it’s normal price of RM86.90. The deal was pretty reasonable and worthwhile with so many item to eat and somemore it’s a meal for two.

Shinjuku Japanese Restaurant is located on Jalan Chow Thye. It has a nice  welcoming space but the signboard of the shop names wasn’t clear to me as it has another name as Xiang Wei which promote Thai food. I was wondering, is it a Japanese food restaurant? Or a Thai food restaurant, but in fact they sell both Thai food and Japanese food. This combination started to make me doubt about their food quality and taste.

With no surprise, I wasn’t really happy with the sushi starter which isn’t fresh especially the shrimp sushi and crab stick sushi which is so hard when I put it into my mouth. It isn’t mouthwatering and it feels like the ingredient have been kept in the fridge for some times. I was hoping for salmon sushi or perhaps unagi, but they were no where to be seen. It’s all the low price sushi. One thing is it took that more than 15 minutes to serve the first dish.

Despite the bad sushi, I still have to stay to eat till the end as there were more than 10 items. The next dish, the Chawan Mushi, luckily did try to pull me back to a good comment of the place. What I like about this is this smoothness of the chawan mushi, it can be compare with local Taofu Fa, but I believe this is smoother. Unfortunately, there wasn’t any meat in it which usually does. Instead of tasting saltyness of the egg, it tasted sweet due to the Japanese sweet sauce that is poured a little bit on the surface of the Chawan Mushi. Overall, this is something better.

Next up was a Japanese Toufu with very small piece of unagi, mushroom and sweet sauce. It tasted different fromt he Chinese Taofu, but they looked the same. The skin of the toufu gives a soft feel and the inner toufu was smooth. I wasn’t ware of the unagi when I look at it until I put them in my mouth. The little brown-black thingy on the toufu was in fact super mini unagi. I wonder why they put such a small piece of unagi which makes it not interesting at all. The warm sweet sauce warm up the toufu and makes the dish tasted not bad too, but not good. It’s just hanging in the middle.

3 slices of abalone slice made it way to our table and into our mouth. Unfortunately, the abalone slice is unlike the one that came out from the can, or the one that is cut fresh from a cooked abalone. It’s, just so unfresh that it doesn’t consist the chewy experience of eating abalone. I was not happy with it and it didn’t spend so much time in my mouth, it just went right into my stomach and skipping my taste bud for a custom check.

It’s getting weird and suspicious with the sweet sauce and the cook at the Japanese restaurant as most of the dishes consist of a great amount of the sweet sauces. A little bit of it makes it good but many of it makes it tasted weird and overly-sweet. It’s the third dish – Teriyaki Chicken on Stick, that has so much sweet sauce in it which eventually ruin the dish and mindset for the food. The sweet tooth in me couldn’t stand the sweetness anymore and wanted a stop. Japanese food to me is always about wasabi and raw-ness, but with so much of sweet, it’s getting un-Japanese to me.

In the middle of the serving food, it comes a small little amount of Japanese Sake alcohol. I am not an alcoholic person, but I wasn’t mind trying it as I have no idea how’s a Japanese Sake tasted like. It’s deep in hot boiled water which makes the liquor warm. Upon entering my mouth, the liquor taste was there BUT it was diluted so much that it’s not like alcohol anymore. This is just like an decorative item among the 13 items.

The last dish was a Udon which I do not know the name of it and I didn’t even bother to know about the name due to the dissatisfaction of the food. I wasn’t excited as before only, I was just like – wait and eat and go. The Udon consisted a boiled egg, vegetable and teriyaki chicken in it. The broth (soup) tasted sweet and the only edible to me was the chicken teriyaki which was pretty tender. I dislike the broth of the udon.

After a few unhappy experience with the meal brought from groups deal website, I started to doubt about these promotion meal.

Shinjuku Restaurant
36C Jalan Chow Thye,
10500 Penang.

Tel: +604-2287999, +6016-4921592

Business Hours: Daily 6pm-10pm

View Shiok Or Not : Food Map in a larger map

I made a short video on my recent visit. Actually this is just a random post, but I want to share out the short video clip. =) Enjoy. If you have any nice tomyam mee place, do introduce to me. =)

Ok, Chatime is a brand for Taiwanese bubble tea. The Original Milk Bubble Tea is awesome, the taste of the milk tea is strong and the bubble is, err, bubble. That’s all. People are crazying about it, Foursquare check in at Chatime, post photo of Chatime on Facebook and tell people about them having Chatime. Do you think it’s nice? I think it’s nice, but it’s expensive, RM5.50 for the Original Milk Bubble Tea, yet I don’t think it’s the best yet.

I believe there’s still huge variety of bubble tea out there, it’s just that the brand that makes people go crazy about it. The recent outlet at Sunway Pyramid makes people queue up long and long. I wonder why there’s no long queue at Pavillion’s outlet or the two outlet in Penang (1st Avenue and Queensbay Mall). I think the queue is due to the inefficiency of the staff. =D

And there will be one opening in the basement of Mid Valley Megamall and The Gardens.

Chatime rocks, but I want RM2.50 pasar malam bubble tea more. =D Happy Chatime-ing.

One more thing, I tried two Chatime in Hong Kong before, the bubble jelly of two stores tasted different.

I know Hokkien Mee in Kuala Lumpur is different from Penang’s but then I never know that Lor Mee in Kuala Lumpur is not equal to Penang’s Lor Mee.

According to Wikipedia, Lor mee (Chinese: 鹵麵; Pe̍h-ōe-jī: lóo-mī) is a Chinese-inspired noodle dish served in a thick starchy  gravy and thick flat yellow noodles (also known as lor mee).

But the one I ate yesterday is so different, it’s in fact is like a new thing to me. The noodle is super thick, the gravy is in light brown color, there’s no sour garlic and no egg. Instead, it has super thick noodle, feels like Wat Tan Hor and comes with sambal.

Sorry that I have to say that I dislike Kuala Lumpur’s Lor Mee.

This is a Penang’s Lor Mee.

Funny or not that I just know that Ikea Malaysia has such a low price meal which I super like and love! Unlike the RM10 for 10 meatballs in the canteen inside Ikea, this is Ikea cafe right outside the cashier counter, a place to chill and have some light meal before going home or proceed.

• RM2 for a curry puff and a bottomless soft drinks.
• RM3 for a hot dog bread and a bottomless soft drinks.

Where on earth you can find this combo besides Ikea? Even kopitiam is charging RM2 for a can of soft drinks and bakery is charging for RM2 for a curry puff. Ikea rocks man!

After a little shopping at Ikea this afternoon, I bought a combo of curry puff and softdrinks for RM2. I was too hungry and then I add on a hot dog bread and another curry puff. With the bottomless softdrinks, I was full. =)

It’s just yum yum, deliciously low price. Claps for Ikea.

I went to Red Box for lunch K last week and it was lunch + karaoke. The price is calculate depends what food you ordered but it’s start from RM10++. I ordered a Fried Fish Fillet with Rice and it’s RM13++. It’s delicious I feel and I like it deep fried and pour with thai sauce with lots of onion.

My girlfriend ordered a fried tempura set which cost RM16++ and the sauce is the same as mine. They somehow taste the same because it’s deep fried and the same sauce. Though, prawn lover might like this. =D

Red Box’s Karaoke’s food aren’t that bad afterall. Though, I did encounter some bad experience before. Hehe.

Food price at Dome Cafe would be rather expensive but we had no choice but to breakfast in there because mom and dad are not a fast food person. I ordered myself a cup of hot chocolate. Expensive stuff comes with a nice chocolate presentation on a nice Dome cup.

Ta-daa. Here is my Chicken Ham and Eggs on Toast. The egg, the ham is awesome and also the sauce too. Just that, I wonder why English’s croissant is so hard to bite.

Last week, I went to eat lunch in my university. It’s the Dessert’s Bar Cafe. The offer a variety of western food and cakes and also beverage. I bought a cake for birthday before at there and it’s pretty good. Located on level 2 between block C and block D of Taylor’s University.

I ordered a Grilled Mushroom Chicken. They gave me a number and I have to wait for the food at my table.

Here we go. It’s a chicken breast and it’s not very hard. What’s special is the gravy and the mashed potato, it’s pretty nice. Good try.

This is actually now a how-to-cook but it’s how-I-cook. So last weekend I cooked myself lunch which is linguine bolognese. Due to limited cooking utilities at university’s hostel, I only have a microwave and I cooked my pasta with microwave, simple and easy meal. I like linguine more than spaghetti because of the flat texture. Rocks.

Take the amount of linguine of your choice. Then you can put it in the bowl to boil it. Break them into half and put into a microwave safe bowl, pour in a bowl full of tap water, cover the bowl and put it into microwave to heat it in high power for 5-7 minutes. Stir a bit in middle.

In the mean time, since I can’t really cook a beef or chicken bolognese sauce, so I cut canned ham into small pieces. Add some garlic into it too. More will be better. I wanted to put in onion too, but unfortunately run out of onion already.

I uses San Remo pasta sauce. Although it stated onion and garlic in it, but add in extra for yourself and it will taste better. Pour the pasta sauce into a microwave bowl with the ham and garlic then heat it with high power for 5 minutes. Stir in between.

Walla. Yummy. Not as awesome as cooking with stove but it’s still an awesome college food. =)