Casbah, Mandarin Oriental, Kuala Lumpur

Posted on April 7, 2011 by Lyrical Lemongrass

Yoghurt sorbet and stewed apricots

I love storytelling. I remember being 7 years old, standing up in front of a fidgety audience of 7 to 9 year olds in school and giving them my best reading of Red Riding Hood. I was clueless as to why I was doing it; all that mattered was that I enjoyed being caught up in this world of make-believe. I’d write stories in brand new exercise books, fill them with my own illustrations, and hide them in my drawer far away from my parents’ prying eyes.

Samboussek – Shanklish cheese filled pastries

Spanakopita – layered phyllo pastry and spinach with feta cheese

I love storytelling. I get my best ideas for my blog when I’m doing my daily commute from home to office, soothed into a reverie by inspiring music stored in my iPhone. I discovered recently, among Bald Eagle’s stash, the soundtrack for Avenue Q, and I have been playing it twice daily, 7 days a week for several weeks now. The music’s uplifting, but unfortunately provides very little inspiration for my blog. With songs like I’m Not Wearing Underwear Today, Everyone’s A Little Bit Racist and The Internet Is For Porn, it’s hard to translate that to child-friendly posts on this child-friendly blog. And so I am hopelessly useless today, short of telling everyone that the internet is for porn…the internet is for porn…grab your dick and double click for porn, porn, porn…

On the other hand, there’s this thing called food porn….

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Queso – Manchego, idiazabal and valdeon cheese with quince jelly

Gazpacho – white with almonds, red with tomatoes and yellow with bell peppers

Casbah. To be honest, I loathed the idea of MO’s replacement of Pacifica with a restaurant that served mezze and tapas from the Eastern Mediterranean, North Africa and Spain. Pacifica was in a league of its own with its fresh seafood, luxuriant decor and sheer curtains offering privacy for the romantic and delectable seafood to the ravenous. It wasn’t so much my dislike for any particular cuisine, but more a case of my affinity to Pacifica for sentimental reasons.

Dukkah Spiced Baramundi – White beans, artichokes and clams

But I visited Casbah anyway upon the persuasion of a foodie friend and mostly because I had the MO Elite Club card with its 50% discount trappings. (However, as fate would have it, our friend, Cheryl, Director of Communications at MO, happened to be there and footed the entire bill. Thanks, Cheryl!)

I was told that the cocktails at Casbah were to die for, and ordered one called Magic Mo Kool Berry Bliss. Kool? Really? As it turned out, it was a theatrical masterpiece, a cocktail made of childhood memories and adult realities. The irony is strong here as the fluffy cotton candy floss dissolved right before my eyes in a harsh pool of vodka, cranberry and lemon. It was a good cocktail.

Tagine with Lamb Merges – Cous cous, almonds and dried apricot

The food is segregated into five broad categories: small plates (vegetarian) with prices ranging from RM12 to RM25, small plates (meat) – RM15 to RM39, small plates (fish and seafood) – RM25 to RM35, large plates – RM45 to RM248, and sweet treats – RM12 to RM18. Dining is meant to be communal and tables are small enough to offer intimacy.

Stirato Bread and Tomato – Grilled rosemary bread rubbed with fresh tomato, garlic and olive oil

Chicken Mougrabia – Stewed wtih Lebanese couscous

My moderate expectations of Casbah were quashed from the beginning when I tried the grilled stirato (literally meaning “to stretch”) bread, flavoured with rosemary and topped with tomato, garlic and olive oil. Somewhat like a pizza after being stretched, it was crisp and tasty, its flavour enhanced by nothing more than the simplest of ingredients.

Queso Fonduta – Melted manchego cheese fondue with home made chorizo

The Queso Fonduta (Cheese Fondue), at RM25, and an outright favourite with me, is worth ordering. The fondue is made with melted Manchego cheese. Pieces of bread and homemade chorizo are provided for dipping into the melted cheese. The chorizo is unfortunately not pork, but its absence will only be mildly felt.

Patata Harra

Chef Mustapha Benhadou

The freshly made baklava also stands out here. In fact, I could hardly fault any of the dishes that I tried that night. Even the most ordinary of the dishes, patata harra (fried potatoes with garlic, summac and labneh) was finger lickin’ good. Perhaps MO has found its groove after all.

Turrons – Spanish nougat

Yiaourtopita – Lemon pound cake with Greek yoghurt

Baklava

Churros Con Chocolate – Traditional fried dough stick with hot spiced chocolate

Casbah at Mandarin Oriental
Kuala Lumpur City Centre, KL

Tel: 03-2380 8888

Zing, Grand Millenium Kuala Lumpur – Standard Chartered Extravagant 8 Menu

Posted on February 9, 2011 by Lyrical Lemongrass

The concept of paying it forward is nothing new. It could be as simple as someone buying dinner and not allowing you to pay. Pay it forward. Buy someone else dinner and see his face light up. I once had a flat tyre and was feeling helpless because my AAM card had expired and I didn’t know how to change the tyre myself. Thanks to the kindness of a stranger, the flat tyre was replaced. The process left him sweaty and his hands dirty, but he didn’t complain. Neither did he take the money which I offered. “What’s your name,” I asked him. “Frankie,” he replied. I looked at him in his face, humbled, and said, “Thank you, Frankie.” One of my favourite hymns is a song entitled “Pass it On”. It’s an old song, and it starts with – “It only takes a spark to get a fire going….”. I used to be a lot more idealistic in my younger days, and age and experience does harden the heart, but the single act of kindness of one stranger is an apt reminder that there are good people in this world.

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Yee sang with Norwegian salmon – the tangy, sweet sauce is made from peach, apricot and strawberry. Salmon skin adds a nice crunchy touch to the ensemble, but it costs an additional RM15.

Christine demonstrating how to use extra long chopsticks

Thick broth with sea treasure. A delightful melange of mushroom, abalone, sea cucumber, fish lips, dried scallops and shredded chicken. Like in the other Standard Chartered Extravagant 8 sets, no sharksfin is served.

Steamed live fresh “cod” with soy sauce. Although this is called cod on the menu, it is actually freshwater sea perch. The number of fish served depends on its size, so either 2 pieces or 3 pieces will be served with the set.

Poached marinated farm chicken with Chinese wine. The free range chicken has slightly tougher meat, and is served with the most fragrant minced ginger. Love it.

Braised Chinese cabbage with sea moss and dried scallops sauce. Quite a mouthful but delicious.

Seafood fried rice

Chilled mango puree with pan fried nian gao. While the nian gao may not look like the most appetising thing in the world, it was probably the best I had tasted as I am partial to pan fried nian gao in egg.

Chef Leong Weng Heng

A private room in Zing

Zing
Grand Millenium Kuala Lumpur
Jalan Bukit Bintang
KL

Tel: 03-2177 4180

Non-halal

In conjunction with the Chinese New Year celebration this year, the best chefs from 8 top Chinese restaurants in the Klang Valley have customised special Extravagant 8 menus, priced at RM888++ for a table of 8, exclusively for Standard Chartered credit card holders. The menus are available from January 20 to February 17, 2011. More details on the restaurants, their offerings and T&Cs are available at the Standard Chartered website.

Thank you, Standard Chartered Bank Malaysia and Grand Millenium Kuala Lumpur for kindly hosting this dinner.

Note: This is the last of five reviews under the Standard Chartered Extravagant 8 campaign. Earlier reviews:

Chynna, Hilton Kuala Lumpur

Shanghai, JW Marriott

Li Yen, Ritz-Carlton, Kuala Lumpur

Gu Yue Tien, Chulan Square

Shanghai, JW Marriott – Standard Chartered Extravagant 8 Menu

Posted on February 7, 2011 by Lyrical Lemongrass

Bald Eagle could tell that I was upset about work when I suddenly started ranting at 12.30 at night. As a matter of policy, I choose not to discuss my work life at home, so when this happened, he knew that I was troubled. The next morning, I took my time getting out of bed. He said, “You don’t want to go to work, do you?” (He loves stating the obvious.) After taking a shower, I got dressed absentmindedly and kissed him goodbye. Seeing how he was so chatty earlier, he could have told me that I was wearing my outfit terbalik, right? But no, he let me walk out of the house with the label sticking out, seams clearly showing. I went to the nearby tuck shop to get a can of Nescafe and a bun, and the girl at the counter didn’t say anything about my outfit. I stopped at Petronas for fuel, and the guy who attended to me didn’t say anything about my outfit. I greeted the receptionist at my office, chatted with her about the lovely CNY flowers decorating the entrance, and she didn’t say anything about my outfit. I walked past 30 colleagues to get to my room, and they didn’t say anything about my outfit. I had a discussion with two of my staff for a good 20 minutes, and they didn’t say anything about my outfit. It was only when I took a pee break about an hour later that I saw my reflection in the mirror and screamed.

The world needs glasses. Not rose-tinted ones. Just plain old prescription glasses.

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I looked in awe at the braised Shanghainese pork. It stood like a wobbly terraced structure of pleasure, entirely made up of my favourite kind of meat. The pork belly had been braised for five hours and sliced so precisely that it deserved to be put on a pedestal and worshipped. The one given to us was firm, cooked exactly to my preference, but I was told that it is normally cooked a little more thoroughly to a point where the pork fat melts a little and becomes softer. Bamboo shoots ensconced within the structure and steamed with the pork proved to be a lovely accompaniment, much like a concubine to her master.

I liked the double-boiled superior wanton soup. Choose wanton soup over sharks fin soup? Indeed! With the Chinese, there are several grades of soup, ching tong (clear soup), siong tong (superior soup) and then, there’s gou tong (higher than superior soup). This was made with dried scallops and bamboo pith in a clear broth made with chicken and Yunnan ham. The wantons were made with pork and vegetables.

The fried rice, humble as it is, had Aly asking for seconds, and that girl normally doesn’t ask for seconds of anything.

When asked which of the dishes was his signature, Chef Wong Wing Yeuk replied in fluent Mandarin, “Xiu Long Bao!”. Luckily, thanks to my years of tuition lessons in Mandarin (yes, really), I made out all of 2% of the entire conversation (money badly spent). The rest was un-fluently translated by FBB, but they cannot be repeated in this child-friendly blog. They were pretty little dumplings with translucent skin, and steamed with the most exquisite broth, but the good Chef also candidly mentioned (in Mandarin again) that he did not prescribe to the theory that a xiu long bao should be made with a fixed number of folds. I suppose he has a point. While I can’t see the significance of 18 (or whatever number is deemed appropriate), the more important virtues are that of taste and translucence and elasticity of skin, and Shanghai excels in all areas.

Shanghai
JW Marriott Kuala Lumpur
183 Jalan Bukit Bintang
Kuala Lumpur

Tel: 03-2179 8288

Thank you, Standard Chartered Bank Malaysia and JW Marriott for kindly hosting this dinner.

Note: This is the third of five reviews under the Standard Chartered Extravagant 8 campaign. Earlier reviews:

Li Yen, Ritz-Carlton, Kuala Lumpur

Gu Yue Tien, Chulan Square

Salmon yee sang