Macau / Hong Kong trippie : Food Part I - Restaurante Galo

Our first stop for makan @ Day 1 Macau - we checked out a Portuguese Restaurant called Restaurante Galo - in mandarin it's called Rooster


We were seated upstairs and it was a pretty cosy set upindeed. It's evident that this place was carefully decorated to fit the theme and the name of the restaurant - Rooster; as there were close to 20 different varieties of roosters on the second floor alone..



The moment we were seated, the waitress poured us glasses of plain water from a big mineral water bottle.

After glancing through the menu for an extended period of time, we finally settled down with:-

Fried Clams in Portugese Style


Fried Pig Knuckle


Ox-Tail in Curry Sauce


Do remember how the food looks in the pictures though, because later on you will observe 'slight' differences with the ones actually arriving at our table :P

The waitress was pretty taken aback by the fact that this weird girl kept taking pictures not only of the surroundings, but on the food inside the menu as well, and she hurriedly collected back my menu like the very moment I laid it back down on the table lolz

Fried Clams in Portugese Style ($60)
Resemblence to picture : 90%


The fried clams were sort of like the 'Signature' dish around here as we saw almost every table ordering this (or maybe they saw us order it first ;)


The clams were fresh, they did not have any smell and the best part is, they were very fragrant with the garlic, herbs, wine, etc used and the sauce it was served with.. a very authentic and must try dish indeed! Best consumed hot from the kitchen :D

Fried Pig Knuckle ($60)
Resemblence to picture : 70%


At first few bites, the pork knuckle proved to be a disappointment due to the overwhelming smell of pig. The knuckle itself was pretty crunchy and the meat's tenderness just right, it's just that the smell was too overpowering until we could not finish the meat at all :( furthermore, hubby found a few strands of pig hair on the skin! *yikes* (observe pic below - middle part of the knuckle meat)


Obviously, the pork knuckle did not impress us at all

Ox-Tail in Curry Sauce ($60)
Resemblence to picture : 60%


The chunks of ox-tail were tender yet flavourful, and the curry was not very spicy too. A downside was that the curry sauce was too salty (even for a pretty tolerant person as I am). Another point to note was that the layer of oil on top of the curry sauce quickyly surfaced and we had to scoop them away to get to the curry sauce

We were pretty much filled up after such a heavy meal indeed, and hit the streets for some more Macau street food :P



More... up next!

Cool Blog @ Prangin Mall

There's this new bubble milk tea establishment that just sprung up at 2nd floor Prangin Mall called Cool Blog with the tagline "Be cool with a refreshing blog".


There was quite a queue at the outlet when we walked past a couple of weeks ago and thought of giving it a try.

So we got ourselves a drink which one of the crew recommended Blue Berry Italian Soda Milk Shake


It was very rich but too sweet to our liking... we couldn't finish it in the end due to its sweetness overloading :(


Maybe they should use 'Be sweet with a sweetening blog' as its tagline instead :P

喜饼 ∙ 嫁女饼

喜饼, a.k.a 嫁女饼 is a type of biscuit specially made as a gift from the bridegroom's side to the bride's side prior to the new couple's wedding.


On a pre-selected auspiscious day, my hubby's sister-in-law represented my mom-in-law and brought over these 喜饼s to my parents' house for us as part of the 送礼 (gift-giving) tradition.

There are 2 flavours in the 喜饼 - the pink ones are filled with 豆沙 (Tau Sar) while the yellow ones are filled with 莲蓉 (Lin Yong)


My family liked them and I shared the 喜饼s with my co-workers.. they all loved it! Most of them liked the 莲蓉 (Lin Yong) ones but my personal preference is the 豆沙 (Tau Sar)

Re-post from MC's blog - Avoid Island Red Cafe!

As I promised to MC, this is the re-post of his visit to Island Red Cafe @ Gurney Tower so more people can be aware of what happened...

Perhaps it's karma, but after the awful experience at Hongkie/Boston the previous week, I found myself caught in an almost as bad lunch situation at Island Red Cafe in Gurney Tower. (Interestingly enough, Firefox threw a security notification when I tried to go to the site - click here to check out the Google Safe Browsing diagnostic page for this site).

As I was in the neighborhood over the past week for training, myself and a couple of friends and colleagues descended on the outlet for a quick lunch. Unfortunately quick would be the opposite of our dining experience.

We arrived at roughly 12:40pm or so, and between the three of us we ordered spring rolls, vegetarian spaghetti, chicken rice served with mushroom sauce, and nasi lemak. The spring rolls were intended as appetizer, but the nasi lemak was the first to arrive after roughly 20 minutes. 20 minutes was a long enough wait for a relatively simple dish (by restaurant standards), but it would be another 20 minutes of waiting before our spring rolls arrived, and another 15 minutes after that for the two remaining dishes to show up.

Throughout this time, we had complained to the waitress who was assigned to our table for updates on our food - but that did not help at all. It was absolutely bizarre that we had to wait an hour for our food to show up as the place was practically empty. Plus, it was very obvious that all the dishes were prepared with ingredients one would typically find in the frozen foods section in your local supermarket.

The customer service was absolutely atrocious, the food was passable at best, and they even had the gall to ask us to spread the news about the place and distribute a stack of flyers to friends and family. I did all of that of course - with a warning to everyone I know NEVER to visit this establishment.

Avoid at all cost!

Re-post from MC's blog - Boycott Hongkie Kopitiam @ eGate

As I promised to MC, this is the re-post of his visit to Hongkie Kopitiam @ eGate so more people can be aware of what happened...

This is a story about relatively decent food, deceptive advertising, impolite restaurant management, and hopefully the power of the Internet. This event took place yesterday (1 October 2009) at the eGate outlet of Boston (what was once Hongkie Kopitiam), when myself and two colleagues decided to have lunch there.

The restaurant staff was courteous enough (despite a pedantic grasp of the English language, but that's neither here nor there), and when we were seated we spied upon a flyer promoting free coffee, milk tea, or ying yong (a combination of both) with any menu item order. We were happy to see that, and proceeded to order such drinks to go along with our lunch.

Lunch was pretty good, and being the thirsty kind, I was the first to finish my glass of ice coffee. I requested a refill from the waiter, and was informed that the free refills is valid only for hot drinks. I was perplexed by this, as the flyer (see below) did not mention anything about this promotion being limited only to hot drinks. In fact, the graphic adorning the flyer definitely showed cool glasses.

Annoyed, the three of us requested to speak with the manager, who came to our table to repeat pretty much the same thing, adding (in a rather unfriendly, arrogant manner) that the management reserves the right to change the terms and conditions of this promotion at any time.

From a legal point of view, they were of course in the right. But this was simply bad customer service, and an obvious case of false advertising, as the flyer was designed and written in such a way to deceive and inveigle unsuspecting customers. Rather angry now, I threatened to bring this up to the CAP (Consumer Association of Penang) as well as posting this up on the Internet in whatever personal capacity possible. The facial expression of the manager very quickly changed to one of fear and worry, and she immediately offered to not only refill our drinks, but also give us each a jug of said drinks. We stuck to our guns, declined her offer, paid the bill, and left the establishment.

I do not know if this is endemic amongst all Boston outlets, or if it is only the eGate Penang branch that is so messed up. Nevertheless, I urge anyone reading this post to boycott them and spread the word. This is sheer arrogance and obscenely terrible customer service from a restaurant, barefacedly deceiving their customers with false advertising.

Please spread the word to your friends, and your friends' friends, and feel free to reproduce this blog entry (mention of original source is welcome of course) any way you like. We should not have to tolerate such eateries. Imagine the embarrassment if this happened to a tourist!