I had the opportunity over the weekend to taste some absolutely scrumptious Japanese food, thanks to my old friend Darren. His company recently purchased this restaurant over and he thought, why not get some folks over to review some of the food. This was definitely one of the highlights of my weekend.



Located in Maju Junction mall, directly opposite Tune Hotel located on Jalan Sultan Ismail, this restaurant is definitely very easy to spot from the road. Best thing of all is that if you are going to dine there, give them a call and you can get a free parking spot in front of the restaurant. No need to find a parking in the basement.





The restaurant offers a wide variety of seating choices, from your normal rectangular tables, to a sushi bar, to a teppanyaki counter (located upstairs) as well as a lounge area and a bar! It also has a private function room to boot as well.







So let's begin with the food. We were given a variety of dishes and the operations manager, Mr. Fauzi, explained about each dish and gave us some very insightful tips about the dish and what makes them unique.

First off, we were given green tea and even that was different from the usual green tea. The ones served at Mikan has been blended together with roasted rice so the taste is quite distinct as well as also very tasty. I definitely drank more than 7 cups of green tea throughout the entire lunch session!




(Above) Sashimi Moriawase - Assorted Slice Raw Fish

The first dish was a shashimi dish where there were a good variety of raw fish available. Served with very fresh salmon sashimi flown in from Norway, this dish was a very refreshing dish with a good blend of flavourful fishes imported in from Japan.

We were thought the right way to eat sashimi as well. Frankly, I really never knew there was a right way to eat them! Most of the time, I am usually quite the pig so I just scoff everything down in my mouth. Anyway, here is the proper way!

Step 1: Put the piece of shashimi on your plate



I wanted to use a better subject but as I said earlier, I scoffed the pieces of salmon into my mouth already by the time Mr. Fauzi explained.

Step 2: Take some wasabi and spread it on your shashimi



The wasabi they served was extremely fresh and potent!

Step 3: Dip your piece of shashimi into the soy sauce and eat it!




Sweet and simple as that!

Next on the menu is the Chawan Mushi.


(Above) Chawan Mushi - Steamed egg custard

So how different can a chawan mushi actually be? Well I learned that it can definitely be very very different, taste wise and texture wise. This chawan mushi served here at Mikan is made with a blend of starchy sauce and together with high quality ingredients such as high quality mushrooms and eggs, the taste of this dish was simply delicious.

After this, we were treated to some fish.




(Above) Gindara Teriyaki - Grilled Cod with teriyaki sauce

I love cod fish and I love teriyaki sauce. Put them together and this becomes an awesome dish served together with black seaweed and renkon lotus root. The fish portions served at Mikan are usually around 120grams. Cooked perfectly and served on top of a bamboo leaf brought in from Japan, this dish was not only tasty but I wished I had more of it. The secret to this dish is that the teriyaki sauce is mixed with a secret blend created specially by head Chef Machi himself. You have to eat the cod fish together with the seaweed to get the real taste of the entire dish.


(Above) Chicken Teriyaki - Pan Fried Chicken with Teriyaki Sauce

As compared with other restaurants, this dish is served with pan fried chicken. By pan frying the chicken, you keep the meat moist and juicy (versus grilling which makes the meat a little dry at times). Accompanied by the teriyaki sauce, this dish is also served with a small side potato salad topped with Japanese mayonaise. An absolutely lovely dish. Normal portion for this is about a 150 grams of chicken and its not frozen chicken.


(Above) Teppanyaki Gyuniku - Beef Teppanyaki

Stocked with an open teppanyaki counter, here we have a beef teppanyaki (150grams). The meat is flown in from the US and it is cooked teppanyaki style together with some assorted vegetables and fried slices of garlic. They have a teppanyaki chef available and you can see him cook the dishes. When you order the dish, you can choose to have your meat to your liking. Me, I prefer it medium rare usually but in this case, well done would be fine as well.

They also have other teppanyaki dishes available as well, one of their more popular ones would be the four mushrooms teppanyaki.




(Above) Tori Katsu Curry - Breadcrumb Chicken with Japanese Curry

I am a real big fan of chicken katsu don and ask Munz and she will tell you that I love Japanese curry a lot. This one however was very very different, and I found out why. Different in a very good and unique way because the taste is just so addictive! Frankly, after eating this dish, I just ate up all of the curry left in the bowl. What makes this unique is the blend of coffee, local curry and Japanese curry to create this scrumptious concoction which really left me wanting more. The base of the curry is beef so you definitely can taste the distinctive beefy taste.


(Above) Kaisen Korokke - Seafood Croquette

With every restaurant experience, one would expect to be served first with a menu and that was exactly what us bloggers were presented with before the start of lunch. A list of all the dishes that will be served in order for us to expect. This time around, the chef decided to surprise us with a dish that wasn't on the menu. A fried croquette stuff with lots of seafood which included scallops, prawns crab meat, green soya bean and topped with home made thousand island. You definitely can't go wrong with this dish!




(Above) Nigiri Sushi and Soft Kani Maki - Assorted sushi with soft shell crab roll

Mr. Fauzi and head chef Machi was very kind to ensure that we don't get too many fried dishes back to back so after tasting and gorging on the croquette, we were then served with two dishes, soft shell crab roll as well as a dish of assorted sushi. Frankly, I wished that I could have eaten the entire dish myself to be able to savour all the different kinds of sushis but since we were sharing, I had to control myself. Although that didn't stop me from taking the salmon sushi first :)

The soft shell crab roll was topped with not ordinary fish roe but flying fish roe. Gives it a more unique and tastier kick. Mr. Fauzi also then explained that good sushi chefs are so used to handling sushi rice that the perfect sushi roll has about 100 grains of rice. How in the world they count it, I guess it comes with experience.


(Above) Jumbo Ebi Tempura - Deep fried big prawn tempura

The name of the dish explains it all, its tempura and the prawns are ginormous. Seriously, I kid you not. Perhaps the image above doesn't really justify the size. So let's put it into scale.



See how large those prawns are right next to my iPhone 4! These prawns were my highlight of the day. Originally sized at 8 inches before being fried, this is definitely a dish you should try and the prawns were very fresh as well.

Mikan is also introducing a new teppanyaki dish in April, so to give you all a sneak peak of what is to come, here is the head chef Machi with the main ingredient of that teppanyaki dish.



No that is not a lobster.



Its a friggin 12 inch long prawn! I am definitely heading over there in April to try out this new dish. The chef was kind enough to show us a fresh sample that he had just ordered in. I wished that we could have sampled that but of course it would mean us having our cake and eating it too.


(Above) Tori Tama Toji - Breadcrumbs Chicken with Egg

The last dish was very controversial. Back when I was in university, I got a lot of smack when I told people I made a chicken ommelette and they asked me why was I cooking mother and child in a single dish. Personally I don't know what makes it controversial in the first place. Its not like we don't eat them at all so I didn't see any wrong in that. Back to last weekend, it was the same discussion again but of course not as heated as the one that I had. Served on a hot plate, it was really nice and warm and definitely a great end to the long list of food.


(Above) Goma Ice Cream - Black Sesame Ice Cream

Last but not the least, dessert! Both the black sesame ice cream and the red bean paste on top is fully imported in from Japan. Both of these were of very high quality and it definitely meets my personal sweet tooth taste test!

By the end of lunch, I was completely blown away by the food and extremely satisfied with not just the food but the overall experience. I just love how each dish is explained whilst it's being presented by the server. I think this is how most restaurants should do especially those who pride in their food. I guess even after watching seasons and seasons of Gordon Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares and Hell's Kitchen, I would definitely say that Mikan is top notch.

Location:

Mikan restaurant is located in Maju Junction Mall along Jalan Sultan Ismail in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

http://maps.google.com.my/maps?hl=en&client=firefox-a&ie=UTF8&q=maju+junction+mall&fb=1&gl=my&hq=maju+junction+mall&hnear=Kuala+Lumpur,+Federal+Territory+of+Kuala+Lumpur&cid=0,0,16969069459864733924&ll=3.160677,101.696556&spn=0.011334,0.01929&z=16&iwloc=A

G11 Maju Junction Mall,1001,Jalan Sultan Ismail,50250,Kuala Lumpur

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 50250

You can also find Mikan on Facebook here!

 

Photography Note:

Just to note in regards to the photos above, all were taken with natural light and available restaurant lights with my Canon 5D MkII. I swapped between either the 50mm prime lens and the 35mm prime lens on several occasions. All of the photos were taken on top of a normal dining table.

Disclaimer: All of the above mentioned review is purely based on my own personal tastebuds. The actual tasting of the food was done in March 2011. Also to note that I did not get paid at all to write this review nor was I paid to take those photos above.

I recently came upon this site called backupify (I have no idea how you pronouce that!) which provides you free online backups of your Gmail as well as other social media tools.

Backupify is an all-in-one archiving, search and restore service for the most popular online services including Google Apps, Facebook, Twitter, Picasa and more.

Running on Amazon's Web Services Infrastructure, all you need to do is to sign up for backupify here, select a plan that you want (yes, there is a free plan available!) and then select which of your online accounts you want to sign up for. Voila, and you are done! Backupify would then take a couple of days to back up your online accounts.



Unfortunately that the free personal plan only offers 2Gb of free storage while my Gmail account is already reaching 4Gb of data!



I really really really need to clear up some of those older emails as well as junk in my mailbox. But at least Google keeps adding up extra storage space for emails!

Anyway if you really rely a lot of Gmail or can't trust the cloud space in which other social media applications work on, Backupify would definitely give you a better sense of security.

 



It all started when Mel suggested that we try eating lunch at this "char siew" restaurant in Shah Alam at a restaurant called Spring Golden. During lunch we toyed with the idea of catching a movie that night and at 5pm I received a call from BK and he said that there were tickets for the "Adjustment Bureau", I just said, "yes" without much thought.

Fast forward a couple of hours, the 7 of us went into the cinema and I had totally no expectations of the movie. I didn't read the synopsis and I thought this was gonna be some Bourne Identity style type of movie. Only did I realise that after a couple of minutes into the show, the story line did become a little weird.

The movie centered around a character called David Norris (played by Matt Damon) who was running to be elected as senate. He was deemed as the youngest one ever to run for office and just before he was supposed to deliver his speech right after the polls were in, he met a girl whom he fell head over heels over. But because he was a high profile figure with a promising career in front of him, there are people who deemed that this relationship shouldn't continue and are trying their all to keep them apart.

So basically, it sounds straight out of a bollywood plot. Rich boy from upper class meets girl of his dreams from lower class and everyone is trying to separate them.

Thats where it gets interesting. Trust me, it gets real interesting.

I shouldn't really spoil it for those who have yet to watch it. I personally thought that it was rather entertaining and I would give it a 7/10 stars.

Update 04/03: Found an image of the A3 Concept in the flesh! Included that into the post



The Audi A4 (B8 version) really took the executive market by storm so much so that there is such a long waiting list for the car here in Malaysia. Mainly due to the fact that it is a CBU hence it needs to be imported in and since Malaysia is not one of the earlier markets to adopt newer models, we get ours fairly slowly. Such is the life of a Malaysian especially since we have to wait quite long before getting even Apple products.

As much as other car manufacturers try to copy Audi's foray into LED DRL's, none have come up with a design that even looks as nice and as sexy as the A4's.



Heck, even they tried to implement it on the A6 but it doesn't seem to pull it off as well as the A4.

Now there are talks and rumours in the air about a new Audi A3 Concept Sedan. Definitely a hot and tasty looking car!



I just love how the lights have been redesigned and the grill just makes it look so fierce! Since this is just a concept, I do hope that it does get into production one day!



Click on the image above to see more photos of the car which was showcased in the Geneva Auto Show.