Over the weekend I had the pleasure of celebrating an old friend's birthday at G3 Kitchen and Bar at Jalan Telawi 3 in Bangsar. Prior to this occasion, I never heard of the place and the only reason I might only venture towards Bangsar is to try out the banana leaf rice there.

When I entered the restaurant, I thought it did seem a bit casual as it was an open concept style and we were surrounded by bits and pieces of grocery items such as sauces, eggs and other food stuff. Anyhow since there were a fair bit of us in the group, we decided on sharing some of the food we ordered. I decided on trying out two pizza's there, a fishy variant (3 different types of fish with honey mustard toppings) and a spicy lamb and eggplant pizza.

The result was absolutely stunning! So stunning that I totally forgot to take pictures of the pizza as I was just too busy gobbling it all down. I even had a chance to taste a friend's Chicken Tikka Masala, the chicken was extremely tender and juicy!

Personally, I have always loved Italianies' salmon pizzas but now I guess I have found a new place to eat pizza from now onwards. Generous portions and the price isn't too bad as well.

One thing I did regret was not sampling one of their many scrumptious looking desserts which are displayed right at the entrance. I can definitely blame that on my account that I am completely overweight and I do have to watch my diet. Well, perhaps when I have lost about 10-15kg and I will definitely return there to eat some dessert. And perhaps during my next visit, I will remember to take at least some photos.

The image above just sums it all and yesterday was one day I didn't realise that eating so much red meat was painful! Anyway, it all began when BK and Dinghy asked me whilst I was on a shoot whether I wanted to join some steak competition. Since I was busy at that time and was distracted, I said "yes, sign me up".



Fast forward that a month and I was sitting under the shade outside of Las Vacas at Mont Kiara looking at the crowd of 63 participants eagerly awaiting to eat their steaks. Funnily I was telling BK and Dinghy that I actually ate lunch at Kanna Curry House first together with a couple of my uni mates before going for the tournament. Biggest mistake yet, LOL!

There were plenty of season pros there who have attended the past steak challenges organized by Las Vacas so I was sort of the newbie.



Everyone was given 600 grams of meat first (each piece is 300 grams). I had to add on a little bit of sauce such as HP sauce, ketchup and HP BBQ sauce because I really couldn't stand the taste of just pure red meat steak. The first steak was easy to go down and by the time I completed the 2nd steak, it started getting tougher and tougher. Right after the 10 minute mark, the emcee announced that one contestant had already started on his 5th steak. Heck, I was only halfway through my 2nd!



I was sitting next to a couple of gentleman who was happily gobbling down their steaks while I was struggling to even look at my meat especially my 3rd steak which was pretty much extremely rare!



Yes, that is just how rare my steak was and it was insanely difficult to swallow the meat let alone taste it. I was resisting the urge to vomit it all out as the emcee announced that the leader was another guy who started on his 7th steak.



And just when the competition was about to end, the guy who was leading the group at the 1st half of the competition puked and was disqualified. The winner ended up eating 2.3kg of steak. He was still working on his 8th piece when the timer ran out! Congrats to the winner who won a 4D 3N holiday to Australia and also congrats to both BK and Dinghy who passed the 1kg mark.

Frankly, I think I can skip eating beef for at least a couple of months.

This was what I had for dinner last night instead :P



Some facts from the competition

• 63 participants in total, had to reject more or else the total number would be 137


• the average amount of meat consumed, 1.1kg per person


• there was a single female participant and she finished 4 pieces of steak!


• In total, 93kg of meat was consumed

Disclaimer

No animals were hurt during the writing of this blog post but plenty of cows did sacrifice their lives for the competition

I have been trying to get as much rest as I can most weekends but after yesterday's shoot, I was completely worned out. Grace suggested I try using a more comfortable pair of shoes to shoot a wedding, preferably something which has a thick sole. If it were up to me, I would shoot with my pair of crocs all the time because I love how thick it is.

Anyway, after church this morning, I decided to eat lunch together with munz at Sanbanto. I got this idea after Jon went there for dinner yesterday and checked-in there via Foursquare. So being the usual curious person and when there is the word "pork" in the title of the name, I headed over there to have a go at their fare. First impressions was that the restaurant really did look more of a deli than a restaurant. About slightly more than half of the place is filled up with the kitchen, sales counter and the large freezer.

Sanbanto Premium Pork is located on the same row as KTZ in SS2, facing "Wai Sek Kai".

Sadly there wasn't any place available but the owner (I think she is the owner), helped us by opening up a new table closer to the door. Feeling extremely hungry we decided to take it and after a while when another group left the restaurant, we moved over to a proper table. Both of us decided to try out the Sanbanto Bacon n Cheese burger and ordered ourselves iced cappuccino.



While waiting for our food, munz was playing her new golden half camera with a flash. Actually I think I took more photos with it and I can't wait to develop the film to see the results.By the time I finished convincing her and after 4 frames from the camera, our food arrived.



The burger was rather good, not great but definitely good. Maybe its because I always had this feeling that a good cheese burger should always be beef and not pork but the bacon was good. How it can be even better is that if they made it with crispy bacon instead of the softer pan fried type. The crunchiness would definitely be a good option mixed with a large helping of mushrooms.



The burger came with a nice side salad which was well seasoned and not the usual junk that other places serves. I completely gobbled that down.



The ice cappuccino was "so-so" and I was annoyed that it didn't come served with a spoon to stir it especially when there is a large layer of sugar at the bottom. Anyway the price of the burger and drinks were not too bad and I would definitely return back to the restaurant to try out their other pork food such as the pork belly salad, yumz!

By the way, I took these photos using my iPhone, totally love the effect.

Have a great remaining weekend and do spend time with your mums today!

I previously blogged about my trip to Chicago here and here. Actually I was on training for a week before spending the weekend in Chicago. Right after spending a couple of days in the windy city, I journeyed towards east together with my mate, Jamie. I learned a lot about flying in the US. First of all, when it is stated that you need to be at the airport an hour earlier before your flight, that really means you need to actually check-in at the counter an hour earlier. This doesn't include the time it takes you to line up (it took us about 45minutes, so we kinda missed out flight).

Anyway, by the time we landed in New York, we both took a cab towards Manhattan Island only to be greeted by what some people might call a New York cab experience. We didn't get conned but the experience was somewhat disheartening. The cab driver did get cut off but he didn't have to wind down his window and started cursing non-stop for 15 minutes. He didn't get a tip from me.

By the time we reached our hotel (we stayed at Sheraton Manhattan), there was a street fair going on.



From all of the movies I have seen, I always had the mental image of how New York would look in either sephia or black and white.

The fair was in full force with plenty of vendors selling trinkets and souveniers as well as plenty of food.





This was my lunch, a mixed version of a kebab with plenty of filling and vegetables. It tasted fantastic, maybe because I was a little hungry at that time hence that could have been an added bonus factor.



The corn dog was really calling out to me and they had like 1 foot sausages. Jamie could tell that I was drooling all over them!



And what is New York without the guys handing out flyers or street baskers.



Times Square was extremely packed. The queue to get theater tickets were extremely long. We wanted to catch the new play called "Shrek". The hotel wanted to sell us tickets at USD$175 but if we spent about 2 hours queuing up,  we could have bought it at a much cheaper price.

After walking about for a bit and enjoying the view of the city, the two of us felt sick and it probably was that we might have been too worned out. But with the current crisis of swine flu, we were a little paranoid and after checking into the hospital, we ended up all bandaged up as shown below.



Ok, I was lying about the bandage thing.

Find out more in my next post :)

Oh my goodness, last week went by and I didn't even post up my usual Wednesday clicks. I guess I wanted to get out of the rut of my blog just having those posts. So a very "femes" blogger told me that I should blog more often, which is so true because what is a blog if it isn't there to be blogged. Anyway, I am getting way over my head here.

I have been meaning to post about this for a while already but it totally slipped my mind. But as they always say, better late than never right?

Imagine this, you are feeling hungry and you want to get some food or in my case, I wanted to bring @munZ out for a nice place to have dinner but at the same time eat at some interesting place. So what I did was I headed over to this site that I kept on seeing at this fella's nick on MSN.



Being a relatively shy guy, I constantly face the problem of trying to reserve places at restaurants. Ok, that was a blatant lie. When it comes to food, especially good food, I would beg, borrow or kill for awesome tasting dishes of delectible culinary delights. Anyway, back to the story. After stumbling unto theQguides, and by stumbling I meant being guided to this URL, I thought to myself, why not give it a try.

The first restaurant I came about on the site was Bermuda & Onion. Bermuda & Onion is located at Changkat Bukit Bintang and it is located amidst a busy street of restaurants, bars and pubs. To be really and completely honest, I got lost trying to find the restaurant because I thought Changkat Bukit Bintang was at the row where Bangkok Jazz was. Anyhow, I was totally late for my reservations (oops!) but the staff was kind enough to keep my table.

Anyhow, the moment I stepped into the restaurant, I glanced through the menu and decided to order food to share between me and munz. We both ordered a ceasars salad, baby back pork ribs for appetisers and pork ribs and chops for the main course.



Bread was complementary and they served it with a rather interesting sour cream sauce. Definitely a good break from the usual bread+olive oil+vinegar from Italiannies.



The baby back pork ribs was served in a rather small dish but the taste definitely made up for it's size.



The salad instead was rather good and it had been tossed nicely and dressed well. Not too much sauce but just nicely dressed.



The main course was quite filling but my only dislike about the entire dish is that they had baked beans at the bottom of the pile of meat and it didn't really taste that good.



But the main highlight for me was dessert where munZ says that their crème brûlée was really to die for! And after tasting it, it held up to it's reputation. If you are in the vicinity, you got to try this dish.

While waiting for munz to finish her food, I decided to take some shots of her. Apparently when she eats or waits for her food, she has many different expressions!



Anyway, its been a while since I had a post that included photos. I definitely have been slacking in my photography as well as in this blog. More posts to come and with loads of photos!

It has been a while since I last came back to my hometown of Malacca. I think I can barely remember the last time but I know that I haven't been back the whole of 2008  (not counting the times I drove past Malacca on the way down to Singapore and Segamat). Anyway I am back here over the weekend to attend my cousin's wedding. Will be waking up pretty early tomorrow to help him out by being his photographer.

One of the things I miss the most about Malacca is the food. I managed to get my parents to bring me to a food court so that I could taste different dishes and I wasn't really in a mood for "sate celup" so they brought me to the Newton food court. The Newton food court originated near the old jailhouse but they have setup a similar looking food court that reminds me of Ming Tien back in PJ.

Here are some of the photos I took of the food we ordered.



My aunts decided to order a very famous "hakka" dish which I really think it is just tortoise food.



My parents went for something more traditional, claypot chicken rice.



My sister stuck with her usual Uncle Bob fried chicken.



I went for an upgraded version of the claypot chicken rice with an additional egg and an extra chinese sausage.



Of course I wouldn't sit down at a food court without ordering fried oysters.



And to top everything off, Portugese "Ikan bakar" or burnt manta ray (its not really burnt!).

I am still full from dinner and I did wish I had more time to try out my other favourites such as "sate celup", "cendol", chicken rice balls and other delicacies. My only dissapointment is that my all-time favourite coffee shop has closed down due to newer development and all of the stalls have split up to other locations in Malacca.

Time to head back to get a good nights rest before tomorrow's shoot. I am still in awe of the recent development in this area.

This is what typically happens almost on a daily basis at 12pm here at the office. First we would all gather at the lifts to make sure that we have enough people going for lunch. Then while waiting for all to arrive, we would definitely spot some people playing about (I guess they are trying to break the monotonous strain of everyday work).



Once we have all gathered around and come to a consensus of where to eat, we end up eating at the same place again and again. Well for the sake of those of you who have never step foot into Cyberjaya, this place has really nothing great to offer. Food is practically the same everywhere with a few emerging "mamaks" and the ever hopeful food court which seems to close down every year or so (even with new tenants) which is located in the colourful building.

Another choice that we might have is a place called, "Streetmall", a quaint place where CUCMS is located and it has a number of restaurants there serving food ranging from "mamak" food, to Italian food to Kebabs. It doesn't take long before we have tried all restaurants and realised that the food just wants to drive us out of Cyberjaya. We settled for the restaurant called Penang House which is a halal restaurant located in Streemall.

The next lunchtime ritual would be to take our orders and then wait very very very very long for our food. Here is Ryan's expression after his order was taken.



Here is Ryan's expression, 20 minutes after his food has not arrived.



He looks rather suspicious I would say. I think he is getting a little hungrier.



And when the food finally arrives, there are only a couple of dishes which I really like. One of the as shown above is their "Sambal fried rice" which comes with an egg (ordered separately). Another favourite dish of mine is the "Sweet and sour chicken with two eggs" dish. Specially ordered with two eggs for the win!



Man, typing this post has made me hungry. I can't wait to try out the new restaurant later today during lunch!