Hong Kong Food Culture @ Low Yat Plaza

If your expecting a long thesis piece on my view on Hong Kong food culture, you have probably been mislead by Google or the search engine that you have been mislead, my apologies. This is suppose to be about a restaurant with a name as creative as our goverment campaigns .

As i was waiting for my printer to be fixed on my last trip down to Low Yat i actually had some time to kill and decided to try out this hole in the wall eatery serving up some decent street food. Fashioned after street vendors of Hong Kong the food served here follow's suit with a typical choice of deep fried tofu, pork intestines,pork skin and a few others.

I have always fancied their curry fish balls. Simple dish with its fish balls boiled in a curry broth. Expect the typical chinese style curry which isnt as rich as a Malay curry due to its lack of coconut milk and with a slightly sweet taste to it. Its around Rm 5 for 9, well thats the usual portion i ordered to share with my friends anyways.

Another item that i must have when it comes to street food would probably be deep fried intestines. Nothing special about the taste, im actually glad about that. Wouldnt want my intestine to have a pungent taste of the pigs last meal would i. Just another example of me being a big sucker for pork intestine. Very crunch tho, does make a good snack.

If you have never been to Hong Kong and like to have a taste of their food culture this would probably be a good place to start. Nothing really spectacular about this place but always a good way to kill some time with some decent food.

Location:

Hong Kong Food Culture
LG-18, Lower Ground Floor, Low Yat Plaza,
Off Jalan Bukit Bintang,
55100 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

I ate: Roast Goose at Pudu(Wei Kee)

Each time my dad comes down to see me in KL it he never fails to come up and tell me about a new eat out spot that he found out recently on his very own self discovering hikes in kl. So like the last time, we headed downtown to the old part of KL city. A part of KL which speaks for itself with its old buildings with is bustling crowd of blue collar workers and a rising middle class executives as well as some of the younger crowd wedged in between. The KL which will never appear on the tourism board's video in promoting Malaysia. Its again one of those old coffeshops with its own cult of followers and a well established reputation only represented by the fading colours of its interior as well as its signage.

To my fascination, this part of pudu seems to be a haven for roast duck/goose with around 3 or 4 specialist shops just a stone throw from one another. But this time we headed to Wei Kee for their roast goose. Its said that the proprietor originates from Hong Kong bringing along with him the recipe for a good roast goose.

Since it was just the two of us, we ordered a quarter serving of goose. Note that these places only serve ducks in quarters and not as individual portions, unless your in an apetite for alot of this bird its recommended to bring along a dining partner.

Glistening on the outside a adequately crispy skin with a slightly rich milky taste and of course its lean meat with a soft texture sums up this goose roasted by this eatery without being to flamboyant in my description. And the broth the goose is served with is actually the juices collected from roasting it and boiled with other herbs giving the goose extra flavour!

Oh and the ever so neccesary home made plum sauce to sweeten the meat a little and a little bit of their brilliant concoction of garlic chilli sauce. It did occur to me that they werent very heavy handed on the chilli flakes inside the chilli itself which gave it a slightly more tangy flavour as oppose to the usual spicyness. Love it!

Apart from the different cuts of roast meat, one more traditional dished usually whipped out by these old places would be their dark sauce vinegar pork trotters.

You'd be silly to miss out on this. Since the portion of the duck was already quite substantial we didnt go overboard and opted for a smaller portion of this just for tasting. Dark, rich and slight caramel on the outside. I'd always enjoy chewing on the tendons of a good pork trotter.

If your craving for some duck and have some patience at hand, in this part of pudu its hard to go wrong with a few good choices at hand. I definetly prefer the goose here over Yi Kee's in my opinion.

Location:

Restaurant Wei Kee
50, Lorong Yap Hin
Off Jalan Pasar
Pudu
55100 Kuala Lumpur

IMU's Next Top Model not just another cheap carbon copy !

This might probably be a major departure from the usual food post as i was nursing a bad ulcer throughout this week which pretty much hampered the enthusiasm to go searching high and low for a good grub. So in turn i manage to get myself to attend an event worth writing about. In all honestly i have never really been a big fan of student organized events as they all turn out to be pretty much badly organized on a shoestring budget. Same impression was probably labelled on this event as well until a few days before the event where the organizing committee revealed a number of their main sponsors and a flow of well organized items on the itinerary. It had all the ingredients of a good event which most probably covers good publicity and it surely did just that with all the rave going on uni as well as social networking platforms majorly facebook.

Anyways least to say i ended up attending the event to see whether it actually did live up to its name. First impression was good with preevent mocktail party serving real food and not the typical delivered form of cardboard which we all like to chew and what the people at Domino's call pizza. No this time it was real food and pretty good ones as well.

We actually had a runway setup at the atrium of the university which turned what i walk/run(at times) through everyday into a platform for next top models to strut their stuff.

The calm before the storm

Since this event was one of the first few events which involves a big scale collaboration between two clubs in this case the photography and editorial board so we were treated to a slide show before the models came out.

As this event was mainly organised as a charity drive in light of the recent disaster in Japan the organizing comittee managed to secure sponsorship from local designer house Bill Keith, Key Ng,and Rumours by Gossips just to name a few.

As soon as the lights went on the models started flying off the runway. =P

The writing will pretty much stop here for now and what will follow soon after these is a case of bad diarrhoea of pictures that might just rape your bandwith and of which some i plucked from a few photographer friends who were present that night to cover the event. (Chun Kai, YingQi,Jie Cong)

5 Top female contestants

Top 5 male contestants

Soon after the first run Bill Keith came onstage and did a little introduction of himself and his side of his story on how he managed to get reel into the involvement of this event in a way much to the delight of the audience. Real show stopper he is, reminds me of the antics of one of my favourite comedians, Alan Carr.

Make some noise IMU!

We even had a short dance peformance by Chen and Derek from Imu's Got Talent which ended last month.

The final run of the day featured Bill Keith's award winning designs for the girls and Key Ng's latest collection of formal wear for the guys.

Then one of our very own guest of honour which was Farhan of AF4 (Akademi Fantasia) came up and did a few songs and cheekily pulled out one of the male models halfway through the song Big Spender.

This was probably the most anxious moments not only for the models but the audience has been waitng for. The announcement of IMU's 1st and very own top models. *drum rolls*

I'd have to say that this part could have been a little bit more exciting with a little bit more effort pulled out by the emcee. But what happened on that day itself was rather anticlimatic after all that glamour and excitement witnessed just a few moments ago. And the winners are!!!!!! (I'd wager that you'd feel a little more excitement from reading this compared to attending this part of the event itself)

                                                   Joshua and Jessica everybody!!!

This was probably the turning point of the whole event where the runway was announced as an open dance floor.

Thats our lecturer dancing onstage. How rad could it get?

Beware, shameless cam-whoring coming up.

Bill Keith ladies and gentlemen!

Tumpang Glamour #1

Tumpang Glamour #2

Coolest Pathologist/Lecturer i have known to date

Renu, the face of IMU's NTM

So i suppose this event proves a point besides us medical/dental students being charitable but who says students in these fields have to look like nerds? This event definitely place a nail into the coffin of medical school stereotype where the image of nerds loitering around the library is something of yesteryears. This everybody is the face of your future healthcare providers.