May 25, 2018

Mr Chew's Chino Latino Bar

We decided to try this place during our trip to KL after my friend tried it and said that it was good. This is not going to be a full-blown restaurant review as it was just my sister and I, so our stomachs limited the variety of food we were able to try.

It was not too crowded for lunch, not sure whether because it is the fasting month, but we made a reservation just in case. The restaurant is at the penthouse of Wolo Hotel in Bukit Bintang, which is just across the street from the H&M store at Lot 10.

Here are some of the interior views of the restaurant:






Your server will teach you how to fold your own chopstick holder, so that was a fun activity while waiting for your food to arrive.




There was a set lunch menu offered for RM49.90++ but we opted for the ala carte menu instead to try some of their more famous dishes. For starters, we had the nori taco with sushi rice, salmon belly and salmon roe with tobikko mayo (RM28 per portion) which was simply delicious! This was a combination of a sushi roll and a taco rolled into one.




For the main course, we shared the pan-seared barramundi with spicy tamarind chilli sauce, coconut cream & pineapple and avocado ginger flower salsa (RM75). The fish was cooked to perfection and the sauce was delicious too. It was a sort of twist on an elevated form of laksa lol.



Then finally for dessert, we had a dessert from the set lunch menu which was coconut and passionfruit sago pudding (RM15) which was yummy to the last bite. It was quite a big portion so we were glad that we decided to share.


The total bill came up to around RM170 for the both of us including taxes There are many other things on the menu which we wanted to try but we just couldn't take it in. Will definitely be back again!

Here is the relevant info for Mr Chew's Chino Latino Bar taken from their website:

 The Penthouse, WOLO Bukit Bintang,
Jalan Bukit Bintang,
55100 Kuala Lumpur,
Malaysia
Telephone +60 3 4065 0168
Fax +60 3 4065 0166
We are open every day
Lunch 11.30am until 2.30pm
Dinner seatings 6.00pm until 8.30pm; & 8.30pm until 10.30pm
Bar 5.00pm until 1.00am
Happy Hour, 5.00 until 8.00pm weekdays (excluding public holidays)

May happenings

It has been quite an eventful month of May, ever since I got back from Seoul, so here are some highlights.

We had the historic 14th General Election, and I am very glad that my children and I have lived in this era! I went early to vote just after the polling centre opened, and there was already quite a long line. Hubby dropped me and went to his polling station to vote. I waited for about 45 minutes before it was my turn.


Actually, the lines were not so long in the afternoon, but I had no choice, because the same evening it was time for Bruno Mars! When the election date was first announced, we were thinking that we would not be able to make it for the concert (and it was soooo difficult to get the tickets when it opened for booking!) but then Air Asia came up with reasonable affordable return tickets to KL, so off we went!

Incidentally this was my first ever concert, and I have never seen so many people in my life! Apparently 12,000 tickets were sold!


Obviously we bought the cheapest tickets (which were still RM398!) so we didn't have that fantastic a view, but it was still not too bad, and Bruno put on a great show.


I guess this was the 24K magic part :)


The concert ended quite early, around 10.15 pm after an hour and a half of solid performance. We couldn't really sleep that night, as we were following the agonisingly slow counting process and around 2 am, we all fell asleep, until one of my friends triumphantly announced at 7 am that Pakatan had won! This was the first time in Malaysian history that the ruling party since our independence has been overturned. So obviously nobody could sleep after that.

The next day, we tried the famous Village Park nasi lemak while checking our phone every few minutes for election updates. It was amazing how crowded the place was. When the food arrived, I understood why :)


After that we did some shopping at Sunway Pyramid before heading home. We took the later flight because it was cheaper lol.

About 10 days later, my sister was back, so after celebrating Mother's Day, we did a two-day trip to KL again for eating and shopping :) This time the Air Asia ticket was really cheap, only around RM97 return per person.



We stayed at a relatively new hotel, Hotel Stripes Kuala Lumpur, which is a YTL luxury hotel and also an Autograph Collection hotel. It cost RM310 a night, after taxes which is not too bad for a 5 star hotel in the city centre. 



There was this little container of old school sweets in the room which were complimentary, as were the drinks in the mini bar.


The hotel had a rooftop pool, which provided an unobstructed view of KL Tower.


We did some shopping and eating, and we tried this place called Mr Chew's Chino Latino Bar in Bukit Bintang. The food there was really good and I will blog about that separately. 

We were back in time to celebrate my dad's 65th birthday, and we had a nice dinner at Lunarich restaurant.



We took the small cake home to cut, and Helene wanted to decorate it with her candies which I bought her from KL. It was not a bad idea, as it was just a plain butter cake :)



The next day, we celebrated Hannah's 9th birthday too, as my sister was leaving to go back to Australia the following day. 





So it has been a busy month, but it was a fun type of busy haha. Happy birthday to our eldest baby Hannah tomorrow - we all love you very much!

May 7, 2018

Seoul & Jeju, South Korea

I just got back from my first trip to South Korea, so let me blog about it here. It was our firm's partners' retreat, so they put us up for 4 nights in The Westin Chosun Seoul. It was conveniently located within walking distance near the Myeongdong shopping district and a short taxi ride from the major attractions. The hotel organised shuttle transport for us to and from Incheon Airport. My group of friends travelled without our families this trip, so we had a lot of freedom to plan and explore at our own time.


So anyway, to maximise the short time we had there, we took a flight the night before (as did most of us) so that we would get there early the next morning, and that would give us almost a whole day before checking in for the night. We took Singapore Airlines and the flight was comfortable enough, although I must say the food standard seemed to have dropped.

After putting down our stuff and having lunch at the Lotte Department Store which was just behind our hotel, we went out to Myeondong to search for this:


I see almost everyone who has been to Seoul has Instagrammed this at least once, and I can see why. It was totally yummy - yogurt gelato. The name of the shop is Milky Bee and there are a few outlets in Myeondong itself. Usual price is 5500 won (around RM20) but on that day it was on offer for 3800 won (around RM14). I must say that food (even street food) in Seoul is not cheap.

After having lunch and our ice cream, we headed in the direction of Gyeongbokgung Palace. There are actually quite a number palaces in Seoul, but since this was the biggest and supposedly the grandest, we decided to only visit this one. Before going in to the palace though, we went to rent a hanbok (traditional Korean dress). By wearing a hanbok, entrance to all the palaces are free.

Here are some shots we took on the palace grounds:









That was quite a fun thing to do, and we didn't feel out of place as there were so many other people wearing it, locals and tourists alike. There are plenty of shops around the palace giving out hanbok rentals so we were quite spoilt for choice. In the end we chose a 2 hour rental for 15,000 won (around RM55) which was quite a good deal.

That night, we googled and found a place to have Korean barbeque, and we found this place which came highly recommended. The problem is that it was housed in a commercial building and our GPS just couldn't seem to locate it. We almost gave up, but managed to find it in the end, and we were not disappointed. The premium beef was the best beef we have ever tasted (they used pork lard to cook it haha). It did not come cheap though - we ordered 2 portions of 150g beef for 39,000 won (around RM143) per portion. This restaurant is called "The Me" and I can't find it on Google now or else I would provide the link here. Anyway, look at those great cuts of meat - really melt in your mouth!


The next day, my colleague Ai Li and I took a tour to Jeju Island which we had pre-booked before the trip. It is about an hour's flight from Seoul, so the tour covered our return flight tickets to go and come back in a day. The main reason of us wanting to go to Jeju is because it is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and our tour that day would cover 2 of those sites on Jeju.

The transport came to pick us up really early in the morning - 5.45 am so the hotel was kind enough to serve us room service breakfast in our room at 5 am for no extra cost. We reached Jeju around 8.15 am and the tour picked us up from the airport around 9 am. The first stop was horseback-riding, and then we made our own citrus ice-cream as Jeju is famous for it's citrus fruits. We ate the ice-creams which we made ourselves with Jeju's beautiful scenery as our backdrop.




After that, we visited a local folk village, where we were given a tour of how the locals lived.



This is another thing which Jeju is famous for - the black pig.


So obviously we had it for lunch :)


After lunch, we headed to Seongsan Ilchulbong or Sunrise Peak, which is a UNESCO heritage site. The peak is famous for its crater, and even though we did not come at sunrise, it did provide splendid views. I did not climb all the way to the top (as our tour guide told us it was 500 over steps) so I was contented with taking photos of it from below haha.




One interesting thing we witnessed however, were these women divers which are an intangible cultural heritage inscribed by UNESCO. They are elderly women (as we understand from our tour guide that young women no longer wish to do this job) who go down to the sea to gather shell fish such as abalone and sea urchin without the help of oxygen masks.



We had a taste of fresh abalone sashimi straight from the sea for 10,000 won (around RM37) and it was delicious, even for me who does't eat raw stuff. The texture of the fresh abalone was crunchy, not like the usual chewy, rubbery texture we are used to.


Our last stop for the day was to Manjanggul Cave (also a UNESCO heritage site) which is a lava cave. A lava cave or tunnel is formed when the lava that was deep in the ground spouts from the peak and flows to the surface. Only about 1km of the 13,422m Manjanggul Cave is open to tourists. It was really cold and wet inside the cave but quite amazing to realise that volcanic lava used to flow through these tunnels.



We arrived back in Seoul around almost 9 pm and took a bus from Gimpo Airport back to Myeongdong. Even though we were up really early that morning, we had sporadic naps throughout the day on the plane and in the bus, so we were quite awake to have some supper at the Myeongdong night market! Here are some glimpses of the night market food:







The next morning, it was an early morning again for us as this time we booked a tour to Nami Island and the surrounding areas. We didn't have to be as early as the previous morning, so we managed to have breakfast at the hotel's lounge (our rooms came with executive lounge access) before heading to the tour meeting point.

Our first stop in the tour was The Garden Of Morning Calm. There were lots of Instagram-worthy sites in the garden, but to be honest, I think the photos which we saw of it looked better. Maybe all the flowers were not in full bloom yet, but it was still pretty nonetheless.









Next stop was Nami Island itself. We were quite disappointed that we could not get to try the zipwire to Nami Island as the slots were fully booked - maybe next time! So we took the ferry instead. Nami Island is famous for where the Korean drama "Winter Sonata" was filmed.




There were also these cute snowmen things all over the island.



While waiting for the ferry to go back, we mailed postcards back home (obviously we arrived home before the postcards did lol).



The final stop on our tour that day was the Gangchon Rail Park. One rail bike fits 4 persons, so it was just nice for the 4 of us. The rail bike track is built on an actual train track which is no longer in use, but there was an instance where cars had to stop for the rail bikes to pass through!


We pedaled for 8.1 km (around 40 minutes) and we went through "themed" tunnels such as tunnels with bubbles, fairy lights and disco! Along the way, we saw lots of nice scenery too.







That night, it was more eating and shopping at Myeongdong. I managed to try my favourite tteok-bokki (rice cakes) and we also had beef bulgogi.



And then we had dessert at this Korean dessert cafe called Sulbing. It was late at night but it was full house. This was one of their signature desserts. There were others as well but we were too stuffed from dinner, so we just ordered this to share and try.


The next day, I finally got to try the hotel buffet breakfast, and this french toast was the best I have eaten!


We had nothing planned for the day, so we did some shopping around the duty free shops and Myeongdong area and then got ready for our partners' meeting at 4 pm to be held at the hotel. What we thought was a "meeting" ended up being a really fun, interactive taekwondo lesson! That's us with the master.



And in the evening, the firm organised a dinner and performance for us at Korea House. That's my boss wearing a hanbok for dinner :)




The dinner was quite good, ala Korean fine dining but we were quite rushed as we needed to catch the performance which was held right after dinner. No pictures taken of the performance but it was really professionally done, and highly entertaining.


So that's a wrap for Seoul! It was definitely a productive 5 days, considering we saw (and ate!) quite a fair bit. Hope to back someday with the family :)






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