Movida Kitcher.Bar.Kitchen.Lounge

 

I was actually wanted to try out Cravings over at Sunway Giza but ended up at this place called Movida. It's actually a bar cum lounge which served food during lunch hour too. My ex-colleague told me that this place served some kind of a buffet during lunch hour. Actually I (we) are still looking for a place other than Louisiana for some good all you can eat lunch.  Coming back to Movida. We arrived around 12.15 and we are among the first to arrive. Not much sign of the buffet available but we did asked the waiter and he confirm it's available. 

After reading the above, I realized that their 'eat-all-you-can' has a 'catch' on it. As you can see above, the buffet style lunch only provide a all you can eat on their dessert and soup. You can only choose one main course for the price of RM14.80 NETT. This is a bit of a let down as who can drink 5 over bowl of mushroom soup or 5 plates of salad?

This is the salad section with tons of fresh salad for us to feast on. But as I mentioned earlier, how many plate do they expect us to eat? Unless you are on a diet and salad is your new best friend. 

They are serving mushroom soup that day. My favorite kind of soup but we will see how it really taste later.

 

 Salad isn't that bad but not much to brag about but fresh. 

Back to the soup. Totally disastrous. This had got to be one of the top 3 worst soup I had. I like my soup thick but this is just too much. It's too thick and worst, the powder isn't diluted well. And when we queried the waiter bout this, he had the nerve to say it's just the way they serve their soup. WTH?!!

Let's go to the main course now. Hopefully the main is better than the appetizers. I had ordered their grilled lamb with pasta on the side. The whole meal really does looked appetizing after the sad start on the appetizers. Grilled lamb was a bit hard to bite off but tasted alright. Spaghetti was really bad. Couldn't really taste anything. Sad sad meal. 

My friend had ordered their chicken chop and it wasn't what he expected. Maybe the taste is good? Portion was really small. Chicken was normal and the only thing worth mentioning is the croquet potato. It's actually potato mixed with cheese and cooked to crisp. 

OK, overall, I can summarize this place up pretty easy. I think you can guess what is my answer too by now. Not worth my money at all. Only spend your money here if someone is buying. Maybe the bar is better at night. Not sure how good is the ala-carte dishes in the menu, but not sure I am taking that chance again soon. 

Ratings: 

Food: 3.5 out of 5.0

Ambiance: 3.8 out of 5.0

Service: 3.5 out of 5.0

Ben & Nick's Cafe @ D'Tiara Subang Jaya

Been thinking of paying this place a visit for some time since I saw the place during supper with my friends after gym. The place is called Ben & Nick's Cafe or B&N for short. It's located inside D'Tiara Apartment next to Subang Avenue. It's on the corner facing Old Town Kopitiam so you won't miss it. From what I read, the owner Sonny Cheah who started the cafe after retiring. With his son Ben at the kitchen, they whipped out several good dishes  from what they can cook and changing the menu from feedback from the customers. 

The restaurant is small but do not judge them from the size of the place. The place can comfortably seat around 50 customers at the most. The place is designed like an English tavern, with most of the tables placed outside for the alfresco experience. The interior decoration is what attract me the most which I read was mostly provided by Cheah's wife own collection. 

I saw the picture of their mushroom soup from the menu and I straight decided to order it. It's so delicious just from the picture itself. The portion of soup isn't that large but just right to share with my babe and a small piece of garlic bread on the side. The soup is mild and not that thick but the fragrance is nice and soothing. Not the best I had but definitely above average and worth a try. 

Babe decided to ordered their combo blanket since she can't decide whether to go with steak or pasta. This is the best choice since it's a combination of beef strips with beef bacon and smoked onions; Cajun marinated chicken strips with tomato salsa. All wrapped in a cheesy grilled tortilla. If that is not enough, it's served with Romaine lettuce and bread crumbles. This is really a heavy meal for lunch but since both of us are hungry so we shared. The beef tasted better than the chicken since the latter fall a bit flat on the taste.

As for me, definitely Carbonara since it's been a while that I had one. I had asked how big is their portion since I am really starving. The waitress told me that all their pasta is served 200g. I had ordered their beef bacon with Fettuccine pasta. OK, I don't really know how much is 200g but when it is served in front of me, damn it's large. The sauce isn't that thick as of my liking but still it tasted really good. A bit salty but just right. Had a bite into the pasta and it's a bit plain. Take another taste of the sauce and take a bite into the pasta and it tasted better. Really strange. I concluded that the sauce is really good but the pasta fall flat because the sauce isn't that thick to stick on the pasta.

All the heavy lunch and what better way to clear our taste bud but a hot cup of illy Cappuccino.

Overall lunch was alright. There's hit and misses here and there but still a good place to have a nice quiet decent lunch. They also served steaks, desserts and some other good appetizers. The place is cozy in the afternoon so you can have a nice chat with your friends and with the decorations, you really feel that you are in an English tavern. Price isn't that expensive since the portions are really generous and all. 

Rating: 

Ambiance : 3.8 out of 5.0

Service : 3.8 out of 5.0

Food : 3.8 out of 5.0

Phukat BBQ Buffer

Finally I have the time to filter through my pictures during my trip over to Phuket two weeks back. Not much to talk about during the makan session but the most memorable one would be this one. It was highly recommended by the local tour agent over there. Actually the fella is from Malaysia and is operating over there. So he is so nice of bringing 15 of us over to this place. He mentioned that this is the best serving BBQ in town. OK, we will see later.

The place was packed when we arrived and since we didn't make any reservation and having a big crowd didn't help much, we waited around 10 minutes for a table for all of us. The tour guide, Richard was so friendly and helpful since he's the only one who know how to converse in Thai, so he's plenty of help that night. You have locals and also foreigners in the restaurant. When we're moving in to the table, we saw a large crowd of Malaysian leaving and giving a good thumbs up of their experience. This should be good I think to myself. 

Lets go through their menu or rather food on the table now. On the first corner we have the seafood section where as you can see, there's fresh prawns every where and plenty of them too. I didn't took much but just two of them for the soup. 

On the other side, we have the marinated red meat section. You have beef, mutton, chicken and pork. I am particularly into the marinated chicken on top. All of these meat seemed really fresh to me, maybe it's due to the crowd and fast replenishing of the stocks on the table.

Here is the beef and mutton with some internal organs too. The far right corner would be the pig's skin as the cooking oil for the BBQ session. Yes, if you didn't realized it till now, it's actually similar to the BBQ Plaza over here (which is from Thailand too).

Plenty of vegetables to choose from but babe decided to go with the seaweed instead which I really love. 

There are at least 5 types of chilies to choose from and here I had highlighted 3 of them since it's my favorite among the rest. This is the normal red chilly with lots of seeds in them. Not for the weak hearted.

This is the green chilly all minced and throw into a big pot. Look at the color~!

My favorite and one the most spiciest among the 5, you have everything inside. Onions, garlic, chilly leaves, chilly seeds and whole lot of everything else. Richard told us to mix all the 5 chilly together and take a dip in it. Yes, it's a very memorable moment during that first bite into it. haha! 

Here's the seaweed vegetable which babe took a lot as she kept on reminding me that it's very good for the body as it contain iodine or some really good protein in it. OK, this I am alright with. Delicious. 

This is how it all started, clean pot and clear plain soup.

This is what it become at the end, black burnt surface but the soup was so damn sweet due to the seafood and all the other vegetables that we cook in it. 

Babe happily helping herself with the dessert. 

We ordered 6 bottles of Pepsi (RM6/bottle). The Pepsi so darn old school. ^^

Overall we have a very filling and satisfying dinner that night. The price for the buffet is RM14/head. You need to pay for the ice cubes too (RM5/bowl). Yes, you need to pay for the ice cubes. Don't ask me why but you just need. After the big dinner we walk around town and had body massage before calling it a day. Definitely be recommending this place to my friends if they are going over if I can find the name card which I misplaced it last week. Dang~! Until then, I will keep searching until I find it. ^^

Food :3.8 out of 5.0

Ambiance: 3.5 out of 5.0 (actually it's quite windy and not that hot so it's still acceptable)

Service: 4.0 out of 5.0 (there's this fella standing next to our table just serving us drinks...cool)