Tian Xiang Tian Wei 天香回味 @ Sunway Giza

I had been hearing about this place from one of my friend few months back. Hearing how good it was isn't the main thing but knowing how expensive it was, is. My friend spent more than RM100 for a steamboat dinner for two. WTH?! That has got to be the most expensive steamboat dinner I heard so far. I need to go and see it myself. The place is located at Sunway Giza facing the street rather than inside the mall. They have three branches to date if I am not mistaken. There's one over at Pudu, KL and the latest one over at Klang Bukit Tinggi. 

It's located at Level 2 and no worries, there's a lift for you if you're too lazy to climb the stairs. Once we entered the place, our nostril was attacked by their strong herbal fragrant from the soup. OK, this should be good. I'd made reservation and we're running late that night. Managed to get a table for us within 10minutes. The place was pack. The place is running with waitresses taking orders and cleaning the tables. Business is really good it seemed. 

We were served with plastic wrapped eating utensils. How hygienic I think but I found out that one of the small plate has some mark on it. So I asked for a change and since all their utensils are plastic wrapped in a set, so I got a new set. I found out from the bill that we are being charged RM2 for two sets of these. Hygienic comes with a price tag these days it seemed. 

Decided to go with their house combo pot. Since it was just me and wifey, we had a medium pot which cost us RM30 while a larger one would cost RM35.  

As mentioned in their menu, they are using more than 60 herbs and spices in their soup. The herbal soup was really salty but nice to drink. We had a few sips and the waitress told us to throw in the pork balls in first since it took longer to cook. The smell from both soup are really strong. Wifey really like their herbal soup. 

This is their spicy oil soup. I don't think anyone in their right mind would drink this. But we both agreed that slice meat are best cook with this soup rather than herbal. They just add plain water for both the soup since the soup in the pot are heavily prepared with lots of spices and herbs. 

This is not in their menu if I am not mistaken. I saw some customers having this and asked the waitress and we are served with stewed pork rice. This is one hell of a stewed pork rice. One of the best I had locally. Portion was really generous I guess. Rice is soft and the pork was plentiful. This comes really close to the one I had over at Taiwan. Nice~!!! 

There are a few choices to be made on their meat side. We decided to go with pork shoulder. I don't really find anything different of their pork with the one I had outside but when you cook it with the spicy soup, the ordinary pork meat becomes extraordinary. Spicy and tender pork, nice~! 

What is steamboat without balls? I saw their "jamping" balls which consists spicy and non-spicy type. Ordered 6 balls with half of each. So it's RM9 for 3 balls which is RM3/pc. That is one expensive ball. 

The waitress recommended the fish egg ball. But I can't decide which to order as I wanted to try their Taiwan Shanghai soup ball too. So the waitress told me that we can mix it around and we took half of each. Nice~!  

Their normal mushroom cost around RM11 if I am not mistaken, so wifey decided to go with their xiangbao mushroom since the price isn't that much far apart. Most of their mushrooms are RM10 and above. Quite pricey. We also ordered Yau Mak which cost us RM10. Yup, pricey pricey even for vegetable. Wifey initially wanted to order their Chrysanthemum Soro but it was sold out (this vege cost RM18). 

First off, the jamping balls. I had something similar over at one of the steamboat restaurant over at SS15 Subang. But this is more packed with pork inside. And you can really feel some water bursting out of it. Nice. The spicy one actually not that spicy anyway. 

Next, is their Taiwan Shanghai Soup ball. It's something like what you have over at Dragon-I but in a smaller mini size. Yes, there are soup being trapped inside where you can drink it. Not bad.  

Last ball of the night would be their fish egg ball. Damn there's a lot of fish roe in there. If you like fish egg, this is a must. 

The Ru-Lou rice was so nice that I decided to go for a second towards the end of the dinner. Yes, I had two stewed pork rice. Both of us was really full towards the end. I know that the amount would be less  than RM150 but I didn't expect to pay for the pocket tissue left on the table together with the eating utensils. But we had a good dinner, and I have RM100 worth of coupons which I bought online. I had 60% discount from the RM100. So in total the bill is RM147.70 but I paid only RM47.70 that night. Add that to the RM40 I paid for the coupons, the dinner amounted to RM87.80. For a steamboat for 2, this is a bit too expensive. But the place is pack with people for a reason. I think 7 out of 10 people dining that night are using coupons or vouchers which they bought online or directly from the restaurant itself. 

Wifey was very delighted and asked me to buy RM500 of voucher next time instead of RM100. And she was lecturing me in the beginning why do I bought so much (RM100) for a steamboat dinner in the beginning. Worth it? Well, I guess it's not your ordinary steamboat dinner and with the vouchers it's quite worth it. Before I leave, they even gave me a 50% discount voucher for my next visit. Goodie~ !! I leave with a full stomach and a happy feeling. What more can you ask for. 

Rating: 

Food: 4.0 out of 5.0 (one of the best steamboat I had) 

Service: 3.8 out of 5.0 (maybe under staff but their waitress are really nice and know how to PR)

Ambiance: 3.8 out of 5.0 (Air condition and although it' steamboat but I don't sweat that much)

Address: 

Tian Xiang Hui Wei

B-8-2, Sunway Giza Mall, 

Jalan PJU 5/14, 

Tel: 03-2148 2268

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)

Hao Jie Seafood Steamboat Restaurant

Got a phone call from my ex-colleague for food tasting tonight. It's a new dessert shop in Kepong area. But before that, we decided to have dinner. So he had suggested Ho Jie Steamboat restaurant. It's said that it's origin from Pulau Ketam. These days, they all said it's from Pulau Ketam. Gimmick?

Fish slices which was really fresh.

Pork balls and fish ball with minced pork. I heard that most of the fish balls and also other variety of food is prepared in house. So it's really fresh.

We had also ordered some fried Yong Tau Foo. Nice~!

Golden Mushrooms are a must for steamboat. It's not those that sticks together that I normally had in other restaurant. So it's not cold storage stuff.

What is steamboat without some fresh green to go with it. There's also bean curd and also prawns, the usual yee mee, mee hoon and eggs.

So add everything on top and we got one pot of hot seafood which is boiling and ready to go into our hungry stomachs. The soup was fresh but still tasty. Overall it's an over the average steamboat restaurant. Service is good and the place is always full house. It's located opposite Carrefour in Kepong same row as Papa Rich Coffee Shop on the other end. The whole meal cost us RM 99nett for 5 person. It's RM13.50/pax but we did ordered some extra pork balls and golden mushrooms and some other stuff. (Rating: 3.8 out of 5.0)

Restaurant Good Time @ Bandar Puteri

After a long shopping at KL the whole day it was time for dinner. So decided to try out this place in Bandar Puteri which served steamboat buffet. Since it's raining the whole evening so steamboat should be the best dinner. It's located across the street from Public Bank.

Saw my favorite fast food while scouting around the bar, french fries. It's hot, soft and salty. They also served fried wanton and also other tit bits for appetizer while waiting for the water to boil.

This is one of the tit bits which really worth mentioning, pandan chicken. It's wrapped with pandan leave and once unwrapped come this juicy succulent pandan flavoured chicken. Damn it's really nice.

Over here they served fried chicken wings which I tried and tasted not that bad. At least you don't need to fight for your wings over here.

OK, now for the best part of the steamboat. They served inductive type steamboat and also the conventional carcoil type. So I opted for the latter. Don't worry, they will heat the charcoil up before they served to you.

There is three type of soup over here, which are Tom Yam, Herbal and also Fish Head. We choose the fish head and also herbal. I like the fish head as there is also sea weed and also salted vegetables in the soup together with some sliced fish. Nice~!!!

They served the usual dishes which you can see in any other buffet steamboat restaurant but over here it's a bit more fresher. As they will changed or chilled the food once in a while.

Like the pork balls and also the mixed pork intestine balls. I think I ate more than 15 altogether. Damn full at the end of the meal.

Other then all those meat there are also varieties of fresh vegetables to choose from.

Here is my favorite section which served the fried stuff. Yes, I know it's weird eating this at a steamboat restaurant. But I like it, so what the heck.

They have two fridge full of ice cream of your desire. So no long queues and plenty of ice cream to choose from. But no Hagen or Baskin over here. LOL!

Altogether there are over 100 foods to choose from the two long bar. The food is always replenish by the staffs. I like the service really much.

Food is plenty, fresh and clean. No long queues and service is good. Tables are sufficient and organized. Quite a good place for a gathering or a dinner with friends. The price for the buffet is RM19.80++ per head. Definitely an alternative for me from Yuen Steamboat. But there are a few more buffet steamboat around the area. Will try to test it out in the future. (Rating: 3.8 out of 5.0)

Address: 1, Jalan Puteri 4/1,
Bandar Puteri,
47100 Puchong,
Selangor D.E
Tel: 016 - 272 6672