Malaysia Food Blog – Apple Foodees

Sao Nam Fine Vietnamese Cuisine is the very first Vietnamese restaurant that I have been to. It is not that I don’t like their food, but there are not many Vietnamese restaurants around. Oh well, it’s an excuse. The truth is that it didn’t really cross my mind to go for Vietnamese food whenever we are out there searching for good food.

Not knowing what to order, we picked some of the good-looking and recommended items by the chef on the menu. We ordered the seasonal Mangosteen and Prawn Salad for RM32.00. According to it’s menu, this is an award winning dish and an extraordinary and truly unique combination of the fruit of the mangosteen, dried squid flown in from Vietnam, grated fresh coconut, chicken slices topped with fresh tiger prawns, peanuts and sesame seed. The dressing on this mangosteen and prawn salad is Chef Tien’s special kumquat dressing. The combination of the mangosteen and the prawns when mixed with the kumquat dressing really goes very well together. Yummy!

The next item that caught our attention is Sao Nam’s Deep Fried Chicken Spring Rolls @ RM18.00. It is basically fried minced chicken rolls with strips of carrot, yam, wood ear mushrooms delicately rolled in fine paper and deep fried to a golden crisp. The filings in these rolls are really compact, so it is not as crispy as the Chinese version of fried popiah. Given the options between the two versions, I’ll definitely go for the Vietnamese one.

For lunch, I ordered the Vietnamese Laksa @ RM18.00. The taste, the texture, everything, is very different from our Malaysian laksa. This Vietnamese laksa is a super-rich noodle laksa cooked with fragrant curry powder and dried shrimps. The sauce was sweet and very creamy. Lots of fresh prawns too. Very recommended.

Beef noodle soup (Beef Pho) is also a must order here because Vietnamese are very popular with their beef soup noodles. Priced at RM18.00, this bowl is jammed packed with lots of beef slices. Yeah, you can’t see much from my picture here because it was all placed at the bottom of the bowl. And by the way, they gave lots of soup too which was another reason why I like this dish.

As for drinks, without a second thought, we ordered their Premium Coffee – Bazan (a triple ‘A’ grade Vietnamese Arabica) and Dak Lak (also a Vietnamese Arabica minus the triple ‘A’ – French mocha) @ RM15.00 each. Nothing fancy though. It tasted okay. What are the difference between the triple ‘A’ grade and the normal grade? I think that the triple ‘A’ grade is much smoother, while the normal grade is slightly sourish.

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Hokkaido Ichiba needs no introduction from me. But if you do not know already, Hokkaido Ichiba is a Japanese Restaurant which serves ala-carte Japanese Food in The Gardens, Mid Valley. If you are in Petaling Jaya, fret not, they also have a branch in 1-Utama. So let’s get to our food review now.

The star of the night has got to be Hokkaido Ichiba Salmon Sashimi. Priced at RM22, a plate of Salmon Sashimi comes with seven really thick slices of fresh, I mean, really fresh salmon flesh. This is by far, in my opinion, one of the best Japanese restaurants which serve the nicest slices of fresh salmon sashimi in Malaysia. It is amazing how these salmons are kept fresh even though we know very well, these salmons are imported products. I could only imagine how fresh salmon sashimi could taste in Japan. With that said, I am also fortunate to be able to taste this salmon sashimi here in Kuala Lumpur.

The Salmon Belly was very good too. It is slightly oilier compared to the Salmon Sashimi. It is also very fresh which I assume was from the same fish as the earlier one. It is slightly more expensive though. A plate of Salmon Belly comes with 5 thick slices for RM30.

My next favourite is Hokkaido Ichiba’s Dragon Roll. For only RM30, we are served with a whole fried tiger prawn jumbo ebi wrapped with layers of seaweed, rice and avocados topped with a generous amount of flying fish roes.

If you love unagi as I do, you must order Hokkaido Ichiba’s Teriyaki Unagi. For a small plate at RM28, you’ll get a plate of unagis, perfectly flavoured a generous amount of teriyaki sauce. It was so good that, I enjoyed every bite of it.

Winter Roll @ RM22 contains thick slices of tamago/eggs and shrimps wrapped with seaweed and rice topped with some mayonnaise and egg roe. Compared to Dragon Roll, this Winter Roll is a softer version of the former.

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I was studying in Cyberjaya a few years back and had several times come across Top Hat Restaurant but never once step foot on this restaurant (because it was just too expensive for a student). Today, I still feel the same. No student or at least many students can’t afford luxury food like Top Hat everyday. Now that I am no longer a student and is now working like every other adults working like crazy everyday, VK and I decided to treat ourselves at Top Hat. Since Cyberjaya is way too far away from Kepong, we decided to go to Top Hat’s main branch at Jalan Stonor, Kuala Lumpur.

Upon our arrival, we were greeted with many framed-up certificates awarded by Malaysian Tatler to Top Hat Restaurant for being Malaysia’s Best Restaurant for the year of 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 & 2007. That’s five consecutive years in a row. Not only that, there are many framed-up old newspapers and magazine reviews about Top Hat too. The combination of all these made me wonder why I didn’t come to try this place earlier.

Top Hat Restaurant serves classic Western dishes with a subtle touch of Asian flavours. One of their signature dishes is their vegetarian Signature Top Hats priced at RM10 for half a dozen. It looks just like the Pai Tees in the Chicken Rice Shop except here; the vegetables are placed in “hats” instead on a “bowl” or “basket”.

I wanted to order their Grilled Chicken with Lentil Rice, Spinach Salad with Yogurt Dressing, but chicken dishes were not available that day. So I ordered their Panfried Norwegian Salmon with Lime Leaf Sauce for RM65.00. The salmon was served with mashed potato & sweet potato and some saute baby french beans with lemony dressing. The salmon was very good but a little bit too dry. I love the mashed potato. It was soft and tasty.

VK ordered their Set Menu which comes with a bowl of Wild Mushroom Soup, a main course – Char Rib Eye, dessert – Signature Tiramisu Cake and Coffee/Tea for RM108.00. The Char Grill Rib Eye is served with saute vegetables and cepe mushroom sauce. The Rib Eye was good. It was very juicy and tender.

For desserts, VK ordered Top Hat’s Signature Tiramisu Cake. This is by far, one of the best tiramisu cakes we had. Strawberry jams were laid on the plate as spreads to make this cake taste even better. It was not too sweet. It was crunchy at the side. It was very fulfilling. I absolutely love this piece of cake. And we were very lucky that day as we took the last piece, so I guess this is a favourite for many Top Hats’ patrons.

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