Blackmore Wagyu Special at Prime (Le Meridien KL).

OK I know, I haven't reviewed that many restaurants & eating places, and here I am posting about Prime for a *third* time. This time is special, though! Prime's July special is Blackmore Wagyu - in their own words:

"AWARD-WINNING BLACKMORE WAGYU

Highly demanded and only sold to the best restaurants worldwide, the Blackmore Wagyu Beef is finally here! For the very first time, it is available in Malaysia only at Prime. Directly airflown from Australia, this premier beef is intensely sweet, delicate and persistent in flavour. You have never experienced 'melt in the mouth' goodness until you try this 100% fullblood Japanese Wagyu.

Be the first to discover perfection..."

How to resist after reading that? Hehe. Anyway, having learned that ordering two mains usually results in us over-stuffed, the darling and I decide to share. We add on a Diced Kobe beef and porcini ragoût in twice baked Idaho potato (MYR45.00), one of the house specialty starters. It's delicious - tastes not unlike a Shepard's Pie, only more tasty. I think the Crab Cakes are the better choice, though.


Moving on to the main "star" of the night - the Blackmore Wagyu Set Menu ($528.00). We choose the 80g Thinly Sliced of Blackmore Wagyu Oyster Blade, Double Beef Consommé Flavored with Asian Spices, Sesame Sauce (MYR60.00 ala-carte).


This. Dish. Is. AWESOME. The thinly-sliced wagyu is served raw in a bowl before the servers pour in the beef consommé which cooks the meat. Using chopsticks, we pick out pieces of beef, dip it in the soy sauce-based sauce, and add noodles, tofu and mushrooms to taste. The slices of meat are exquisitely tender and are full of melt-in-the-mouth goodness. Was so good we contemplated ordering a second helping.


* Oyster Blade is derived from the blade or chuck and is the wedge shape muscle remaining after removal of the bolar blade from the whole blade.

The alternate starter is Inter Costal 140g Blackmore Wagyu Braised in Homemade BBQ Sauce, Soft Mascarpone Polenta with Truffle Oil (MYR58.00 ala-carte).

Moving on to the main: Here's the Charcoal Grilled 170g Blackmore Wagyu Cube Roll - Medium Rare (MYR488.00 ala-carte). I'm a little disappointed that the steak doesn't look anything like the advertisement, and I do feel it could've been served a little more warm, but no complaints on the taste. It's an awesome cut of meat - supremely tender, exceedingly tasty and with a buttery & fatty goodness. You could probably eat this steak even if you had no teeth.


The set comes with sides of Truffle Mashed Potato and Grilled Mediterranean Vegetables. The Mashed Potato is superb as usual - creamy and light with the great taste & smell of truffle oil (though I wouldn't know if the chefs used an Olive Oil substitute instead). The vegetables were a bit on the oily side though.


The dessert of Fresh Wild Berries, Light Whipped Cream, Evian Water (MYR40.00 ala-carte) was a bit of a miss though. For starters, of the 6 different berries here I can only name the Strawberries, Raspberries and Blueberries. No idea what the other 3 are. In any case these berries are sour! Not able to say if they are supposed to be sour, but the darling and I had a lot of trouble finishing this off.


Final damage was about MYR330 after charges and tax and the 50% Starwood Privilege discount. Was most definitely worth it; though in hindsight we would have probably given the baked potato a miss and added on an additional Blackmore Wagyu starter instead.

Previous posts:
Prime at Le Meridien Kuala Lumpur
Prime at Le Meridien KL - Trip #2

Fong Keow Bak Kut Teh - Klang

Yet another non-halal post - sorry! Hehe. Couple of days before my brother ended his 3-week holiday and had to go back to slog it out pulling 35-hour weeks at his cushy GLC in the you-kay, we all take a trip to Klang for Bak Kut Teh! Many people say the Teluk Pulai Bak Kut Teh shop is nicer but I personally prefer Fong Keow which is just next door.


Judging from the nice decorations in their 'new wing' expansion, I'd say they're doing pretty good. Pretty damn good.


Of course, the focus is on bak kut teh - Fong Keow serves the claypot style where all the kinds of meat you order is mixed into a large claypot. I love the soup here which is nice and thick and strong, but still liquid enough to classify as "soup" (some places it's more like gravy).


Yam rice here is nice as well; thing is that I feel yam rice makes me full quicker, which means I can't eat as much Bak Kut Teh as with normal rice.


Give the Assam Fish a miss, though. It's not a bad dish; just that it's nothing special and rather non-descript. Plus, the actual fish is a sting-ray (which may be a plus point for you if you were a crocodile hunter fan), but to me stingray doesn't go well with Assam.


I don't remember what this was called (hehehe), but it was pretty good too. Some sort of Loh Bak.


And of course, some vege to make us feel a little less guilty about eating so much meat :)


To get here, drive up the Federal Highway towards Klang/Shah Alam. After passing Sunway/Subang area there'll be one toll - drive another 15 minutes and pass the next toll, and immediately exit left. The shophouses around here house at least 5, or even more, bak kut teh stalls which are all quite full at lunchtime - speaks of how much the Klang peeps love their meat.

About MYR15 per person.

Buffet High Tea - Essence in Sheraton Imperial KL

Since the darling and I were both a little under the weather, we decide to pamper ourselves a little with a trip to Essence at the Sheraton Imperial KL. After all, the saying does go "Starve a Fever, Feed a Cold." And we did have an unused complimentary dining voucher lying around.

We start off our tour at the Sushi and Smoothie bars. The sushi bar is terribly unappealing; with only the most basic of rolls (not a single slice of fish anywhere), so we skip. The darling has a honeydew smoothe - I go for banana.


The bread corner - decent selection. Perhaps we chose wrongly, but the bread that we did choose was just average.


Onward to the salads and starters then. Nice choice of cold cuts, and mix-it-yourself rojak and caesar salad corners.

* note to self: wow you way overdid the saturation on this picture.


Local food corner. Hits: Hainanese Chicken Rice and Quail Soup. Misses: Chicken Murtabak and Chili Crab.


Roast corner. Today's roast was leg of lamb - which was a big miss for me. Had an exceedingly strong gamey taste and it was dry and rubbery. Had to overload on the mint sauce for it to be edible.


Pasta section - where the "chef" cooks up a choice of either spaghetti or penne, with a choice of tomato, cream, or bolognese sauces. I had the spaghetti bolognese, which sucked. And not sucked in a "compared to 5-star Italian restaurants like Prego" way, it sucked in a "it just sucked." way.


Chinese food corner. Small selection of dim sum like siew mai and pao, of which we didn't bother trying.


Having half-filled our stomachs, we move on to desserts! The cheesecake is bad, but the chocolate mousse, chocolate soup, and chocolate mud cakes are nice.


Other mini-desserts that were pretty nice were the orange jelly (with slice of chocolate on top), apple slices with cream, and some sort of cream custard on a biscuit.


Finally we end the eating session with some papaya with lime (yum) and watermelon.


Overall we come away rather disappointed. The selection isn't great, and the food is decidedly average. I didn't get the exact price of the buffet, but at estimated MYR80-MYR90++ per person, there are too many better places to spend your money.

Don't come here unless you can eat at a heavy discount. Or if you're eating free (like us).

George & Dragon Cafe - Johor Bahru

Last week the darling and I took a trip down to JB for a birthday celebration. Darling's Dad, to be exact. Her brother arranged the dinner plans, and so I find myself somewhere in JB standing in front of George & Dragon Cafe.


Wasn't expecting much, but upon stepping foot into the restaurant I must say that I was supremely impressed by the decorations. The cafe is dimly lit; but there's a nice "old England" theme in the walls & lighting that is complemented very nicely by the memorabilia on the walls. So impressed that I forgot to snap more than only this one photo :(


I like stepping into nicely decorated restaurants. It gives you a certain confidence/hope that since so much effort has been put into the decoration; the food should be pretty good, too. So onwards to the food. The Soup of the Day is Cream of Zucchini (MYR7.00). Not too bad, actually.


We also have the Home Cooked Mushroom Soup (also MYR7.00, go figure). While I like that it's more mushroom than cream, I do recall not finding anything special about it.


On to our mains, and I have the Traditional English Fish & Chips (MYR23.00). In a nutshell, this dish was terrible. The batter was tough and soggy, and the fish was bland and tasteless. I guess to be not totally negative - the wedges weren't half bad. Fish was a huge disappointment though, I could beer-batter my own better-tasting Fish & Chips blindfolded and with an arm tied behind my back.


The darling has the Pan Seared Fish with Orange Butter Sauce (MYR23.00). This dish isn't as bad as the Fish & Chips, but other than the novelty of an orange-y sauce on fish, nothing to shout about.


Other dishes that the rest of the darling's family had, starting with the Rosemary Lamb Chop (MYR25.80). This one was pretty good, and the portion was quite big as well. More than enough for all but the heaviest of eaters.


Then here's the Rib Eye Steak (MYR38.80). One of the restaurant's tag lines is "Taste the Best Steak in town." As I'm not from JB I can't comment on the accuracy of that claim, but this steak served in KL with that tagline would be an invitation to a false advertising charge. Sorry lah, I'm just too spoiled by Prime's gorgeous steaks.


I can't remember what this is - I think it's the Red Wine Lamb (MYR29.80). Didn't try it, can't comment.


Dessert is the Orange Cake with Vanilla Ice Cream. I think this one cost about $10 or so, it was part of the Rib Eye Steak Set. Didn't taste it either, but from how it looks it couldn't have been anything special (yes yes, book by its' cover, bla bla).


Other than the terrible Fish & Chips, the rest of the food was both decent in taste and decent in price. Unfortunately I don't know whether to advise you to visit or to stay away; don't know the "average" level of JB's restaurants to make a comparison. I will say however that I doubt this restaurant would survive long if it was opened in KL.

Which is a pity, because I do SO love the decoration.

George & Dragon Cafe,
No.1 & 3, Jalan Glasiar, Taman Tasek
80200 Johor Bahru, Johor, Malaysia.
Tel: 07-232 3761 Fax: 07-235 1767