Claypot Station Restaurant - Kota Damansara

I had to confess. I didn't know Kota Damansara has so many eating places and I mean MANY x5 !! It was really an eye-opener for me when I had my first dining experience at Kota Damansara on the 2nd day of Hari Raya, 22nd Sept 09. My family was invited for dinner at Claypot Station Restaurant at Kota Damansara.

Front of the restaurant

Specialties with NO MSG

Daughter and wife posing in front of the restaurant

More posing by my models

I couldn't snap photos of the food on my table as there were more than 10 of us and look darn dorky/wierd to be snapping photos of food here and there in the middle of all these hungry people. Before the photos are snapped, I am sure those super big-eaters around me would have wiped the plates/claypots clean and leaves the high and dry. Hence, instinct got the better of me. No pictures of food this time around. Only the exterior of the place. Maybe next time when I do happen to go back to this place again, I will snap photos and update this post.

I tried the pig stomach with pepper soup, fa tiu chicken, vinegar pork trottle, satay chicken and a few other dishes that I can't remember the name. Poor memory, getting old :-) I find that most of the dishes we ordered were just "pass" only. Nothing much special about the food. The vinegar pork trottle were just bones and fats. Nothing much to eat. The pig stomach with pepper soup was super hot, too much pepper and coupled with I am not a fan of this soup anyway. The satay chicken is the only dish I am giving 2 thumbs up of all the dishes we ordered. Nice crispy, juicy bits with aromatic 'pandan' leaves and 'serai' smell. Love this dish !

Service : 3 ( be prepare to wait at least 20 mins for your food )
Value for money : No idea, I didn't pay for the food
Ambience : 4
Food quality : 3 ( except for the satay chicken which deserves a 5 )
Overall : 3

Address :
CLAYPOT STATION RESTAURANT
No 23-1, Jalan PJU 5/12,
Dataran Sunway,
Kota Damansara,
47810 Petaling Jaya,
Selangor Darul Ehsan.

Dinner at La La Chong Restaurant

This year, my birthday is celebrated with 2 special meaning.

First, the date : 20 09 2009, 20th Sept 2009. The date is kinda special right ? Right ??

Second : Status upgraded to being a Daddy. So, we have 2 daddies on the dinner table.

It was a choice of either the new food stall near my house or La La Chong Seafood Restaurant which is now at Kayu Ara, Damansara. Previously, it was opposite Terminal 3 at Subang Airport. Heard that rental there is getting too expensive. Though the location of the previous shop at Terminal 3 is easy to find, parking may be a problem for late comers. This place is usually packed to its fullest by 7pm. I like the new place at Kayu Ara. Firstly, it's near my house and secondly, ample parking. It's certainly competing with Pantai Seafood Restaurant for business as these 2 restaurants are now within walking distance from each other.

The 6 of us excluding baby Clarisse wanted to dine alfresco but a few droplets of rain changed our minds and we moved in to the air con area. It was also the 1st day of Hari Raya and a Sunday. So, the place was doubly packed.

We started the 'makan' session with an order of satay from the Malay lady which has a stall outside the restaurant. The satay was nicely grilled with succulent pieces of chicken meat nicely tucked into the stick. From the irregular size of the stick, you can tell that the satay is not those from industrial mass-produced. The thickness of the sticks are not all standard. You have some of the sticks fatter and some thinner.

Entree : Good old satay

As there were only 6 adults, we ordered 5 dishes. We ordered the stir fry 'kangkung', yamcake with cuttlefish and dried chilli, lemon chicken, hot plate tofu and deed fried mantis prawns with dried chilli. Though the restaurant was packed to the fullest, our dishes came quite fast. We waited for about 15 minutes for the dishes to arrive.

Stir fry 'kangkung'

You have to forgive me for the quality of the photos as I'm still learning how to snap photos of different things using a digital camera with multiple scenes selections. Some photos were taken half way through the eating session as hungry stomach is more important than taking photos :-)
The str-fry 'kangkung' taste fine. I find it cooked right to my liking, not too soft or undercooked.

Yamcake with stir fry cuttlefish and dried chilli

The tofu would have looked better if came with the hot plate and wooden base. My parents liked the yamcake with cuttlefish though. The only downside of this dish is that the gravy was too little, making the dish a bit dry. If only the chef had put in more gravy, this dish would have win hands down.

Lemon Chicken

The lemon chicken was the forth dish that came to our table. I like the chicken crispy to the right degree. You can feel the crunchy bits in your mouth when you bite them. We find that for this dish the lemon sauce was too much. The plate was practically flooded by the lemon sauce. It would have been nicer to have a thicker and lesser sauce so that the presentation of this dish is not like a plate of fried chicken in flooded lemon sauce.

The fifth and also the last dish we ordered was the fried mantis prawns with dried chilli. The mantis prawns were kinda letdown. Seemed like a lot of flour was mixed with the prawns. You end up eating like lumps of flour instead of mantis prawns.

In the end, the bill came up to around RM113. It was a decent amount for 6 of us. Anyway, it was on my birthday and it's nice to have my family together for a dinner.

Overall, here's my rating for the dinner ( 5=excellent, 1=poor ) :
Service : 4
Value for Money : 3
Ambience : 3
Food Quality : 3
Overall : 3

Address:
La La Chong Seafood Restaurant (Next to Pantai Seafood @ Kayu Ara)
Lot 13556, Jalan Cempaka,Kayu Ara Damansara, 47400 Petaling Jaya.
Tel : 03-77281906

Malaysian F1 Team

A Malaysian F1 Team ? Huh ?? Yup, that was my initial reaction when I first read the news in the newspaper. Maybe there are others who have already seen this coming from the day Malaysia started to build the Sepang F1 circuit. And this was followed by our very own F1 driver, Alex Yoong.

But, to build an F1 circuit is already a big, fat white elephant whereby most of the time the circuit is left empty. How many racing events do you organise in a year in 1 country ? You have the A1 race, the Super GTT, Superbike race and a couple more cars or bike races. Surely, all these races will only add up to about 30 days in a year while you have to maintain the circuit for a whole long year!

And now, our Country has decided to have a F1 team. How much would it cost to run a F1 team? In these days where major car companies like BMW and Honda are pulling the plug from F1 races, Malaysia is putting both legs into the global automobile racing which is currently battling scandals, credit crunch, teams dissatisfied with the organiser etc ? To quote from today's The Sun newspaper, "Ferrari, for instance, has a team of close to 800 people, including 200 frontline crew involved in pit and technical aspects of the race" We're probably looking at spending about RM200-300 million a year! Wouldn't it be better to spend that kind of money to improve the livehood of Malaysians ? I think we should stick back to the original idea of having 1Malaysia, not F1 Malaysia.