A Foodie Tale of 3 Cities

Last weekend turned out to be quite a food adventure. It was not meant to be that adventurous, but it was inevitable as we were travelling down to Port Dickson to attend a friend's wedding. Adventure here is not like Andrew Zimmern's (from Bizzare Food) experience, although hubby would have wished for it. It was like a twilight zone moment where good food was suddenly scarce, especially when we have pledged to not go for the usual fast foods or franchise restaurants.

On Friday night, after 5 days of working from home and cooking food full of homecooked goodness, we decided to try this newly opened ikan bakar (grilled fish) franchise (this one exempted because we had not tried it before) named after a Selangor small town. You will know soon why I am restraining from mentioning the full name. Seeing the crowds there daily, it really made us curious to know how great is it after all. To our surprise, it turned out to be self service. Never mind that, we went ahead to choose our ikan bakar, we choose siakap as it was our usual fish we ate outside. Next at the nasi lemak stall, apparently they were still cooking, and it was already 8pm, weren't they expecting customers at the normal dinner time? We settled for plain rice, and had our ikan bakar, which in the end turned out to be not that great or even bakar-ed (grilled). The fish seemed to be just steamed (hours ago) and upon our order they just put on the spicy sauce over it. I was not impressed and I missed my Kampungku ikan bakar! But wait, this is not the worst part yet, the bill for 1 siakap bakar, sotong bakar, 2 rice & 2 drinks came out RM80!! The freaking siakap cost RM56, like what?? It was the most undeserving RM80 I ever spent on food. For that much of money, I could have had a nice main course with bottomless drinks at Chillis, or even eat at Kampungku Food Court like 3 times! Since the review of their food is pretty bad from my side, I think I will let you guess the name.

The next day in Port Dickson, it suddenly became so difficult to find any good place to eat, with a toddler in tow. Plus we were stuck in the jam, and had our breakfast hours before, my hungry-half was getting very hungry indeed. After checking with his PD friend, we quickly rushed to PD Eating Point after checking into our not-so-fancy hotel (thanks to the school & public hols). The menu was impressive and for an odd hour eating, there were plenty of customer in and out of the restaurant. We had local nasi goreng kampung (very spicy, me likey) and Singapore mee hoon. Never felt more grateful for good food in my life. Speaking to the owner we found out that he has been in the hotel line for 14 years. He definitely did a great job with the restaurant. And yeah, Sanju had also made good friends with him. As I was still traumatised from foodie ordeal the night before that I made hubby bring us there again for dinner. This time they even had western food in the menu, with damn reasonable prices and finger licking taste! You can check out more on the restaurant here.

The next morning was the wedding, and due to unforseen circumstances, we could not eat our breakfast at the wedding. Hubby was furiously driving around to at least get the cranky preggy wife something to munch on but with no luck (and we were being choosy too). As we got on the highway, something struck my mind. There was this chicken rice shop in Shah Alam that we used to frequent during our courtship days, and we had not gone there like in ages, literally! I convinced my tummy to wait and promised baby super-yum food in less than 1 hour. And the rest is history. What do you get with a hungry man & woman at the Spring Golden Restaurant? Stares of disbelief. We ordered chicken and pork portion for 3 people. The char siew turned out so succulent and heavenly, the only thing I can compare it to is Tony Roma ribs of unbelievable softness. We ordered another single portion of the char siew as we can't just get enough. The portions were rather huge though, which is the reason to the stares we got from the auntie serving the food. Apparently this restaurant is huge in Malaysia and has made it to the papers and TV a few times.



Highly recommended chicken rice and char siew in the most unlikely land of Shah Alam. It turned out to be a great ending to the foodie weekend, and since Spring Golden is just a toll booth away, we pledged to go there more often to earn more stares of disbelief!