A Hearty Breakfast

:: I’m LOVING it ::

McD is the ‘new’ Hearty Breakfast in Indonesia for exam stress hungry students. We stayed up till 4am or so, had to pay the internet bill and have a side trip to Happy Land for the most awesome breakfast of the week! Word.

To think Youmouma and I was going to have a nice quiet breakfast by ourselves came a group of hyperactive, noise polluter Kinddie kids!! I swear i’ve never seen the play pen at McD having a massive Jamm!

A Beautiful morning at 8 something in the morning, they were celebrating a 5 yr old boy’s birthday!!

It’s weird to see birthday parties held so early in the morning!! Back in Msia, the kids birthday are either lunch time or dinner time.

Balloons make lil kids go beserk :p

And there was a line of traffic stopper. It’s normal here for school kids to perform their music band by taking the whole stretch of road by themselves with a few policemen assisting them.

Vehicles in queue to pass.

Last night i had dinner with a bunch of crazy people   We had a vegetarian meal prepared by these people below!!

PaiSEh! They prepared everything, and i didn’t help. Plus i was 20 minutes late. Perangai buruk betul!

I suppose we can call this fusion of culture- ever had Indian cuisine by dining Chinese style? hahaha.

<3 Thanks guys i had fun and it was great! xoxo

Gallivanting

I’ve been doing lots of going up and down on getting back to socialising (hehe) and doing work. I can’t believe i have more work outside of academics boundaries. Sigh~ There are moments i wish it was exam period!

My schedule is back to classes, Thesis exploration, plucking hibiscus, and two more new additions: participating in the preparation for Social service and the Malaysian Society trip to Bale Kambang! I’ll be clad in the same clothes from day til night.

Rats came injected with Alloxan to induce Diabetes in it the dosage was 4omg on five below 200g rats, all died within 3 days! Dosage was too high. Then Wednesday, we tried too different dosages and inject four rats and checked it out yesterday. One died not too long that day, the other 3 survive but only one was succesfully induced Diabetes. OH man, it feels like i am paying money for rats to die! Well this is an exploration process which is needed to spent on Rp35k/rat.

Manage to visit those new houses that my friends shifted to! Aaahh… the company was good! I had good time catching up with many people.

Speaking of gallivanting, i did, we did!

::Just Dance::

Boogie Woogie the Saturday night away!

Oohh, it was a big group and we had the whole upstairs to ourselves! Groove our beat out! I had fun in the end with the best party people though i was a lil’ reluctant for a bit because i was thinking of some unfinish work i got to do.

We dress to our nines and Nad the mamasita was most gracious that night!

At the end of the fiesta, we bummed at the nearest McKers for some chow time! Spending the remainder hours there in good humour and high spirits!

Sunday just came too soon. Caught a few hours of sleep and was getting ready to Miss K and the gang’s house for lunch!! haha! So nice to have people cooking especially for you ! Unlike some that takes you as a garbage bin. Wokay, sense the resentment there? Well that’s another thing i don’t want to elaborate

:: Home-Cook Indian Food ::

Yummy Licious! Papadum is my first love of keropok.
They whipped up this meal for us!

We went room hopping! Exchanging ghost stories and sharing funny moments!
Later that evening, they made tea, fried fish keropok and serve cookies as well! Too well fed i tell ya.

:: the attic::

This is their attic where the bicycle sound was heard at the witching hour a few days ago!
Attic is kinda like a secret hiding spot, since the entrance to it is one small window size. It will be the perfect secret hideout for them to escape assassins.

Kawaii Student Exchange

Earlier of March, I join the merriment of four to make this merrier! (lol)

Forgive my failing memory, i can’t recall the names of those Japanese girls… hehehe. Opps!
They were on a one month Language student exchange program.

:: Dieng Club house ::

The Japanese girl in Blue has been traveling around. She went to London for a year just to learn English!!! Imagine that, and she is Indonesia to learn the language, though she took classes back in her homeland.

The other Nippon girl in white, she is the more curious one and owns this marvelously informative bilingual menu book of Indonesia. When were in Warung Bali, she whip out her book to look up what is Jus Tape.
Tape or Tapai is a fermented cassava (type of potato), that is blended with condense milk and water. One of my Favourite drink, and among my friends i’m the only one who have a liking to it.

So they were brought to Warung Bali to try out some sinful food.

:: Babi Guling ::

Warung Bali serves famous traditional Balinese food. It’s not Halal. For halal, balinese food it will be in Nuansa Bali.
Anyway, this place serves awesome spicy food! Such as, ayam plecing, kangkung plecing and ayam bertutu.

Surprisingly, Japanese do acquire a little wasabi when eating sushi, unlike Malaysians that i known, they will take a generous amount of wasabi to eat with their sushi or sashimi.
Wasabi is not suppose to be mix with the soya sauce or sweet sause, it’s suppose to be on or in the sushi.

:: NaV karaoke ::

That was my 2nd time in Nav and compared to the last time, they have less variety of songs from different language.
They use to have Hindi, Tamil, Japanese and Korean songs.
So these two girls didn’t get to sing much, but listen to us crowing for an hour and dance to Project Pop- Goyang Duyu~! hhehehe.

We headed to Dieng Clubhouse for bowling, unfortunately, that day there was a bowling competition so the place was fully booked. We only did some sight-seeing at the clubhouse.

A week later they went away. I must take up the opportunity with them to go Japan one day since they offered.

Royal Cafe

hey verbatimcries,
well i have read your blog,

you said that you ever went to cafe royal?is the owner female? i’m not sure, i just wanna prove that the owner like a boy? but she’s female? oh no,, she’s my rival i think hehehhehe

can you email me?
thanks a lot

ROYAL CAFE,  Jln. Merbabu, 21

The first time i visited *click on * Royal Priesthood Cafe was on the new year’s eve 08, it was a pouring one. My friends and i were sloshing all the way there… they were probably half swearing for making them walk somewhat far. Iron Chef and I stumbled on this rather cool ‘makan’ spot by accident. Guess it was the night of Xmas when J.C lead us there after lingering at Ijen Catholic Church  (hehe). ” Wei, new eating-makan spot in Malang!”, that’s what we said, and decided to tak a look and report back to our friends later on. We were greeted by this woman, whom i assume was the owner because she sat behind the paying counter and she was so nice! =) Nice people are hard to forget.

:: Ijen Church during Xmas 07 ::

Back then, the food menu were not many and most dishes were beef base, not many choices for my Hindu friends and some of my Buddhist friends who does not take beef due to religios reasons. To the Hindus the cows are their sacred animal, to some Buuddhist who prays to the Goddess of Mercy they too don’t consume beef.  However,  i got to say the name of their dishes are very intriguing!
Hei! Did i mention the atmosphere of the place was good??!!! The soft lighting used definitely help create the nice atmosphere. Their dining style is Al-fresco and they have a room for those who wants to host a mini party!! They have a mini bookstore that sells christian songs, books and some de-stress hand balls =) lots of cute accessories there too
Nearly one year later…

So back in November 24th 2008 i think… someone asked me where should they host a private party? Jeng… Jeng… Jeng… I reccomended RPC! (Probably sounds like i’m bragging here just in case Aka reads this! I’m not, merely telling the truth.)
A mismatch party was held! We had a great time in that private room and the service was great!

We were allowed to decorate the room and blast some music of our own

it sort of looks like we were in a conference room or meeting room.. hehhe but it was the Birthday girl’s turn to give a speech!

:: TauHwa and Ayam Plecing ::

After nearly one year in RPC, their menu doubled! They not only serve Western food but Local menus and of course Japanese food too! I ordered the food in the pic above! Ayam plecing is spicy (i like), a little different from where I ‘ve tried in the Balinese resto and i ordered that white tofu looking thing, which is well known to the Hock Kien clan (Singaporeans and Indonesians) as TauHwa and famously known to the Cantonese clan (Malaysia and Hong Kong) as Tau Foo Fah! Err.. it had too much ginger flavouring inside! Slightly different from the ones i have back home, which has no ginger flavour at all, just your choice of brown sugar or white sugar syrup.

Who is RPC’s owner? To be more precise, the woman whom i met in RPC may or may not be the owner, perhaps she was helping out to run the place.  Oh my GOSH!!! Anyway it’s a nice place to chill =)

Fancy “burnt fish”?

Actually what i meant is IKAN BAKAR that literally means burnt fish in Malay. Coming from the same ‘Kepulauan Melayu’, yes the dish is very much popular here in Indonesia too just like Malaysia! The cooking condiments are different though. Will tell more throughout the post

Ikan Bakar you can find it at most hawker spots, bound to meet have a few in every area. Usually this Ikar Bakar stalls are Al-Fresco, meaning outside never indoors. It’s the same in Indonesia. You can have Ikan Bakar by the beach (Jimbaran, Bali) and Al-Fresco restaurant but never indoors.

May I present you:

:: IKAN BAKAR 52::

It’s been open for nearly one year now. I’ve not been here before until today. The idea of coming to Alun-alun Malang for a meal never strikes me unless i got other matters to be in this place. Hustly and bustle of alun-alun is something i won’t look forward to especially under hot scorching sun.

I usually frequent the IKAN GALUNGUNG for ikan bakar because they have kick-sambal !! I’ve a high threshold for spicy food! Come to think of it, it was Ms.Carey the cousin who took me there. Haha… both of us had some great times there when it comes to glutonny.

What actually caught my attention of the restaurant one year ago wasn’t the food menu but the drink menu pricing on the banner placed outside the restaurant. I’ll show you why,

:: Teh Tawar Rp 100, Butt soup anyone? ::

There i was wondering… “Do they serve tea with tiny chinese tea cups? That one cup cost Rp. 100?”
I don’t drink much after a meal, only sip on drinks to wash off the taste of the meal and prevent from being overly full, obviously i was please to see that!

Check out the Soup section
Sup Buntut in Indonesia is known as Ox-tail soup in Msia aka Sup Ekor (BM)
Butt soup taste like any butt to me, no difference.

The most expensive drink only cos like Rp. 10k which is standard pricing in most restaurants in Malang.

Anyway there was this new drink that for the first time i come across it JUS TERONG BELANDA!!
Now does anyone knows what is that? Durian Belanda (BM) i know it’s called Sirsak in BI and Soursop in English but that? It’s hard to envision brinjal and soursop as one.

Oh ya… Es Mega Mendung is one of my favourites drinks around! MEga in Size and TAste if u have sweet tooth!

:: inside the restaurant ::

Waiters and waitresses all in batik uniform.

:: Dining Area ::

Don’t you love the ambiance? The Restaurant is really big! A place where you may like to have a group of friends to eat and be merry. They have a more secluded sitting area near the washing place but it’s rather stuffy in there.

what we ordered:

:: the satisfying package Rp. 2500 ::

ordered five of that… a basket of rice came for five and turned out we got cheated on our vegetable. For five people heck they gave us very little vege it was the size of small soup chinese soup bowl. As if Sawi is very hard to get now. It was the vege was cooked with urap-urap. By the way, after dinner, the neighboring opposite table i passed on my way out had a big bowl of urap-urap on their dining table which is untouch! Arrgghh… unfair treatment! We girls like our vegetables thank you.

:: Gule Ikan Kakap 1 ekor ::

Curry fish to die for! *YumYum* The shallots did wonders to this santan(coconut milk) dish! A must to order when u come! The best dish out of the four we ordered.
Logically, a person will come to an ” Ikan Bakar” resto to have some burnt fish, but for me i come just to have a fishy meal preferably none burnt. Staying on highlands, away from the sea, sea fish is hard to get unless u go to this kinda resto. If not the only fish you can get in warungs@ kopithiam will be fresh water fish or preserved fish. Why none burnt?
One of the small few reasons i don’t like the ikan bakar here is because after they burnt the fish, the size of the fish shrinks! There will be hardly any white meat to peck on. Secondly, the cooking style for fish are very few. The most famous and common local distinctive style will be using Kecap Manis as marination then bbq it or deep fried the fish. Ugghh… i miss good old steam fish!

One can never go wrong with sweet soya sauce in Indonesia. Practically in every food/ dish/ meal they use their sweet sauce. Be it the ABC brand or whatever.

:: Gurame Bakar Kecap/Kacang::

That’s the Kecap style only this comes with the kacang sauce.
Can you spot the carbon on the fish? Anyway Msia’s Ikan Bakar style we used lots of spices and the fish is wrapped up in banana leave when put on the bbq pit to be more precise it should be called grilled fish! Yum yum!

:: Udang masak Asam Manis ::

Tasted sweeter and there was no tinge or sourness. My grandma makes better one using Asam Jawa!
It was a disappointing portion for it’s price.

:: Sapo Tahu Seafood ::

I asked whether it was Japanese taufoo, waiter said yes.  LIAR! It’s either the waiter lied, the cook lied or the kitchen ran out of Japanese taufoo… Hmmppg. So far the best Japanese Taufoo would be in Matos (halal) an d Sukun Murni.

:: washing area with the secluded dining area ::

The total damage done???

:: Rp. 143, 935 for five people ::

CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT TAX is RP 13,085??!

The VERDICT

If you fancy going somewhere for burnt fish but with an ambiance, this is the place you should check out! Not only the food is affordable and delicious, you are able to dress nicely and smell (smoke free) good after the meal!
IKAN BAKAR 52, Jalan KH Agus Salim, 11, Malang
It ’s the same road as Mitra 1 along the same row of Martabak Agung only slightly further down.

B

URP!!
BURP!!!