boon's log 4707.03: Sesame + Soy Experience

IL and I decided to take a drive downtown to check out one of the new fine-dining restaurants in Penang. It's called Sesame+Soy at the G Hotel along Gurney Drive.

This is not your normal fine dining experience. They actually put a little twist to fine dining, where they fuse artistic dining with chinese cuisine; while most fine dining is western cuisine-centric.

IL was rather impressed with the very first impression given by the restaurant staffs. There was a waiter waiting, outside the restaurant, for us. And he id'd us by my last name. So, it's either (A) there's not too many customers and he's free, or (B) he genuinely did his homework. Yeah, we've made reservations before hand, but knowing Penang (and given it's on a weekday), I'd go with option (A).

Anyway, the atmosphere was nice, really gives you that exquisite ambiance, warm, cozy and not too crowded. The staffs were very accomodating as well.

We kicked off with a Margarita for the lady and a Mojito Breeze for me.


Refreshing Margarita

They have an a la carte menu and then there's the Tasting Menu - 4 variants (from RM58 - RM98). Tasting Menus are 7-8 course combinations.


Sesame Menu

We've decided to go for the Tasting menu before hand, we went ahead with that. Of course the more you pay, the better the choices... We decided on the RM68 and RM88, which included dishes like pan fried salmon and pumpkin, stir-fried chicken, tiger prawn, eggplant and yam, slow cooked shanghainese pork belly with crispy rice noodles and vegetable, gula melaka crème brulee with coconut ice cream and red bean paste pancake ....


Tasting Menus...

How did they fair? Read on...

The Looks (**** out of 5)
The food was well presented; much attention were given to the details. Typical fine dining style - big funny looking plates with petite portion of food. I've gotta give it to them for the effort they put in making food look beautiful. Like what some would say - it's so pretty, I cannot bring myself to dive my fork into it...


Century Egg with Tofu..

The taste however, is a little bit on the lacking side. Not that it's yucky, but to me, it's lacking a Chinese-ish (or soul, according to some) in the preparation. Certain ones were okay, like the Quail Soup and the Pork Belly. However, the soup that IL had was rather bland (Pumpkin Chicken Soup).


Fried Katafi Crab

I was quite interested to meet the chef, since I'm thinking that he (or she) may not necessarily be Chinese, considering that the taste is lacking that Chinese-qi :P - but I forgot about it until I arrived at the car. Perhaps next time... ;)


Boiled Quail Soup

The Service (*** out of 5)
Well, I've mentioned that IL was quite impressed with having one of the waiter waiting to greet us outside the restaurant. There's the waiter who brought us to our table, and introduced us to our waiter for the night, Jason. We, thought... impressive and western.

The good impression soon took a dip when Jason handed us our drinks and food menu and immediately asked us what we wanted to drink. I was like, "Dude, gimme me a minute, will ya?" Anyways, told him politely to give us a minute.


Chick and Prawn Combo

After the orders were taken, came the second service-blow. IL decided on the RM68 while I took the RM88 menu. However, they started off the first 2 dishes correctly. But when the 3rd one came, they swapped our orders. we did not notice it until the 4th dish when we asked them about it. anyways, we did not really mind, but being a "upper class" restaurant as they claimed to be, they should not be allowing this sort of mistake. What's more, they just apologise (as a matter of fact-ly) and went on serving us.

IL finished her 4th dish while I was still working on my Stuffed Crab Claw. So, they retrieved IL's plate and served her with her 5th, while they left my Salmon in the middle of the table. That's number Three. I was tempted to swap my plate upon finishing #4, but I decided that I should let them do it. So I waited for about 2 minutes before they realized that they needed to remove my plate and move the Salmon from the middle of the table to my side of the table. Rather disappointing...


Pan fried salmon

Oh and half way through Jason transformed into another guy named NJ - which we believe was the culprit who swapped our orders. But both of them were very friendly - we were guessing that that's probably because we were the rare ones who ordered the Tasting menu (while others just settled with the a la carte).


Pork Belly

Chinese Tea's on the house and there's hot towels to end your nice evening's dining experience...

Dollars and Cents (***)
We think that it's not really THAT expensive. We ended up paying about RM180. UOB credit card holders have a 15% discount BUT only on a la carte orders (!!!), not applicable for Tasting Menus - we weren't really in a mood to argue with them - so, we signed and left.

Took us about 2.5 hours to complete the entire course and we were so full at the end. We thought it was going to last 2hours, max and that we will not be filled since it's fine dining - where they charge you a lot for very little food. But we were wrong... IL could not even finish her dessert.


Creme Brulee with coconut ice cream

Oh speaking of the bill. When we were finally in the car - IL noticed that they forgot to charge us for our Margarita and Mojito which was RM22 each - so, they actually "gave" us a 28% discount. We loved that restaurant! So we figured that you need to have the right combination of orders in order to enjoy the drinks on the house... That'll be the RM68 and RM88 menus with Margarita and Mojito Breeze.

... and that's the price that they have to pay for not giving us our 15% UOB card discount! (Ha!).

The Final Verdict (***)
It was a nice experience. But comparing to other places like Ferringhi Grill or Bagan, I believe they still have quite some room for improvement in terms of service. And they need to work on their timing.

I don't mind the free drinks part, though - keep 'em coming.

Of course, definitely can improve on the taste. I will remember to request to meet the chef the next time I'm there. Well, yeah, there you go - Will I ever go back there again? Yes, most probably.

Oh by the way, why (or what's) Sesame + Soy? Soy is the first room as you enter the restaurant that serves bistro-type a.k.a. casual food (e.g. noddles, snacks. etc) while Sesame's the inner second room overlooking the G Hotel Lobby that offers modern and fine dining menus (some call it slightly on the high-end part).


Sesame+Soy at the G Hotel

boon out...

boon's log 4507.07: Ab's day out... and Ab's day in...

Last Saturday, we decided to bring Ab down to the wadding pool for the very first time. Se we pumped up the Tortoise (or turtle - can you tell?) a.k.a. float, and headed down.


Ooo-Kwai...

She was afraid for a little bit at first, but soon got aquainted with the pool and and the tortoise, and was enjoying herself. We were in the pool for about almost half an hour before heading back up. IL's sis and cousins joined in too. It was fun...


Ab's day out...

but the fun soon wore-out, come Wednesday when we got an emergency call from our aunt (who also babysits Ab), saying that Ab's got elevated temperature. We rushed over from work in the AM to bring her to the doc. She (de doc) did not rule out dengue, but took a urine sample and gave us some medication and asked us to go home and monitor for 2 days and bring her back on Friday if the conditions did not get any better.

Sure enough, on Friday, her temperature was still >100F, in fact on Thursday, it went up to 104F. We had to stuff her with the medicine and brought out the ice-pack...

Ab was admitted on Friday, but was allowed "home-leave" after the doctor confirmed that there was no UTI, and after taking some blood for tests. "Home Leave" means she can go home, but under close supervision. It's amazing how specialists centers make money these days. They tell you that you can go home if you want to but you will still have to pay for the room. I mean, WHO would, in the right mind, WANT to stay in the hospital IF the doctor says that you can go home... (???) I mean, not like the nurses here are like those in, say, Pearl Harbor... right? ;)

So, we took Ab home with a needle thingy sticking out of her left hand - poor thing. Took a while for her to get used to the needle, but she did, eventually. The, miraculously, on Saturday, her temperature took a dive and returned to normal (~98F). No anti-biotics administered, just the usual paracetamol... De doc also confirmed the dengue tests to be negative (i.e. not dengue), just a viral infection. So, I guess the viral infection decided to take a hike after lepaking in Ab for 3 days... damn it. Well, we'll still need to go back to the Hospital to get her discharged tomorrow. Yup, officially, she's still "hospitalized" per se, but she's at home... amazing, but true...


Ouch!

By the way, business is so good until the poor kids need to sleep along the corridor... Made me wonder if there's going to be a "Jesus Moment" where a lady (say her name is Mary) whose husband (yup, Joseph) comes to the hospital to give birth... all the rooms (and corridors)are filled, would she have to give birth underneath the shed in the car park? (!!!)


Familiar scene - like that found in pearl Harbor...

thanks to those who've been praying for poor Ab. And God DOES answer prayers...

Happy Deeps to All who celebrate and Happy Holidays to the rest - drive safe...

boon out...

boon's log 4507.02: What's Blue, White and Red?

IL and I did some late-night-shopping again - after the sudden urge to get another tub of Wall's chocolate ice cream. We decided, when we got out the car, that we will just dash in to the frozen food area and extract the ice cream and exit.

But alas, Tesco won again.

On the way out, the Blue-White-Red triangular box of Tesco Value Hawaiian Pizza caught my attention. Yeah, I know that there is a siren on top of the shelf that says "Don't buy me, I'm yucky" - but it's those moments you just wanna try how yucky it really is... IL warned me about it and that I would not be able to finish it; but I've deicided to part with my RM1.75 just to discover the truth behind the confines of the Blue-White-Red box.

By the way, it's "Pizza Hawaii Ayam" in Malay - what a translation (???).


Pizza Hawaii Ayam

After 15minutes at 200C, I sinked my teeth into the nice-smelling hot "fresh" Pizza. The first bite was okay - where the ketchup part was, but as I moved on, it does not get better, especially when I tasted the cheese - there is a somewhat in-describable "synthetic-taste" to it that makes you wanna launch it out of your mouth. But I kept it in, with some help from Coca-Cola. I managed to finish the entire piece (just to prove that I can, I guess...).


Looks can be rather deceiving...

Other parts of the pizza - the chicken tastes like flaky-meat while the pineapple maintained it's texture, but not the taste. The only thing I like about the entire episode was the crust. Wasn't there a saying that great Pizza begins with the crust? Well, for this case, it kinda stopped AT the crust...

I later had to further wash it down with the ice cream we bought from Tesco - well, thank God for the Ice Cream... else my stomach would not forgive me for the torture... ;)

Well, there you go. Another reason not to buy anything that is presented in a blue-red-white box or wrapper. It will not exceed your expectations...

boon out...

boon's log 4407.05: Half tank versus Full tank...

We did an experiment with our old car recently. Well, not really much of an experiment, really. It's more of common sense, but we just wanted to see if the "myth" is real - yeah, kinda like some local version of MythBusters.

We've been filling up the car with a full tank of gas all these while and it gets a mileage of RM0.22 per km. Recently, Petronas has this special deal whereby for every RM30 you spend at their station, you get to redeem a Sundae or Apple Pie at McDonald's (and some other stuffs, which I did not bother to remember). And RM30 gets about half a tank of gas.

Based on our experiment results, [drum roll] it gets us about RM0.18 per km, based on RM1.92 per litre. A savings of RM0.04, in return of visiting the gas station more often and getting a free McDonald's Sundae. Well, there you go. It's a proven fact.

Last update was >1 month ago. Has it been THAT long?! Gosh...

There was the birthday bash thingy - thanks to my dear wifey and also my colleagues, it was quite a blast. We (my office folks) had lunch at Chili's (oh! by the way, they sit incomplete parties now - what a joke!) and thanks to EC and Jim-ster for getting the excellent cake from Manila, which was so good I had to save some for supper later ;). And for dinner, IL brought me to Deluxious - this Dinner and Spa restaurant thingy near Upper Penang Road. We did not do the spa that night, but got a voucher for next visit. Excellent, choice! And for my b'day gift... I got a Zen V Plus! Fanta-bulous! Now, I've got more than just 5 or 6 tunes when I on the threadmill!


Zen V Plus

A little on Ab. She's growing so fast, I tell you. The latest feat is her ability to climb up the sofa - yeah a real "sam-seng" little fellow. She's cheeky and cute at the same time. We just love her to pieces.


Ab liking the plate that GrandPa and GrandMa bought from their Scandinavian trip

We're just a few days away from her very first birthday and mom & dad are scratching our heads, thinking of how to celebrate it. I was thinking McDonald's, but IL wanted something more homely - so that everyone can just relax and hang out at home. Well, still a few days to figure that out.

Met up with TTK somewhere in the middle of Oct. He seems to be doing great. He spent like a few days in PG. WH was supposed to meet up, but he's KL that time... excuses! excuses! TK's in Japan right now. I guess we'll be seeing him more often from now on... AhBoy, you're taking him out the next time! ;)

At work, October has also been quite a roller coaster. Loads of issues and excursions, plus the need to plan out for 2008. It's been quite hectic. It's getting a little better now, at least some of them have already been resolved, while some... still pending... well, as the Chinese Saying goes, "Life long kung fu will take a long life to complete".

boon out...