This is my first attempt at this dish. It tasted pretty good, if I may say so myself. However, I felt that the french beans were cut too short because I am so used to doing that when I stir fry them. For this dish, cutting each french bean in half would be just nice.

Ingredients:

500gm french beans

2 tbsps minced pork

1 tbsp dried shrimp

2 tbsps chopped ginger

1/4 tsp salt

1/5 cup water

1 tsp vinegar

1/4 tsp sesame oil

1/4 tsp sugar

Method:

1. Trim the ends of the french beans and break into two sections.

2. Soak the dried shrimps till softenened, remove hard shells if any and then finely chop the shrimps.

3. Heat up a wok and deep fry the french beans until the surface of the french beans turn wrinkly. Transfer them out and use paper towels to absorb the excess oil.

4. Heat 2 tbsps of oil in wok and stir fry the minced pork and chopped ginger. Add in the chopped dried shrimp, followed by the sugar, salt and water. Finally, return the french beans to the wok and stir fry until gravy is almost dry.

5. Drizzle vinegar down the edges of the wok and add the sesame oil.  Continue stirring a few times, then dish out and serve.

This restaurant used to be located in Grand Continental Hotel’s building but has since moved to a new location. It’s new premise is BEHIND the “Dua Puluh Sen” store next to the junction/traffic light at Jalan Mendu.

Being a restaurant, food is a little on the pricey side, especially when you order seafood. However, there are some dishes which I feel are worth paying for such as my favourite Thai Style Mized Midin and the Sweet and Sour Fish. Unlike most outlets, their Sweet and Sour Fish have very little flour added, so you don’t get that chewy or rubbery feel when you bite into the fish fritters. Most important, the fish is also fresh.

RATINGS:

FOOD - 4 out of 5 (sometimes depends on the dish you order)

SERVICE - 3.5 out of 5

ATMOSPHERE - 4 out of 5

Thai Style Mixed Midin

Sweet & Sour Fish

Braised Mushroom with Soy Gluten

View of the restaurant

“Nan Ru” Pork Ribs

Steamed Bean Curd Top With Minced Spinach

“Zhen Jiang” Pork Ribs With Buns

Mani Chai Fried With Egg

Deep Fried Crispy Soft Shell Crabs

I’ve posted about an earlier meal at Xin Tsui Siang sometime back. Today, we headed back to the restaurant for another lunch but with a slightly diffrent choice of dishes. The food was good with the exception of the vegetable dish. Overall, this meal for 5 only cost us $91, so it was considered averagely priced.

Tarot Cafe is situated at Jalan Tun Ahmad Zaidi Adruce, next block to Bing! Coffee. As the name goes, the decor in this cafeteria comprises of tarot cards framed up nicely and displayed on a section of the wall. Foodwise, it serves a mixture of Western, Malaysian and simple Chinese dishes.

My rating for food is 4 out of 10. Nothing to shout about.

Ayam Masak Merah with rice

Nasi Lemak with Rendang Chicken

Spicy Chicken With Salted Fish

We made a special trip to Verinice, located at Jalan Petanak, to try out its new dish, the Paper Seafood Steamboat. This is what the actual dish looks like:

Paper used to fill the seafood and soup

The seafood ingredients included mussels, fish fillet, squid, prawns and also vegetables like slices of carrot and mushroom. I actually enjoyed the soup as it was very sweet and tasty. Add a bowl of rice and it will keep you full throughout lunch. This unique dish, with a promotional price of $9.90, was definitely worth trying out. Once the promo is over, the Paper Steamboat will cost patrons $18.90.

I like having my meals at this Restaurant as they have some of the best Dim Sum in town too. Xin Tsui Xiang is located at Petanak Road, next block to Veri Nice. The food is also reasonably priced and if you are interested to have cheaper food, they have lunch set like Roasted Meat with rice, etc. ranging from $5 and above.

My overall rating:

 Food : 4 out of 5

Atmosphere : 4 out of 5

Cleanliness : 4 out of 5

Service : 3.5 out of 5

 Beancurd with Seaweed and Vegetables

 Mixed Roasted Meat (Chicken, Duck & Char Siew)

 Fried Pork Ribs

 Mixed Vegetables in Oyster Sauce

Soft Shell Crab

Village Fast Food is located behind Green Bento (which is no longer opened) at Jalan Central. They are both painted in bright green colour and you can view the building from the main road, so it is not difficult to locate it.

The building itself is an open concept, meaning non airconditioned but based on my experience, it’s bearable during lunch hour heat, so should not be any problem for those who wants to try them out during dinner time. This place has also organized a bloggers food review campaign where Kuching Food Bloggers were invited to taste & review the dishes sometime end of last year. Kudos to Village Fast Food for recognizing the power of blog marketing.

Basically, they are providing home cooking style dishes and the price are average, starting at $4 for a plate of fried beehoon. Here’s a look at the dishes that we ordered.

Singapore Style Fried Bee Hoon (actually it’s fried beehoon with curry powder)

Fried Mani Chai Bee Hoon

Home Made Tauhu (not recommended)

Sesame Chicken

 My favourite - Kangkong with belacan (spicy)

Overall, I thought the food was quite good 3.5 out of 5. This is definitely a place I will return to have my meals again.

I’ve tried many claypot noodle in town but so far, none has been able to beat this stall. It is located at Thompson Corner, Jalan Nanas opposite Chung Hua School No.4. Honestly speaking, I have frequented the stall for more than 10 years already. The price for the Claypot Noodle is $3.50 and ingredients include vegetables, mushroom, crabsticks and chicken meat.

Yamitsu is a newly opened food outlet located at Premier 101. We decided to frequent the place without bothering to make reservations. Bad idea! When we walked into the shop, the place was full of patrons and no one attended to us. We even had to wait for customers to leave and quickly grabbed the table available.

They have a fixed menu comprising of a variety of dim sum, fried mee, fried rice, fried bee hoon, roasted pork, roasted chicken, char siew, etc. Other dishes were not available at the moment. Service was not that great but I believe this is because they are still new and inexperienced.  Food was average, though the fried rice and roasted dark were a bit too oily.

Overall, I would rate them a 3 out of 5. I would like to give Yamitsu another try once they have more dishes on their menu.

Har Kau

Char Siew Pau

Steam bun with butter & salted egg filling

Fried rice with mushroom

Fried Bee Hoon

Roasted Duck @ $25 per plate

3 Types of Roasted Meat @ $15

At the end of a hectic day, quick one dish meals can be a wonderful solution for dinner. Regardless as to whether or not you have children at home who are wanting their dinner NOW, you will still find that these dinners are a great solution to your otherwise busy schedule. If you only have 1 or 2 people for whom you are cooking, you should not forgo these meals either. In fact, they will leave you with some great leftovers for your next meal, making things even easier.

Most one dish meals can be cooked in just 30 minutes. Nevertheless, these meals are still very tasty and filling. You simply have all of your meat, vegetables and extras (like pasta or rice) in just one dish. This means that you will only have a pan or 2 to clean. Furthermore, you will also find that these meals are also a lot more healthy for you than the fast food that you may have opted for before you knew just how quick and easy these meals were to make. Of course, this will also save you a lot of money since fast food is so expensive these days.

As you can see, there are a lot of benefits to one dish meals, which is why so many people love to make them. So, the next time that you need something quick for dinner, you really should try a one dish meal like fried rice, chicken in crockpot, chicken & sweet potato soup, baked lasagna, etc.  These will provide you an excellent, homemade option for your hectic lifestyle.