Month: August 2008

Food tasting at La Gourmet House, The Curve

I’ve always passed by La Gourmet House at The Curve but never tried out the place. It used to operate in Ikano Power Centre, but later moved to The Curve to capture markets other than the family crowd.

La Gourmet House.
La Gourmet House.

La Gourmet House serves Mediterranean food and some fusion too. Here, I present a dish by dish review:

#1 Non-alcoholic Sangria.
Non-alcoholic Sangria

Non-alcoholic. Tangy. Very delicious with ice. At room temperature, the taste was a bit overwhelming.

#2 Sicilian seafood bisque.
Sicilian seafood bisque

Absolutely excellent. Creamy with chunky seafood to top. I could have this over and over again. Must order.

#3 Andalucian style tiny meatballs in almond sauce with salmon pikelettes & stuffed aubergine with rockets, cherry tomatoes and walnuts topped with berries and lemon dressing.
Andalucian style meatballs, salmon pikelettes and aubergine

I’m not sure if they were meant to be served at room temperature but I couldn’t help but think that they would taste better warm.

#4 Paella Luzonia with mixed seafood, vegetables and salted fish
Paella Luzonia

Excellent taste, but was served at room temperature. Rice was fluffy and saturated with the taste of the ocean. Filled with prawns, crabs, fish and other seafood. Just pity it wasn’t warm enough.

#5 Shepherd’s Buglidicce
Shepherd’s Buglidicce

Some kind of mini savoury pancakes with creamy sauce. My favourite of the night. Very addictive!

La Gourmet House is a humble looking restaurant with pretty good live entertainment. If you’re lucky, you could even catch the Chef himself singing an Innuendo’ number.

Chef singing.
Singing Chef.

Basically, I think that this place has a lot of potential. The taste of the food is generally good but they they were not all served in right temperature. I don’t know any restaurant in PJ that is serving Mediterranean food, so I would recommend giving this place a try as this is the only restaurant I know serving affordable and almost authentic paella, but be sure to remind them to serve them at the right temperature!

Lot G-52, Ground Floor, The Curve
Jalan PJU 7/3
Mutiara Damansara
47800 Petaling Jaya
Tel: 03-7725 4279

Phuket, Thailand – Day 4

DAY 1
DAY 2 Part One
DAY 2 Part Two
DAY 3 Part One
DAY 3 Part Two

We left Surat Thani in the morning and made our way to Phuket. It was about 3.5 hours journey in a car. During the drive, we stopped at a bridge to check out the scenery. The smaller bridge on the right was built in the WW2 era.

Bridges.
New and old bridges.

Sea and boats.
Sea and boats.

We arrived at See Tho’s Phuket office as the man himself had arranged for us a Thai cooking class. I was really looking forward to it because I’ve never been in a cooking class.

Phuket See Tho.
Notice the gold plated letters? They’re actual gold!

Goofing.
Fooling around while See Tho was working. PICTURE TAKEN BY KY.

We were taught to cook tomyam (red and clear) and mango salad.

Slicing ginger.
Slicing ginger (really slowly).

Pounding.
Pounding. PICTURE BY NIGEL.

Smash out the flavour!
Smash out the flavour!

Chef wannabes.
Chef wannabes. PICTURE TAKEN BY NIGEL.

Our masterpiece - Tom Yam.
Our masterpiece – Tom Yam.

Our 2nd masterpiece - Mango Salad.
Our 2nd masterpiece – Mango Salad.

Then, we sat down for lunch that we made ourselves! Of course, there were also grilled crabs and fried noodles and grilled fish that were already prepared by See Tho’s staff. Hehe.

After lunch, it was time to check into a new hotel, Millennium Patong. It was attached to Jungceylon, a popular shopping complex in Phuket. Lovely, 5 star luxe :)

We were welcomed with some lovely lime based mocktails. Very sour but I loved it.

Welcome drink.
Welcome mocktails.

Lobby.
Hotel’s lounge.

Hugging the ball.
Hugging the ball.

Nice room.
My room at Millennium Patong.

It would have been perfect if it weren’t for some really noisy kids running up and down my hallway. Eventually I opened my door and scolded them. Golden silence since :)

View from my room.
The view from my balcony.

It was a day to chill. No more activities lined up except dinner. Well, dinner was at a Shogun-like japanese buffet restaurant, which was nothing to shout about. That’s why I’m not posting any picture of the dinner. I guess See Tho wanted to give us a break from Thai food overload but I would have been very happy to eat more Thai food.

After dinner, it was back to the hotel and more free & easy time. It rained for a while so we hung out at Jungceylon till the rain stopped. After that, we went to Patong to check out the night scene and do some shopping. As I’ve already been to Patong before, I decided to skip the night life and head straight for the shops but the thing with travelling in pack is that someone will always manage to disappear without informing anyone and expect other people to be constantly keeping track of him/her. So anyway a lot of time was wasted waiting and finding this person so many shops had closed by the time I decided to just like, f-k this s-t.

I did manage to snag a couple of lovely tops. My mission to find the shop where I got bikinis for 100 Baht a pair failed too (thanks Nigel and Kellster for accompanying me!) :(

We walked so much that by the time we got back to the hotel, I was already majorly pooped. Yeah, it was a lovely sleep.

Stay tuned for my last day in Thailand!