The Hot Chocolate Cafe, Medan Damansara

I've driven past this place numerous times but never made it a point to try it out. A quick check on my blackberry found reviews on this place like...

"Tucked deep into the Damansara Heights neighbourhood, Hot Chocolat makes for a good hideaway eatery. The laid-back and unpretentious atmosphere puts you right at home."

"Another great place for Italian. This time it's at a cosy little place in Damansara Heights. Sitting at a corner shoplot amongst the quiet Damansara Heights neighbourhood lies Hot Chocolate Cafe."

"QUIET ambience, easy parking and lovely Italian food - that's the lure of a little cafe tucked away in Damansara Heights, I HAVE many reasons for going back again and again to The Hot Chocolate Cafe."

...To put it bluntly i wish i had just kept it that way.

The decor and ambience was kind of haphazardly laid back and the place looked kind of tired and i'm sure it has seen better days.
I was greeted by a chiller with some sad looking "Royal Chocolate cake" and the waitress that only recommended the high price items on the menu( which was of an Italian Thai spread).
So we decided on Pesto Salmon ($26) which had a watery cream and bits of cili padi and beware lots of tiny little bones in the salmon.
The other order was Abbacio Roma (lamb chops $22) which was as tough as anything you can imagine. It came with sad looking veg and a really sour mint sauce generously poured over the chops. You can get the same dish at Mama Chops & Papa Grills for less minus the frills. And before i forget an order of cold stale garlic bread.
So far so bad, as i gestured to the waitress to clear the table and to order the the signature chocolate cake she instead brought me my bill and thankfully end this ordeal.
I'm really easy to please foodwise, but as a rule of thumb i will find it very difficult to come back to a restaurant that serves dishes that i can make better.

Roasted Artery Clogging Goodness

I was lucky enough to survive eating this. It tastes amazing. It has the appearance of pure gelatinous fat, but instead it's firmer, quite earthy, meaty, I would almost say mushroomy or fungal. Had it on a toast with roasted garlic spread and sea salt. Had 3 bones and it was heaven. Actually my head was spinning for a while must be something to do with my cholesterol. So i'm going to limit this to once a month.

It Came From Down South

It was last Friday at The Establishent met up with the regulars for what was suppose to be a bottle or two but we ended the night with another triple play.
It was recomended by the establishments over enthusiastic future somelier guy who reckons that we would enjoy this. Couldn't make out the lable as it was all in latin and as you would guess i'm still grasping with the english language. Anyways the colour was a deep purple with a nose of musk and sandalwood which reminded my buddy that it was time to pay his respects to his ancestors at the altars back home. To sum it up it was typically South African with earthiness, mushrooms, short,oakey, no fruit, minerally, tannic acidic and ends like a juice. It reminded me of intermission wine between 2 sad piano concertos. And to make the day sadder it was RM300 a bottle. Enough said.

We had to have something else to make up for the first and we again visited the vineyards of the southern hemisphere and had the Alkoomi Jarrah Frankland River Shiraz 2001 (RM216, again not cheap) which was full of plums and berries, very fruity lots of tannins. Medium bodied and lenght. Will probably get better in a few years time but it was not going to make up for the first bottle. STRIKE TWO!




The establishment was definetly not happening for us so we got out of there for a late dinner at Prego's of the usual pasta, risotto and duck (write about that another time). The wine that accompanied dinner was a Bruno Giacosa Nebbiolo d'Alba 2004 (back to familiar territory), it started out tight but after a while it was a lovely wine with cherries, a hint of strawberries, tar and licorice. Feels like silk in the mouth. Nice acidity, balance and finish. Had to pay unrealistic restaurant mark ups for a basic Giacosa but at least it made up for the earlier rough rides.

KJ's Cronies Hang Out @ Cafe Chef and Brew, Plaza Damansara

I've known of this place for quite sometime now but never got about to blog about it. I always use as a convenient half way meeting point.It's kind of like the neighbourhood cafe that seems to serve about anything and everything. I was told that the outlet is is owned and managed by the group that runs the Victoria Station Steakhouse.

It's another of those places where the menu reads like a phone book offering everything under the sun. The place is cosy and thats the only thing good i got to say of this place. The food sucks and the coffee is like dish water. Enough said.

The interesting thing of this place is the people that hang around there. I noticed many of those rent seeking crony types occupying many of the outdoor tables. I was right because a big black SUV bearing the registration KJ10Q comes up the driveway and out jumps the PM's son-in-law. He then run's upstairs to his office with all those seeking am audience with him in tow.

I spent a while sipping dish water while watching numerous people carrying thick files go up and down the stairs and hanging around waiting to be summoned upstairs. I must say that KJ must be doing very well for a former Timbalan Ketua Setiausaha Sulit di Pejabat Perdana Menteri to this successful business person. Life must be amazing for this young man.

Elsewhere the father in law our PM is once again going to review the projects he boldly said will be implemented under the 9th Malaysia Plan during his election campaign. Let's face it, nothing has taken off since he took over office. No Crooked Singapore Bridge now its NO PENANG Bridge too because of escalating cost. Fuck why cant somebody tell him that its not going to get any cheaper if you continue delaying things!!

Only people benefitting from his incompetence is his family, son-in law and cronies!!

The Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. Restaurant and Market @ The Curve

The Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. Restaurant and Market is a chain of seafood restaurants inspired by the 1994 film Forrest Gump.
The restaurant is named after the movie's main characters Benjamin Bufford "Bubba" Blue and Forrest Gump who talked about going into shrimping business.

Well here's another of those franchise chain restaurants thats hitting our shores. “Mama always said life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what your gonna get” That’s exactly what was going through my head when I walked into Bubba Gump’s.

Unfortunately this one was no where near my expectations. I've been to many so called themed restaurants and have been predictably dissapointed by most of them. It's a theme restaurant so you have to expect that its going to be busy, noisy and more expensive than it's worth.

It's new so you can expect over enthusiastic waiters that annoy the daylights out of me. So it was good that they had that unique paging system consisting of two license plates on the tables marked "Run Forrest Run" from Jenny's famous quote and "Stop Forrest Stop" based on the signs used to help Forrest when he played football at the University of Alabama. The red "Stop Forrest Stop" sign is used to signal that a table needs service and the blue "Run Forrest Run" means that all is well.

I also had the unfortunate pleasure of sitting next to 2 tables that were celebrating birthdays. You can imagine the racket the staff made with their incomprehensible singing, clapping, foot stomping and booty shaking.

The menu consists mostly of shrimp dishes, but also other seafood, as well as Southern and Cajun cuisine. On the menu, was (quoting from the movie) that "shrimp is the fruit of the sea. You can barbecue it, boil it, broil it, bake it, saute it. Dey's uh, shrimp-kabobs, shrimp creole, shrimp gumbo, pan fried, deep fried, stir-fried, there's pineapple shrimp, lemon shrimp, coconut shrimp, pepper shrimp, shrimp soup, shrimp stew, shrimp salad, shrimp and potatoes, shrimp burger, shrimp sandwich. Th-that's about it.

We basically ordered the house specialities of Bubba Dip of artichoke and cheese with tortila chips and Shrimpers Heaven a combination of 4 varieties of prawns and sauces which was nothing to shout about. Only positive was the drinks.

To put it simply, the menu was disappointing, music was too loud, high prices, good service. Not sure if we'd go back next time.

The Apartment, Curve Mutiara Damansara

Here's my blog where i give my unsolicited, unqualified review on good bottles and places to eat......
i look at restaurants from the perspective of an armchair food critic. Wherever i go, be it street food, restaurants, franchises, trendy, posh, high priced etc. All i want is my moneys worth. I expect good food properly prepared, prices in line with the decor, and an efficient, congenial, but not patronizing staff doing its best to assure return business. That's really not much to ask. Yet, many restaurants I visit fail to meet these basic criteria. I will award the places i eat with one to three stars, where one star for good food in its category, two stars for very good food in its category and three stars for exceptional food in its category. ie. a local Michelin star rating ;-)


I will never forget how the staff in this establishent expalined that their menu is based on favourites from Jamie Olivers cookbook!! The menu on a clipboard was like the indexes on the back pages of a cookbook. The decor was based on a living space with a corner resembling a bathroom with tiles and fittings minus a bathtub.

Since it was a lazy sunday afternoon i ordered the perfect pint of Guiness draft on the menu and what i got instead was the can version. The waiter insisted it was a draft and when i questioned the bartender he told me that that they had ran out of it and thought nothing of informing the customer.

Now on to the food, i get turned off rather then impressed with a menu that has too many items for their own good. As it was 3pm, we thought we would grab a light lunch of tomato and mozarella salad. When it arrived it was swimming in its balsamic dressing. It was like having an oily black balsamic soup with cherry tomato's and mozarella floating about.

Next came the open faced beef bacon sandwich on a bed of rocket with two poached eggs on top. The rocket was dried out and the poached eggs were about hard boiled.

Later for dessert was a chocolate mousse cake that was as hard as a rock and when i mentioned it to the waitress she just shrugged and told me that maybe the cake chiller was turned down too low!! I didn't bother about coffee after that.

All this abuse for around RM70++

Overall the decor was tacky, the food was forgettable and the service appalling.

RATING: NIL