I’m not sure why we’ve never thought to try myNews Cafe all this time. Maybe it’s because I tend to associate it with being a newspaper store rather than a restaurant.

But after a full morning of shopping, we didn’t want to fuss too much with where to eat so we just plonked ourselves at the nearest table outside the cafe.

Their Combo Mix comes with a chicken chop and a lamb chop separated by a sausage, a huge heap of fries and veggies (cauliflower, broccoli, cucumber and tomato) with a choice of either mushroom or black pepper sauce. Tastes pretty good.

The Char Kuay Teow, or fried flat noodles, is fried with chicken and eggs. There’s the usual bean sprouts but surprisingly, they also top it with a heap of veggies - shredded lettuce and carrots, and a slice of cucumber.

The taste is okay but it’s not spicy enough for me. They give you a small scoop of chili paste on the side but I prefer the chili paste to be fried into the noodles itself.

I ordered the Cantonese Fried Yin Yeong, or fried rice noodle and flat noodle combination. The Cantonese style of frying noodles is one that’s practically drowning in sauce with an egg beaten into it.

myNews Cafe’s is fried with black Chinese mushrooms, chicken strips and crab sticks topped with Chinese parsley. There’s not much meat though.

What’s unusual is that they use veggies like baby bokchoy, shredded carrots and snow peas instead of Chinese cabbage and choy sum.

Tastewise, it’s excellent complete with a smoky flavor that reminds me of the Cantonese fried noodles I used to have at the stall near my childhood home.

They’re on the first floor at 1 Utama’s new wing round the corner behind Watson’s. The place fills up pretty quick during lunchtime especially now that the holiday crowd is on the loose.

And it’s no wonder, their servings are big with heaps of vegetables and their prices are very reasonable. I like their service too. The waitress noticed our table was too small and she quickly found another table to join up so we could have more elbow space. We’re definitely going back.

If you liked this post, subscribe to our RSS feed for more recipes, restaurant reviews and mouth-watering updates. If you've tried this recipe or restaurant, drop us your comment or feedback.

When I was a kid, my folks would take us to The Ship every other Sunday after our swim. When I started working, I continued to frequent The Ship with my colleagues during lunch or dinner, and on birthdays and dates . You can tell I adore their steaks.

Been years since I’ve been there. Yep, life got busy when the kids came. But last weekend, we finally got to introduce our kids to a dining experience that holds a rich history for me and their dad.

Lucky us, they have a Royal Victorian Christmas Lunch set on their Christmas menu. It comes with Cream of Tomato Soup (below top) but for old times’ sake, I ordered their Seafood Chowder (below bottom) and DH his favorite Oxtail Soup (forgot to snap a pix of that).

Mm-mm, I’m speechless! My Seafood Chowder was crammed with large chunks of squid, fish and shrimps. Da best! And I’m not even paid to write this post .

There are 3 choices for the main course on their Christmas set menu. I chose the Charbroiled Black Pepper Minute Steak (below) which came with a thick, flavorful sauce that i found to be a tad salty!

The Roasted Chicken Whole Leg with Brown Sauce is simple but tastes divine…

The Grilled Fish Fillet with Caribbean Sauce boasts of a refreshingly sourish tomato-based sauce. A very nice combination.

This Santarina Mocktail (below) which is a concoction of orange and carrot juice, and a single scoop of ice cream complete the set lunch menu.

One of my daughters had the ala carte Charbroiled Rib Eye Steak which comes with a salad ahead of the main course. This steak is melt-in-the-mouth for real, not just empty promises.

My daughter was thrilled that the waiter topped the baked potato right before her eyes and she got to choose the topping from small metal serving jugs shaped like Aladdin’s magic lamp.

The kids were all over the nautical themed decor. It feels like dining on a real ship, they say. And of course, if you’re wondering if the food is still as good as it was back then, the answer is yes.

I don’t know how they’ve managed that. Everything is the same as it was 20, 30 years ago from the authentic decor to the impeccable service. And they still serve REAL food which is still value for money. Guess it’s not known as the best steak in town for nothing, eh?!

Okay, if you’ve been drooling in your sleep about the McDonald’s Prosperity Burger you had last Chinese New Year, well, it’s ba-ack!

With a vengence, I might add!

The girls and I innocently stepped into McD’s this afternoon and woot, there’s the Beef Prosperity Burger, and then there’s the Double Beef Prosperity Burger for doubly good luck in riding out this economic crisis.

To be on the safe side, go for that Double Beef Prosperity Burger for double the pimples wealth, double the zits money, double the acne good fortune .

Yes, we’re officially one month (give or take) away from Chinese New Year so if you start eating ‘em prosperity burgers now, you’ll be looking nice and fat prosperous by Chinese New Year!

Okay and you can stop wondering now. McDonald’s isn’t paying me in Prosperity Burgers to write this post, okay?

I used to have lunch at a chicken rice restaurant in Sunway Pyramid years ago. I can’t remember the name of the restaurant, only that they had some seriously delicious char siew (barbecued pork) and siew yoke (roast pork) dishes.

Strangely I haven’t been able to find that restaurant until a couple of weeks back. Well, this time I was determined to find it because I’ve been craving their roast pork noodles for such a long time . So I dragged my kids from floor to floor looking for familiar stores that would lead me to this place.

At this point, it should be noted that I’m not the sort of person who’d go out of my way to track down good food, no matter how highly recommended. But this restaurant has left such yummy memories with me that I just had to find it!!!

And I did. It’s on the ground floor near the skating rink. It’s called Yip’s Kitchen now with an upgraded look and even a guitar-playing waiter singing out front to entertain and tempt shoppers to step inside.

If there was any doubt in my mind about whether this was the right restaurant, the siew yoke noodles confirmed it for me! Its crispy, crackling skin is all too familiar and brought back a rush of lunchtime memories. Yes, it’s still as yummy as I remember it.

My younger daughter had the char siew rice. Still good.

My older daughter had the curry chicken rice, which I presume is a new menu item as I don’t remember them having this back then.

I swear we’re probably one of the few odd people who go to a seafood restaurant but won’t order any live seafood. In case you’re wondering, I am Buddhist and yes, it has to do with my religion.

I’m pleasantly surprised that being a seafood restaurant, Pantai Seafood still has great non-live-seafood dishes to offer.

Their Yam Basket is one of our favorites. This is about the only form of yam that my kids will eat. It’s mashed deep-fried yam shaped into a bowl containing a medley of chicken, cashew nuts, mushrooms, and onions.

We wanted to order the Honey Sotong, or Honey Squid, but they didn’t have it on that day. So reluctantly the kids settled for Honey Shrimp instead although having to shell the sticky shrimp tends to interfere with the eating momentum somewhat.

Their Yeen Yeong Kailan, or Chinese kale cooked in two ways, is my favorite simply because I’d never seen anything like it before I ate it here.

They’ve actually taken the leaves of the kailan, finely shredded it and fried it with white bait to make this curly-wurly bunch that looks like a wig . The stems are simply stirfried as is and the whole thing looks really unique.

I have to admit that the good thing about their Herbal Beggar’s Chicken is that we didn’t have to order it ahead of time, like some restaurants make you do.

This is a dish that takes hours of brewing to infuse the flavors of the herbs into the chicken till it melts in your mouth. The flavors are so strong and yummy it’s good till the last drop of gravy.

Fish Slices with Ginger and Spring Onion is a great dish if you have kids and you don’t want to be concerned about fish bones. It’s got a lot of flavor but the ginger taste is not overpoweringly spicy, so kids find it easy to stomach.

Their Lemon Chicken is very crispy but I find the chicken a little too fat and the lemon sauce a little too weak. This photo was taken before we poured on the lemon sauce. You can see the chicken is very well-fried but they are chopped pieces that come with bones.

Overall, a great place to go to for the occasional weekend dinner as the food is pretty reasonably priced. The restaurant is a little hard to find as it’s tucked away in the village area behind the Damansara Jaya secondary school.

We attended a wedding dinner at Oriental Pavilion some months ago. The restaurant is not very big and it’s tucked away on the first floor of Jaya33.

At any rate, we were pretty impressed with the food at the wedding dinner. One night, we happened to be in the area and decided to stop by.

We were lucky we managed to secure one of only two tables left that night. Wedding receptions usually take up the whole restaurant and you may get turned away.

That night, there was no wedding as it was the seventh month of the Chinese calendar, not an auspicious month for weddings, but still the restaurant was full.

We rarely get to eat this Crispy Chicken except at wedding dinners but it’s one of our favorites except this order didn’t come with the lovely prawn crackers.

Gotta love that crispy skin though. Guess it’s okay to eat the skin once in a while . The chicken dipped in wa yeem, or flavored salt is the way I prefer it to dipping it in plum sauce.

We also ordered the Steamed Cod Fish which came with too much a heap of dried black fungus and fresh coriander. Tastewise, it was okay, a bit bland and not as vivid as some others I’ve tasted.

This Stirfried Kailan was exceptionally good that day. Because of the simplicity of this dish, you need to use kailan so fresh you can taste the freshness and be able to distinguish that from the fragrance of the garlic. Well, we got lucky.

Of course, we had to have our favorite Claypot Seafood Tofu which turned out to be very tasty. They used the extra large, extra soft tofu which I suspect could be made inhouse.

Look at that, the colors really jump out at you, don’t they?

The thing I really like about their food is that the taste is just right, not too salty. Pricewise, let’s just say we can’t eat there too often but the food is pretty good so yeah, we plan on going back.

Sometimes it’s hard to get everyone to agree on where to eat. But somehow Esquire Kitchen is one place we can always agree on when we run out of options.

They serve some pretty mean Shanghainese noodles which was what got me started going back again and again in the days before my kids were even born.

These days when I go with my kids, we usually have the ala carte dishes because “I want to have the wo tip“, or pot stickers.

These oval-shaped dumplings are filled with ground pork and chives, and fried in a shallow pan on the bottom side only, hence the name pot stickers.

The top of the Wo Tip is cooked by the steam of the water that’s gradually added to the pan. That’s why they’re only blackened on one side.

Scrumptuous when eaten with a coarse chili dip consisting of shredded ginger, vinegar and soy sauce!

Stir-Fried Fish Slices with Ginger and Spring Onion is a new favorite with the kids simply because the fish is boneless.

I think this is the Shanghainese style of preparing Stir-Fried French Beans. The beans are left long and cooked with ground pork till softened.

This Lemon Chicken is our perennial favorite. The chicken is practically boneless and deepfried to a crisp. The lemon sauce featuring finely shredded lemon rind comes in a separate bowl, so the chicken retains its crispness till the last minute.

The Claypot Tofu is also a regular dish that we order. In fact, we like this so much I even have my own copycat recipe for it and cook this at home every so often.

Tong Po Meat is one of their popular Shanghainese dishes which goes with the man tou, or flower dumpling. The 3-layer pork of alternating layers of lean meat and fat is braised in a sweet soy sauce till it melts in the mouth.

This is one dish we rarely order though because of the fat. After we throw out the fat, it seems there’s hardly half the dish left.

There are people who love the fat and would gobble down every last bit, and here we are throwing half the pot away . So I’d rather not order it. I hate to waste food.

We can always tell that DH has a pleasant surprise for us when he calls home for us to pick him up for lunch. So off we went downtown in rush hour traffic. Never mind, gas is cheap, eh :rolleyes: !!

Li Jin is on the top floor of the Pavilion where the classy restaurants are. The minute we walked in, my kids sang, “Mom, I think we’d better leave our jewelry at the door. It’s gonna get expensive!” Bwahaha, my kids are sharp!

We were famished so we just picked the first thing we saw in the set menu. Right off the bet, I fell in love with this beautiful appetizer, Pickled Lotus Root, served in a dainty white dish. The colors of the white lotus root, red chilli and orange slices jumped right out at me.

Tastewise, the lotus root slices are crunchy and slightly tangy. I confess I was so busy admiring the natural perforations of the lotus root that I almost forgot to put it into my mouth.

Next came the 2 Roast Meat Combination - char siew, or barbecued pork, and siew yoke, or roast pork with crispy skin. This was lovely but too salty for my tastebuds and to be eaten without rice.

The Yeen Choy Soup with Century Egg and Whitebait was pretty good but again I would’ve preferred it low-sodium. Yeen choy is also known as leaf amaranths, I think.

The thing I liked about the Claypot Fish Slices were the whole onions and garlic that has been braised to a flavorful softness.

When the kids saw “lobster” on the menu, they were eagerly anticipating the arrival of the Sweet Sour Lobster.

When it came, My 12-year-old took one look and went, “How old is this lobster, Mom?” I said, “I don’t know, why?” and she went, “It must be an infant, it’s so small!”

Bwahaha, indeed a smaller lobster I’ve not seen! There was hardly enough to go around. Whatever little meat there was clinging pathetically to the shell was pretty tough.

After the lobster-sized anticlimax, we were in for another disappointment in the Deepfried Soft-Shelled Crab. I’m not sure if deepfried is supposed to mean soft but this wasn’t crunchy like I expected.

You wouldn’t believe the sigh of relief from my kids when dessert finally came. This has been the most hilarious meal we’ve had out. We laughed at every dish that came to our table as we prepared to ‘fight’ for each piece .

The servings were so-oo small we felt like the Cratchetts in “A Christmas Carol”, an entire family picking off one tiny turkey drumstick the size of a pigeon drumstick!

The dessert was supposed to have been Tau Foo Fa, or soybean curd but the waiter informed us that the recipe didn’t turn out well and couldn’t be served.

So they brought us the Sago Honeydew Dessert instead in a super large serving! Hopefully this would tie us over till we could go grab a burger downstairs afterwards. Very refreshing, loved the shaved ice!

In spite of everything, I have to say their food presentation is very pleasing to the eye. And we loved the beautiful Tienchi Floral Tea. That’s our glass teapot sitting right there with a candle below to keep it warm.

When we eat out, hotdogs is usually never our first choice for a very simple reason. Teens have ravenous appetites and within a few minutes of eating a hotdog each, we’ll be having his conversation.

Any one of my kids: Mom, when are we having lunch?

Me: But we just had lunch !

Another of my kids: THAT was lunch???

The third one: Mom, I’m still hungry! *poor puppy dog eyes*

So you can see why hotdogs can only be a snack for us. Hotdogs are not cheap either if you eat them outside. So the kids know one is the limit! So 1901 isn’t something we do too often.

But this time, our excuse was we had a late breakfast so we were looking for a light lunch. We ordered the combo meal which comes with a free drink.

My son finished this Chicago Beef Hotdog in 3 chomps .

The girls prefer the New York Chicken.

Frankly I do too but decided to give the Texas Ted a try. It’s just as I like it, a little spicy.

Nando’s at 1 Utama is newly renovated to create perhaps a more cozy ambience. It’s nice, I like it. I just make sure we get one of the tables off the walkway to avoid having passers-by peer at us when we’re eating.

I ordered the Peri Platter, their largest set meal of a whole chicken with 5 side orders (or what they call, sidelines). We finally got around to doing the math and decided the larger set is cheaper.

We used to order individual sets because we have different heat level preferences of very spicy, spicy or mild. Beware, the very spicy is too spicy even for me, the Chili Queen!

Truth is if we order mild for the large set, those of us who prefer more fire in our chicken can always add the Peri-Peri sauce of our desired heat level. So it works out pretty good that way.

The large set comes with 2 bowls of Mediterranean Rice (rice cooked with green peas, carrots and onions) and a bowl each of their Fresco Salad (tomatoes, cucumbers, onions and coriander with a sourish dressing, I love this), Coleslaw and Old Style chips.

The kids wanted to try their Peri Wedges & Creamy Peri Dip which turned out to be just your regular wedges and the dip was, um, ordinary.

I like Nando’s but I consider it just too expensive for a chicken meal, albeit one that’s flame-grilled with their famed Peri-Peri sauce. A meal like this set us back by over rm85 just four of us. That’s over rm20 per head, much too steep for a family meal.