We’ve probably walked past Fish & Co. at 1 Utama a thousand times but never stepped inside. Recently my son had dinner there with his college friends and he says the food there is pretty decent for the price.

He took us to try their Fish and Chips one night. I would never have believed we could get fish and chips for around 10 bucks. But yes, it’s true, their piping hot, crispy New York Fish and Chips is served in a pan and comes topped with melted cheese.

Pretty yummy. Kinda reminds of the ones we’ve had while on disney world vacations when the kids were much younger. The drinks are expensive though so we don’t order any. Instead we ask for water which, as I found out, is supposed to be served with the meal but we won’t get it unless we ask for it.

I also found out that they don’t tell you about ongoing promotions with certain credit cards or certain days of the week. I stumbled upon some of their promos by chance, and if we’d known about those when we were there, we could’ve gotten an even better deal. Most restaurants have a promo card on each table to highlight their specials. Not this place! Looks like they won’t tell you unless you ask for it. We haven’t gone back since .

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The week before Christmas, we went on a beach vacation to Penang where we stayed at the funky new Hard Rock Hotel. We set out at the unearthly hour of 4am. Just before sunrise, we were passing by Ipoh and decided to turn into town to have a bit of breakfast.

It’s amazing how we managed to locate Foh San so quickly and in complete darkness too without getting lost like we usually do. I’m pretty sure it was a fluke . But yeah, the old crowded Foh San where it was impossible to get a table, is now housed in a new building which is spacious and bright and where you can actually eat without having someone hit your elbow and shove the food right down your spine.

So we ordered our usual favorite dimsum. You can see we’re  not that adventurous with ordering all the other types of dimsum. We just pretty much stick to what we like.

And the Century Egg Porridge with minced pork is one of our favorites. Now it comes in a claypot big enough to feed 3 or 4. My only complaint is that the century egg was hard, not soft and melt in the mouth as it’s supposed to be.

We had to use the bathrooms before continuing our journey and we were lucky it’s still pretty new and fairly clean. Not sure if they have hand dryers or tissue dispensers, we were too sleepy to notice .

One Sunday afternoon, we were in the vicinity of Sri Hartamas and ended up at Soho KL tucked away in a swanky part of town. After walking around undecided, we finally settled on Ole-Ole Bali, an Balinese (Indonesian) restaurant with both an indoor and an al fresco dining area. We chose to sit outside as only a couple of tables were occupied and there didn’t seem to be any smokers.

We ordered this Nasi Campur Ole Ole (Mixed Rice, literally) which comes with various accompaniments like shrimp, squid, chicken on a lemongrass stick, stir-fried veggie, salad and assorted sauces. Interesting and quite tasty.

The Ole-Ole Trio was also quite interesting with chicken on lemongrass sticks, crispy deep-fried shrimp, barbecued chicken wings, sliced cucumbers, tartar sauce and chilly sauces.

My son, who prefers Western food, ordered the next best thing, the BBQ Combo with chicken and lamb which turned out not to taste very Western after all. The lamb was tough and he didn’t like the taste of the sauce.

My other Western food lover decided the safest bet would be the more familiar-sounding Chicken and Chips. It tasted okay, just like any ordinary deep-fried chicken chop.

The food is interesting and presentation is great. The way we were eating, it was a good thing we decided to share our orders or we might’ve needed something akin to an rv towing service to get out of our seats. Indeed we would’ve been able to eat more if the food hadn’t been so overly greasy and salty. You know how I feel about that. I wouldn’t be in any hurry to go back again unless my bank account is overflowing .

Friday’s has this Southwest Adobo Chicken on their new menu. What’s got us excited are the sweet potato fries it comes with! How cool is that!

But here it is – a healthier, naturally sweeter contender to the French fry we know and love so well. As you can see, this portion of sweet potato fries is way small for something that tastes so good.

So I went home and made a huge batch of it myself the next day. This is a recipe that came straight off the top of my head. I used to have a pretty good tempura batter recipe sitting around somewhere but I wasn’t about to go digging for it. So I improvised and came up with this.

• sweet potatoes, cut lengthwise French-fry style
• 3-4 tablespoons cornflour
• 1 tablespoon flour
• iced water
• pinch of salt and pepper, if desired

Combine flours and iced water into a batter. Feel free to add more water to achieve the desired batter consistency. Dredge the sweet potatoes through the batter and drop carefully into a pot of boiling oil on high heat.

Keep the heat on high throughout the process. Fish out the fries when they turn light golden brown. The cooking process will cause the fries to darken a little more after they’re removed from the oil.

It’s so simple, you should try this. Makes a great appetizer or finger food for guests. If you’re too lazy to make this yourself, go try it at Friday’s where baby strollers are welcome and kids get to eat for free if you order a main meal. No, I’m not getting paid to advertise for them.

We were on vacation in Penang last week (read and see the photos here, here and here) and decided to check out Strada, a small restaurant tucked in a row of shophouses in busy Pulau Tikus. We’d read good online reviews about this place and thought, why not, since the set lunches seem reasonably priced.

The sets come with either soup of the day, which was Pumpkin Soup that day, or salad. Unfortunately the Pumpkin Soup was sweet and bland (if you can imagine that!) and none of us finished up our order, which is something we hardly ever do since my philosophy is not to waste food.

The salad came with the default dressing which means we didn’t get to choose our favorite dressing.

The Chicken Chop with Oriental Sauce was nothing to shout about either. The sauce was more like a pizza base.

I hate to say this but this Spaghetti alla Vongole was really hard to swallow. The presentation was great so I guess I set my expectations too high. It was bland (which is better than too salty, I guess) and the sauce was like some Chinese gravy?

The Salmon Fish and Chips was, by far, the best thing we had there though the portion was rather skimpy.

It’s a shame the quality of Strada’s food didn’t live up to the nice ambience of the restaurant. I guess if you don’t try it, you’ll never know, which also confirms my philosophy of not chasing down food no matter how good the reviews are made to sound.

On the day we were there for lunch, only a couple of other tables were occupied. There was a small family and 3 ladies discussing mortgage protection insurance rates.