Dining With Jewelle

I first heard the news of the opening of a Japanese eatery in Seria town from the most unlikely source - my parents in law who gave me vague information that it will be a “branch of some restaurant in Bandar Seri Begawan“.

The other men in my household were excited - nevermind which restaurant it will be as long as it’s Japanese - as the nearest one is at least 30 mins drive away.

While I, not being a sushi fan, was busy speculating on which restaurant it will be and guessed that it could be another Excapade or perhaps Sushi Tei or maybe Misato or even Kaizen - the only 4 Japanese places that I’m familiar with.

That was until we got a confirmation from someone who was involved in the project that it will indeed be a Kaizen Sushi.

So last weekend, since it first opened its door last month, we took the whole family and my youngest brother, who was in town on route his way to Miri, for dinner.

One thing about Japanese place that I don’t like is the menu can be confusing - all the food looks the same and the selections are so many, I had to forced myself to focus on the pictures and quickly pick before I lost interest.

My husband ordered the vegetable tempura as he knew that I liked the one that I had in Bandar’s Kaizen but for some reason, the one that arrived was nothing like the type that I wanted. We also had the sushi party set, salmon salad, seaweed soup and fried rice.

I also ordered a plate of Japanese dumpling called Gyoza - which tasted as good as the “Wo Tek” (Chinese fried dumplings) that we sometimes have for supper in Keningau and KK after whatever night activities we had then.

For some reasons, I find that the Kaizen’s gyoza are more to my taste than the Excapade’s and I will definitely order this again next visit.

And even though there were only 5 adults and 3 kids, the food finished so fast that I didn’t even managed to try some of them!

My in laws verdict was that they prefer the other place when it comes to taste and that could be due to Kaizen’s no-use-of-MSG policy (as I was told). But my husband and I actually like this place and I found a couple of things that I enjoy here and next time I’d have to try their curry range too.

In case you’re wondering about the price, it is slightly pricier than Excapade but definitely no outrageous RM400 for a 4 persons lunch here.

And Sis Caneeliea, why don’t you come over so you can try this and compare it with Umai

It was two days ago that we had our Chap Goh Mei dinner to mark the last day of Chinese New Year.

Later that evening we had our Chap Goh Mei dinner where my in law again, had the usual home-cooked roast duck and roast chicken and some mussels.

As I sent Qi to bed, Eu and the others finished off the remaining of our firecrackers and fireworks. And before the evening was even half over, I went to bed with Eu and that’s it for our last day of Chinese New Year for this year!

Part of my parents in law Chinese New Year shopping routine was to get roast chicken and roast duck from across the border city for our reunion dinner.

But this decades old tradition was broken this year with news of an even stricter border checks and so for perhaps the first time after many years, we had home roasted chicken and duck for our recent reunion dinner.

My father in law decided to cook the duck this year and our kitchen sure smelled so good the whole afternoon as the duck was being roasted.

Since I have the double-barrelled reasons of being busy with the kids and having not much interest in the kitchen, the food was prepared by my in laws - single handedly.

Roast duck, roast chicken, roast pork, “mah kui” (our special family springrolls) were all prepared in addition to our steamboat - and you can imagine our table groaning under the weight of all those food!

Being an aspiring chef, my father in law even took the trouble to garnish all the dishes :

Even without the steamboat, the table was already full

So much meat!

I didn’t much of these meat as I was more into the steamboat - I could still taste how good my soup was with sliced cili padi that night…

For as long as I’ve join my husband’s family for their Chinese New Year’s eve reunion dinner, we’ve always had steamboat as our main dish. Although we’d also have dishes such as roast chicken, roast ducks, our family’s spring rolls, mixed vegetables and etc, these are side dishes to the steamboat.

And every year, my mother in law would prepare all the ingredients such as prawns, squids, fishballs, fish cakes, liver, some vegetables and one special ingredient such as abalone or what we had this year, limpets.

As for the soup, there are no special seasoning except fish sauce and some chicken stock because the prawns, squids and all other ingredients that we add inside the steamboat will add its own flavour - and I like to spice up my own soup with some sliced cili padi!

We still used the old-fashioned steamboat which uses charcoal for heat and I was told that, this gives the soup a much nicer smell as compare to using modern gas steamboat.

The only thing about eating steamboat is that it is a very hot affair and even in our air-conditioned dining room, some of the men would be sweating - but since we only do this once a year, nobody minded.

And this year, I thought we had an even more delicious steamboat than before.

Although when I go back to KK, I frequent the coffee joints a lot, when I am back here in Brunei, I hardly ever do that.

I find myself less inclined to make the effort and even if asked by friends, it’s easy to find reasons not to - and it’s nothing personal against my Brunei friends.

And when I had tea at one of the coffee joint in Kuala Belait recently, I find that I didn’t miss much by never frequenting this place before.

Sure, the ambience was nice and the service was good, the cake that I chose left a lot to be desired. And while their burger was great, I usually go to these places for their cakes and to have a cake which was chewable was definitely weird. Or perhaps I was just unlucky enough to pick the wrong cake that day…

But I’m not sure if I’ll ever drop by this place for their cakes in the near future - besides, why go for cakes when we can have excellent roti canai for tea, right?

Courtesy of some $20 worth of redemption voucher which was about to expire tomorrow, my husband came home and gave me a 30 mins notice to get ourselves ready for a family dinner at the Buccaneer. Despite this near-impossible task, we managed to leave the house only about 5 mins late for our second visit to this restaurant for this year alone!

Today the whole place was nicely decorated for Chinese New Year and when we arrived, only two other tables was occupied.

They were having some promotion for Australian Black Angus Beef and hubby decided to get their $25 Sirloin Steak.

I thought it tasted good and he approved of it too. We also had the Caesar Salad and Calamari Rings for starters and although he said the Salad was alright, I didn’t think it looked very inviting - of course, I’m not a salad eater and I didn’t even bother trying this, so what do I know.

I got Eu the fish and chips from the kiddies menu and she surprised me by finishing both fish pieces, very very quickly! If you know how slow she usually eats, you’d be impressed too. Not only that, she even polished a small plate of spaghetti which I set aside in case she wanted to eat - which she did.

In case you’re wondering, Qi only slightly enjoyed the bun with butter and although she made a big show of dipping her french fries into the sauce, she actually fed her father most of it. She spent more time somersaulting, getting me to take her pictures and tried to attract the attention of the patrons who sat behind us.

Besides us, a few other tables were occupied by mostly Caucasians tonight and I think this has been one of the busiest nights that we’ve ever been here for dinner.

And with the $20 voucher, we ended up paying an extra $30 but since everyone enjoyed their food, I thought it was well-worth the money and as usual, the service was good - besides, how can they not be charmed by my kids who flirted with every single ones who passed within a metre from our table.

One good thing about this place is because it faces the car park, parking is a breeze and there are days when our ol’ Seria town can be very busy.

And because it is quite a small place, with only about 40 seating capacity, the place always looked busy and there are times when we had to cancel lunch here because there are no more seats. But despite the small place, you’d be surprised with the number of very alert and efficient (in all my experience) waitresses this place has. Is it any wonder that even though its rather basic and non-air-conditioned, it has been steadily operating at the same location for at least 20 years?

Of course, we love their chicken rice too.

I was a little adventurous on that day and without thinking twice, decided to order the first thing that came to my mind - “wah tan ho” which meant kuay tiaw in egg gravy (?).