Urban Coffee Roaster, Hong Mei Building, Tai Kok Tsui, Prince Edward, Hong Kong

Address:
135, Lai Chi Kok Road, Prince Edward, Hong Kong

Opening Hours:
Unsure since it's not listed. But I gather Daily, 10:30am - 7pm (?)

Time Visited:
11:30am, Sunday morning. Hot hot hot hot day.

Attire worn:
Casual. Like a traveler. LOL

Item(s) Ordered (Photos taken as inconspicuous as possible with my phone):
Big Breakfast and Flat White (hot)

Last day at Hong Kong and I barely had any time. The night before I was fresh out of breath from the amount of alcohol consumed not to mentioned still sore from a terrible leg cramp from the first night. I was lazy to move but had to check out by 12pm else the cleaner won't be able to clean up my room for the next guest. LOL. So with my bag and all, I headed off to one cafe destination before heading to the airport and I wanna make it count. I open up my app in search for some beautiful coffee and decided upon Urban Coffee Roaster.

Urban Coffee Roaster was established back in 2014 so it's relatively new and it started with 2 coffee enthusiast in Hong Kong. It's also their own coffee bean brand. There's also another outlet in Tsim Sha Tsui which looks relatively more seats to me from their pictures. Over here at the Prince Edward outlet, it's teeming with many elegant decors. Books galore on the shelves and an old looking antique record player which actually is a common modern player instead of an actual record player. There's a very big wooden appeal to it with 3 of it's staff cramming up behind the coffee bar scuttering around in performing their duties. Filled to the brim with coffee paraphernalia, they skillfully weave their magic by grinding, tamping and pressing coffee for you.

The 3 staffs gives off a very chilled and laidback vibe that easily puts me at ease with my very hurried manner. They also took their time in preparing my cup of coffee as well as my food. But then again, Hong Kong has been a place that slowly prepares their food and take pride in it to give you the best that they have. So it was quite a more than my usual time of waiting if I were to compare to Malaysian cafe standards. LOL.

The coffee was placed in a coffee paper cup to my dismay but as soon as I sip through it, the dismay dissipated away to a satisfied happy customer over his creamy Flat White. Though it may not possess the more stringent and strong coffee aroma as Flat White's in Malaysia, it still passes in my book as a Flat White. So far in my limited visits to cafes around Hong Kong, this was the best I had. Mind you, coffee in Hong Kong tend to be a lot more creamier than Malaysia. It's gotta be their milk and their frothing ways. Something which I uniquely adore on Hong Kong cafe coffees.

Next came my Big Breakfast. It certainly looks like a very huge portion with the ingredients all laid on a chopping board that's branded with their name as your eating plate. The Big Breakfast consists of scrambled eggs, mushrooms, 2 types of sausages, bacon, some salad, a tomato and a toast with baked beans. Unfortunately for me, Hong Kong food just don't have a strong enough taste for me. It just felt that they missed the salt and even that was true with the bacon. Nevertheless, it was a filling breakfast and satisfying enough to fill up my tummy.

This certainly is a nice place to have a cup of coffee with a very trendy environment. But there's limited seatings and it's all bar seats up front in the shop. There seems to be some seatings at the back past a door but I didn't investigate to find out what's beyond those doors. I headed off towards the airport in a jiffy as I'm already behind time. LOL.

Total Wallet Damage:
HK$143. $108 for the Big Breakfast and $35 for the hot Flat White. And like Malaysia, asking for ice with it costs more.

Final Verdict:
7/10. Very much in love with their coffee. Not so much on their food but then again, a lot of Hong Kong food seems to have similar flatness in taste.

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Mak's Chee, One Utama (1U), Bandar Utama (BU), Petaling Jaya (PJ)

Address:
LG311D, New Wing One Utama (1U), Lebuh Bandar Utama, Bandar Utama (BU), 47800 Petaling Jaya (PJ), Selangor

Opening Hours:
Daily, 10am - 10pm

Time Visited:
6:30pm, Wednesday night before a movie.

Attire worn:
Business

Item(s) Ordered (Photos taken as inconspicuous as possible with my phone):
Wonton Dry Noodle and Green Tea hot

Mak's Chee famous noodles from Hong Kong has finally made it's way into Malaysia by opening an outlet at 1 Utama.

The long line of customers awaiting for their turn shows that Malaysia is full of foodies and Malaysia itself is a food haven. The same like when Tim Ho Wan first opened in Malaysia, people start clamoring to have a taste of it to see what's the fuss about. As a lone diner, it has it's privilege here because they have booths setup for the solo diners so you can actually skip the queue if there's a place at the booth there. LOL. The booth looks amazing with the spotlight shining down on your station and it looks like you're about to handle a photoshoot of the product.

One of the Mak's family member (grandson-in-law) takes the helm in managing the restaurant who is also the chef and his name is Johnny Yu. In addition to that, the restaurant manager at the front who takes orders is also from Hong Kong and you know Hong Kong is famous for their rude behavior when it comes to serving customers. LOL. Well, I would say by Hong Kong standards, the guy has been very polite to me and even sparks a chatter with some of the customers there. When he accidentally drop the order chit as he was about to put on my table he did say sorry. So to me, it's already quite polite but due to the way he aggressively handles things, some may find it unrefined and outright rude.

Anyway, when I was there, the guy did give me some time to check out what's on their menu which is a flip display chart on every table but was quite quick in attending to me to take my orders. And so I ordered the dry noodles with Signature Sea Prawn wontons and to drink, well, they've only got two choices at that moment even though there's more written on the menu and so I went for the green tea. The guy from Hong Kong seems to be the only person that's allowed to take orders while the other foreign workers that work the floor are only allowed to carry the food and drinks to the table.

They were quick to serve the food over, almost in a jiffy. I think it took less than 5 minutes. The noodles don't look like the normal wonton mee that we have locally. It looks really dry like fried beehoon only thing is this looks way more fluffed up. The wonton is actually served together with the noodles and not the soup unlike our Malaysian style. The prawns jut out from the wonton but is still wrapped within. However, you can see it's shape. The noodles were soft and delicious. Springy and has a very clean taste to it even though it's been mixed with the dark sauce. The wonton tastes fresh where the prawns are crunchy and bouncy. The soup too was a delight to me despite it being really salty. I believe this would be way too salty for the Malaysian taste but still, it's very tasty.

Total Wallet Damage:
RM17.80. a whopping RM14.90 just for the wanton noodles with the small bowl of soup and 4 delectable wontons and RM2.90 for the green tea. No service charge nor GST implemented which is good.

Final Verdict:
9/10. This place really did live up to it's name. It's unlike any wonton noodles I've ever tasted or any noodles for that matter. The wonton really emphasizes on the prawn more than the wrapping whereas usually, the wontons I tasted has the wrapping that's enveloping it taste either on par or more than the actual meat inside. The only downside would be the price due to it being an established name and the service where some may find it rude if they're not used to Hong Kong hospitality. LOL.

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Wong Kok Char Chan Teng, SetiaWalk, Pusat Bandar Puchong, Puchong

Address:
G-02-G, Block G, SetiaWalk, Persiaran Wawasan, Pusat
Bandar Puchong, 47160 Puchong, Selangor.

Opening Hours:
12pm-11pm (Mon to Thurs),
12pm-12am (Fri, Sat, Sun & PH Eve)

Time Visited:
1:39pm upon the New Year of 2016!

Attire worn:
Casual

Item(s) Ordered (Photos taken as inconspicuous as possible with my phone):
French Fried Rice, Banana Boat and Stocking Milk Tea in Hong Kong Style - Cold

DISCLAIMER: This was not a lone dining experience. I was hanging out with my best friend (Read: only friend) on New Year's day and we were there to catch The Charlie Brown and Snoopy Peanuts Movie. We usually would watch it at 1 Utama but since 1 Utama for some reason decided not to screen it these few days till Monday, we had no choice but to opt for SetiaWalk as the place to watch it.

Wong Kok Char Chan Teng is not a new name in the Malaysian scene. In fact, it has branches scattered all over Peninsula Malaysia and even has a branch in Singapore. My friend wasn't too keen on the idea of trying out new outlets for food and so we decided to go for one that he's very comfortable dining in which is Wong Kok Char Chan Teng.

Wong Kok Char Chan Teng's style of restaurant mimics Hong Kong style given the name and the origin of the franchise. In order to order your food, you are to write down the quantity of the item you want on an order chit. Personally, I kind of find this type of ordering amusing because you have to find the item you want on the order chit. In addition to that, when you pass your order to the staff of the outlet, they would need to scan through quickly the whole order chit so as not to miss a thing. LOL. And Hong Kong style restaurants such as these usually has a lot of different items on their menu.

I pick at random to try their French Style Fried Rice. Feeling the need to be a glutton today, I decided to order the Banana Boat dessert as well. And lastly, to drink, I ordered Hong Kong's famous Milk Tea. Since I was with a friend, I didn't really time the waiting period for the food to arrive. But what they did was they served me the Banana Boat dessert first after the Milk Tea had arrived.

The Banana Boat is of course, an ice cream creation that involves having bananas in them and it's in a boat like glass serving plate. There's 3 scoops of ice cream for Wong Kok's style and what's different in their version is that they use an Oreo biscuit to be the end of 2 sides of the boat. The flavors that were served on the 3 scoops of ice creams are Yam, Chocolate and Vanilla. There's nothing unusual nor out of the ordinary for their version that puts a little pizzazz into it. I also find that they drizzled very little on the chocolate sauce. There's also no whipped cream with cherry on top which are very common on Banana Boats and so it didn't give me a wow factor.

My Fried Rice came when I was in the middle of eating my dessert. LOL. What a funny thing. Eating desserts first. The French Style Fried Rice is basically Ketchup fried rice. How French Style derived into Ketchup is beyond me. I wonder who defined this. Anyway the fried rice was cooked to proper condition and is savory to garner an above average score from me. But due to me disliking ketchup that much, it wasn't really that much of a pleasure to eat it even though I have to admit it being tastefully made. The fried rice consists of three big shrimps at the top of it with some ham in the mixture of the fried rice.

The SetiaWalk branch of Wong Kok Char Chan Teng is a small one compared to the many other branches that they have. It has a lot of wall mirrors which I'm sure it's there to create the impression that it's bigger than it actually is. They surmount to quite a fairly survivable number of customers patronizing the outlet which would ensure their survival for quite a bit, I guess.

Total Wallet Damage:
Since this isn't exactly a lone diner food escapade, I wouldn't mentioned the total. All you need to know is that it incurs 10% service charge and imposes a 6% GST charge. The Fried Rice is RM10.90, milk tea RM3.70 and the banana boat ice cream RM8.50. Fairly reasonable prices.

Final Verdict:
5/10. Though Char Chan Teng has got their name from churning out Hong Kong Style dishes which are pleasing to the public's palate, it just doesn't excite me that much with their never changing menu. But that isn't to say that they're bad or mediocre. Oh no, they actually do create out standard Hong Kong worthy mouthwatering dishes which are above average. So all in all, if you're just wanting some Hong Kong comfort food with the surety of what's there to eat, they can assure you with the same kind of dishes in their menu and their consistency in dishing out above average tasting food no matter which outlet you go to.

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