Monday, June 26, 2017

Cocotei Tokyo Japanese Cuisine


I ran out of idea of where to have Japanese food in creative manner so I randomly posted in Facebook and one of my friends replied to my post that she recommends Cocotei. Then I googled Cocotei and found out that this restaurant has quite tasty fine dining Japanese food but many facebook reviewers mentioned that they had to wait for almost 1-2 hours for their food. I was so worried about that so Jonathan quickly called in on 24/6 morning to make a reservation. We then rushed there and reached late at almost 1 pm. It is actually located in the open area of Holiday Inn Express KL.



The ambience is as sophisticated as described by the bloggers. There are different type of setting like indoor setting, bar tables, and also the circular round tables inside.





There are also tatami seating facing the Japanese garden.




There are also private dinner rooms with 4 different seasons as the wallpaper.


Every private room has glass roof top that shows KL skyscrapers.






Attention to detail is given by the owner even to the extent of the famous broccoli decoration at the tatami area and also slippers for the guests.





Event the washrooms are work of art!



Initially, before coming, I thought that the price of every set is at least RM 54 - 80 and above. Luckily we came at lunch time and there was thankfully, special lunch sets at below prices. I like the set lunch here because there is so much freedom in choosing the menu items whereby we are spoilt for choice. Each set also comes with rice, miso soup, chawanmushi and pickles.

RM 33 : A + A
RM 36 : A + B, B + B
RM 39 : A + C, B + C, or C + C


Appetizer 

The appetizer of the day were seaweed with some sesame seeds. The pickled octopus was simply incredible!



Unagi Kabayaki

I have always had Unagi craving for a long time and finally I fulfilled my craving with this huge piece of Unagi that simply screamed happiness. It was so slippery and soft and the meat was thick as well.



Sashimi Moriawase 

I always shout aloud that I can never get fed up of sashimi and I mean it! Duh! The sashimi consisting of 2 pieces of salmon, 1 maguro, 1 butterfish and etc are all very thick and fresh. In fact, they are such big size that I needed to cut them into half before eating!



Ebi Tempura 

We all love prawns and thought of just ordering ebi tempura since the mixed vegetable and 2 Ebi tempura cost the same anyway. The tempura batter is beautifully fried and not over fried till brownish.



Spider Maki 

The soft shell crab maki is one of the best I have ever eaten as the crab is just super crispy. They are very generous with the portion and inserted the entire crab inside compared to places like Sakae Sushi or Sushi King which has mostly mayonaise. Mind you, just 1 soft shell crab ala-carte cost RM 35 here but even that, you are assured of the quality.




Chawanmushi 

Chawanmushi is included in all the set lunches. Even if not, I have read bloggers ordering this to eat which must have been so tasty to be ordered ala-carte. It has a lot of ingredients like tender chicken meat, 1 gingko nut, fishcake, mushroom and even prawn! Wow so far, I have never had set chawanmushi with prawn inside!



Beef Shogayaki 

The light stir-fried beef with ginger sauce was just incredible. The beef doesn't have the beefy smell and thinly sliced. It is not cooked with too much seasoning that covers the original taste.



Salad 

The supervisor was so kind to change my white rice to a healthy salad with cherry tomatoes, something most people won't do and would just not serve you the rice without any replacement.


Hotate Butteryaki 

These scallops are so huge and very well worth the price paid. In fact, they were so huge that I need to cut it into half before eating. I also liked the sensitivity of the chef who took the initiative to sliced out the scallops from the shell which otherwise would cause us to waste a lot of sides if we were to take it out ourselves. The hotate is simply juicy, succulent and simply amazing.



Ice-Cream 

We can get any of their amazing ice-cream by just topping up RM 4 to the set lunch.

The Black sesame ice-cream is just superb as the bits of black sesame can be literally felt and seen unlike those mall ones whereby they are just spots.


Wasabi ice-cream is my personal favourite. Beware of the spice inside but if you are ok with that, the spice beautifully comes well together with the coldness of the ice-cream and the natural sweetness of red bean.



Mochi 

The mochi is a traditional type of mochi with very smooth peanut shavings on top. Too bad we finished our ice-cream by the time this arrived warm.



Pictures of the Happy Birthday Girl





Childish Fun





Details:
Add: No.84, Ground Floor, Annex, Jalan Raja Chulan, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Tel: 03 2164 5265






Saturday, June 24, 2017

Marco Creative Cuisine




Recently, a few months ago, I saw a few bloggers posting about the affordable fine dining in this restaurant here. So I guess I got bought into the post and decided to bring Jonathan here for his birthday lunch on 23.06.2017

Marco Creative Cuisine is located on the ground floor of 1 Utama Shopping Centre (Old Wing) opposite Pappa Rich and Pasta Zanmai and beside Royce chocolate shop. The main attraction point is an aquarium with real blue jellyfish swimming inside. In fact, many customers especially children are attracted to the jellyfish too.



The restaurant looks very casual. Jonathan said it looks like many women like to frequent this place because of the tiffany blue seats. There are quite a number of customers for a weekday, perhaps due to the Special Lunch 3 course meal at RM 48 only. We had the Journey of Flavours multi-course meal at RM 78, which is a very affordable price for fine dining of this quality. We can choose the 3rd course onwards ourselves.



Palate Cleanser - Velvety Matcha Lime Shooter 

The boss of Marco personally served this to us which is actually cold lime sorbet with foam on top. The bottom is very sour lime sorbet which awakens our senses with its sourness.





Appetiser - Savoury Eclair 

I fell in love with the crispy and airy Gruyere Flavoured Pate a Choux topped with creamy Aubergine Caviar, Green Chile Pesto and Tomato Confit shaped like a pretzel. I really enjoy eating the crispy Choux. To prevent the pastry from breaking into pieces, we ate this with our hands. 




Soup 

For soup, there were choices of Strawberry Gazpacho, French Onion Soup and Truffled Mushroom Soup. 



Strawberry Gazpacho 

We rarely have cold soup and some find this weird. The soup to me, tasted like ice-blended strawberry. It is actually chilled cold soup of Spanish strawberries garnished with dehydrated strawberries and peppermint. Jonathan didn't like this much as he is not accustomed to cold soup.


Truffled Mushroom Soup 

This a plant-based creamy mushroom soup infused with truffle oil. The soup has golden mushroom and shimeji and very flavoursome.


Entree 

Ratatouille 

This is a mosaic of thinly sliced and vibrant coloured vegetables, which are mostly zucchini sauced with piperade. I felt it was more of tomato-based sauce and a bit too sample for fine dining.




Savoury Ice-Cream Salad 

This is one of the more artistic looking entrees whereby assorted baby leaves, heirloom tomato, seasonal microgreens and violet flowers forms a circle with sea-salt ice-cream. The ice-cream is also too creamy and milky for my liking.







Duck Breast with Orange Puree and Roasted Beetroot 

The duck breast is just amazing and the star item, I believe. The pekin duck breast sous vide to medium doneness with orange puree, beetroot and the winning item is the valrhona  dark chocolate sauce and is very juicy and succulent.



Salmon with Jet Black Hollandaise 

The salmon is juicy whereas the skin is just nice and the meat is luckily not too coarse and dry. The salmon goes well with pesto sauce as well. The squid ink jet black hollandaise is a bit too gross for me and I despise it.



Desserts 

Deconstructed Lemon Meringue Pie 

The deconstructed lemon meringue pie is technically plated with elements of lemon curd, passion fruit gel, Italian meringue and white chocolate sherbet. The lemon curd and passion fruit gel were quite tasty.






Texture of Chocolate

These are dark and white Varlhona chocolates in various form, accompanied by Raspberry gel, dehydrated olives and cayenne pepper. The chocolate wafers are quite sweet too. There is some tofu like thingy that's not even tofu and tastes good with the chocolate and raspberry sauce.



Birthday Surprise Song for Jonathan





Single Origin, French Press Coffee 

The coffee is quite thick and strong and better than normal Americano.




Raspberry Mocktail 

The mocktail is served in steel tin-like mug. The raspberry is also quite sweet.










After all the fine dining, Jonathan said he was not full enough and went to Little Fat Duck to buy Spaghetti Bolognaise. 


 Details:
Add: Lot G146, Ground Floor (Old Wing), 1Utama Shopping Centre, 47800 PJ, Selangor, Malaysia, 47800 Petaling Jaya, Selangor, Malaysia
Tel: +60 3-7731 8923