(Update: This outlet is permanently closed)

A breather from updating about Taiwan! Got a call from C over the weekend while I was still recuperating from staying up late gaming, asking if I could help her paint her house. I find it rather funny, because other girls ask their girlfriends to go out shopping on a weekend. I wouldn’t have it any other way,  though.

C came to pick me up and we had a quick breakfast at a food court nearby. Dish of the day: curry chee cheong fun, ie flat rice noodles swimming in a spicy broth and topped with various fried/boiled items such as fishball, meatball, pig’s skin and fried beancurd.

Got to the apartment, which she rents out. She was planning to rent it out to a new set of tenants so we had to clean up the mess left behind by the previous ones – dirty walls with handprints, double sided sticky tape, nails, etc. My ‘job’ was to help repaint the rooms with a nice fresh coat of white. Sounds easier than it looks, but it was a good workout! Took us a few hours, the prospective tenants came to have a look; then we sat around watching some Chinese DVD on the TV. By then it was already 6pm so we went to hunt for food.

Ended up going for Japanese at Sushi Zanmai in IOI Mall, Puchong. This is my second visit here, and like before, business seemed to be booming, with a queue of patrons waiting to be seated. We got seats fairly quick. C ordered garlic fried rice, which was fragrant but rather tasteless. Like many Malaysians, she peppered it with a mad amount of wasabi lol.

I was in the mood for some cold noodles; so went for the tempura soba. A popular summer dish, these buckwheat noodles are bouncy with an al-dente texture, usually served with a small bowl of soy sauce broth.

This is how you eat it: pour in the spring onion/shredded daikon into your soysauce-y broth, grab some noodles, dunk them in, and slurp them from the bowl. Apparently you are also supposed to slurp all of the strands in one go, and make a loud noise while you’re at it. It’s ‘polite’. 😀 Culture is a strange (and fascinating) thing.

Crispy tempura. The eggplant, long beans and shrimp were not too oily and had sealed its juices on the inside. 

For the finale, we had a Sukiyaki (hotpot) to share. The sweet broth was loaded with vegetables, mushrooms and tofu. We waited for it to boil before adding in the thin slices of beef.

Fresh egg is whipped and used for ‘dipping’. Some might find the idea of eating raw egg with cooked meat weird, but trust me, it’s awesome. The egg gives it a silky smooth texture, and also helps in ‘cooling’ down the piping hot meat.

The meat was just the right thickness to cook quickly, and was well marinated: flavourful, juicy and tender on its own. Possibly one of the better hotpots out there. Although, for someone used to free flow, the few pieces of beef weren’t enough 😛

SUSHI ZANMAI 

G18A, IOI Mall, Batu 9 Jalan Puchong, Bandar Puchong Jaya, 47170 Puchong, Selangor.

Business hours: 10am – 10pm (daily)

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