Chef Nic is a slight man with a calm demeanour, prone to sudden bursts of enthusiasm about his food. His restaurant, Embrasse tucked on Drummond Street is a little like him. An oasis of white tables, intimate and unpretentious. A place where you feel you might get to eat some great food and unwind.

It was a wet and misty morning as we drove up to meet up with the other bloggers for a little road trip to a free-range chicken farm. I was excited to see what happy chickens looked like…and I also was interested to see the whole process of raising a chicken in a healthy manner.

These days we hardly know where our food comes from…meat is bought in neat little packages and we haven’t a clue how the meat is treated before landing in that Styrofoam container. Therefore going to an actual farm intrigued me.


Cock-a-doodle-doo! A happy handsome chicken indeed

We arrived in Kuala Lipis and then had to switch from our car into a 4-wheel drive just to make it safely through the slippery mud filled slopes. This ride made me feel like an adventurer, roaming out into the wild slipping and sliding all over the path as the rain trickled down. To be honest it was a bit scary too as it always felt like the car wasn’t really gripping…  Continue reading »

Hot on a trail for Nyonya laksa, my crew and I found ourselves in Melaka last Friday. Now if KL seemed like the inside of an oven recently, Melaka was that oven cranked up to the highest setting. Whew! Was it hot, hot, hot. Our gracious host for the day was Mrs. Ee Yong Neo (yes from the same talented family as the now infamous Baba Ee). She used to run a popular coffeeshop serving nasi lemak, nyonya laksa and economy rice. Nowadays, she relaxes with her two dogs, a rather excitable terrier pup and a more laid-back Shih-Tzu. Man, I have no idea how furry creatures can survive in this sweltering heat.

The front of her house still has long tables and chairs from her coffeeshop days. She was all set with the ingredients when we got there. It appears that Melaka Nyonya laksa also has quite a number of ingredients and the only one I've seen so far that uses candlenuts though I daresay the Northern version probably dabbles in it too.

We were at the Obama Magic KL event in PJ Hilton earlier this month. Roger Fisk was in town for a couple of days to anchor the conference brought by ADOI's Marketing Magazine. Who is he? He's Barack Obama's (ex) National Special Events Director, hired to supervise campaign teams in about 32 states during Obama's presidential campaign. Besides giving great insights into how he managed the ground campaigns, Fisk shared his experience in gaining campaign support using New Media which he considers an important element to the success of the campaign.

Yes... she's the only Malaysian to be short-listed for the Best Job in the World. So what is the Best Job in the World? Pretty much being the Caretaker of the Islands of the Great Barrier Reef. Yes, white sandy beaches, exploring the islands of the Great Barrier Reef- below and above water and then finding ingenious ways of promoting it via blogging, videos and photos. And if that doesn't sound like paradise you get generously paid for it!

One of the highlights of the Asian Culinary Forum was meeting Madhur Jaffrey and Martin Yan. Madhur, who I think is the funkiest dame of food writing (she was wearing a sort of leather/PVC tights while giving the inaugural speech at the first ever Asian Culinary Forum), is full of anecdotes and information.


This is ASIA

She's been to the spice islands of Banda, Ternate and Tidore. On the twin volcanic island of Ternate, with the BBC crew as she was talking on camera backing the sea, when she noticed smoke coming out of the volcano. Turning the camera crew around, they filmed a small eruption, "so being a food writer is exciting," she said. During lunch I approached her with a book to sign. The lady I was behind had a whole stack of her Indian cookery books. There was one of her in a sexy sari sprawled behind dishes of exotic Indian cooking. Cool. The girl beside me with a newly bought biography of hers waiting for a signature whispered to me. "She's really famous…  Continue reading »

A trip to New York would not be complete without hooking up with the guys responsible for the New York Food Film Festival. Afterall they screened our 'Sloppy' and then gave us the Award for Best Super Short. Amazing how months after winning it, we still get a warm inner glow thinking about that especially when stroking the 'Silver Spoon'.

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