Salt N Pepper

Anyone of you ever heard of Station 1 Cafe before? For Salt n Pepper, we just get to know about this cafe when it opens its first branch in Kuching sometimes in late 2010. It is located on the lower ground of Hills Shopping Mall, one of the latest shopping malls adjacent to the trendy Pullman Hotel, Kuching. We get to know that this outlet is already the 50th outlet throughout whole Malaysia and is also Malaysia No. 1 Leisure Cafe. Wow!!! 50th outlet and No.1 Leisure Cafe in Malaysia but we just get to know about it now. This shows how outdated we are.

We decided to pay a visit to the cafe and see what it has to offer. Upon glancing through the menu, most of the foods are of western styles such as meat chops, pizza and spaghetti. Since it is our first time trying the foods there, we went for the recommended dishes to gauge the tastiness of its foods. If the recommended foods are just so so, what other to say about the rest of the foods.

Salt ordered the Champion Lamb Chop which is an award winning dish. Meanwhile, Pepper ordered the Chicken Chop which currently they have promotion set till end of January 2011 in conjunction with their opening. For drinks, both of us ordered Yestea because we saw that in the menu a visit to this cafe would be incomplete if one did not taste their signature Yestea.

Here come our foods. Each of the sets comes with coleslaw, wedges and sweet corn.

Chicken Chop

Lamb Chop

yestea

After finished eating, we both agreed that the foods served here are not bad and will come again to explore other dishes. Since this won't be our first and only trip here, we decided to apply for the membership card which cost RM10 valid for 2 years. Instant benefit will be 10% discount of the total bill.


Subsequently, Salt went to Station 1 again to dine with his friends. This time round, Salt ordered the Chicken Maryland. Although there is no recommendation such as with the champion word in front of the dish's menu name as compared to the lamb chop, however it still tastes nice.

Chicken Maryland

As this is a lifestyle cafe, you can hang out here to have a drink, surfing (free-wifi) and chit chatting with friends as well. Not necessary that we can only come during lunch or dinner times.


For more information about Station 1 Cafe, please visit the website http://www.station1.com.my/

Both Salt n Pepper are loyal Maxis subscribers. We happened to find out that currently Maxis is organizing a contest on "Inventing My Own iPad Application for Maxis" and we would like to join in to contribute some ideas.

The year 2010 is about iPad. It has been rated as being one of the hottest gadgets in the tech world currently. Whether you are young or old, you will find that this gadget can fit into your life in some ways either reading, watching movie, surfing, playing games, etc.

Maxis has in fact, already offered us with a number of services from their online Maxis Store.  Wouldn't it be great if some of the existing apps in the Maxis Store plus some new apps can be combined into one (1) single app. If we are given a chance to invent, we will invent an app with a few numbers of apps in it, for example a "4-in-1" app.

As iPad is a lifestyle gadget, we have come out with an idea of a combined single app which will consist some of the lifestyles which we think that are essential and a norm to our day-to-day activities.

Will it be good if we can watch our favourites Hong Kong and / or US TV series on the go? Just subscribe through here and one can watch his / her favourite TV series anytime and anywhere. 

Apart from listening to musics / songs downloaded into the built-in iPod app, it will be nice too if we are able to listen to our favourites local music radio stations such as myFM and hitz.fm directly from the iPad.


With the size and display of the iPad, using it for reading an e-publication will be cool. We can treat the iPad as a physical book, newspaper or magazine and the action of flipping a book, newspaper or magazine can be simulated on it.

 Hmm, what should be the name of this app?  May be we will name it as One Lifestyle......

To access the above mentioned different lifestyles, there are 4 different sub-selections upon initialization of the 'One Lifestyle' app. One good thing about this single combined app is that we think it can eliminate the hassle for users to search highs and lows for different single individual apps that can satisfy their personal day-to-day lifestyles whereas all these can be found readily available in just one single app.

The different sub-selections can also be run simultaneously utilising the iPad multitasking features. For example, you can listen to your favourite radio station while read your favourite novel and meanwhile make use of the home automation to control the air-con, lighting of the room and sound from the TV.


Without a data plan, the above features will not work smoothly. Do drop by a nearest Maxis outlet to check out the current iPad data plans on offer and decide for yourself which one suits you best.  All the data plans come with  a micro-sim card.  There are plans for both prepaid and postpaid users.

Postpaid plan

Prepaid plan

For more info, please visit,
http://www.maxis.com.my/personal/broadband/ipad_postpaid.asp

Recently Salt n Pepper went to H.I.P to have lunch. It is not a hip-hop venue but H.I.P stands for He Is Peace. The location of H.I.P is on the 3rd floor of The Springs, Kuching shopping mall (same floor as MBO Cineplex). I guess The Springs does not need any further introduction about its location and the mall itself. Currently, it is the largest shopping mall in Kuching (for those of you who don't know).

As we are short of time and have a movie show to catch, Salt decided to just went to H.I.P and have a quick lunch so that we can be in time for our movie. This place is famous for its Taiwanese delicacies such as beef noodles, dumpling and Taiwan sausages.

Salt's all time favourite at this shop would be the pork rice. In chinese, it is called '扣肉饭'. So without failing, he ordered this dish.

Pork Rice

Meanwhile Pepper ordered the pan-fried dumplings as she was not very hungry. The dish came in 6 pieces.

Pan-fried Dumpling

Another fact about this shop which some of you might not know / noticed is that it is the second outlet for Ting's Noodles House. The main outlet is located along the row of shops opposite the Grand Continental Hotel at Jalan Ban Hock, Kuching.

It was New Year's Eve. We believe most of everyone have ways of celebrating the last day of the year and Salt n Pepper is no exception. We chose to go to a better dining restaurant to enjoy our last dinner of the year and that place was Bella Italia.

From the name of it, you can know that this is an Italian Restaurant and that most of us would have already know it serves one of the best italian foods in town. The shop is owned by non-locals and I guess the owner should be from Italy. Bella Italia is located at RH Plaza, the block not far away from Four Points Sheraton. One should easily recognise the shop as it is painted in Italy's flag colours.

On this special night, we ordered an appetizer, a soup, 2 main courses and a pizza.

For appetizer, we ordered Bruschetta. For those of you who don't know what is this dish about, it actually is "an appetizer from central Italy whose origin dates to at least the 15th century. It consists of grilled bread rubbed with garlic and topped with extra-virgin olive oil, salt, pepper. Variations may include toppings of spicy red pepper, tomato, vegetables, beans, cured meat, and/or cheese; the most popular recipe outside of Italy involves basil, fresh tomato, garlic and onion or mozzarella" (from Wikipedia).

Bruschetta

Next came the mushroom soup. Guess this dish would not have need any further introduction what it is.

Mushroom Soup

There came our main course dishes which were the Fettuccine Alla Carbonara. Fettuccine is one of the variants in a pasta meals which the pasta is in flat strips which is wider than the normal spaghetti what we know of. The method of cooking was carbonara (i.e. creamy white sauce) cooked with ingredients such as beef bacon, herbs and fresh mushroom.

Fettuccine Alla Carbonara

The next dish being served was Galleto Venetto. From the name of the dish if without giving any further description, would anyone be able to guess what is it? Tip: Refer to photo below.

Galleto Venetto

Anyhow, no prize for guessing correctly :P. This was actually baked boneless chicken breast with fresh mushroom, cheese, tomatoes and herbs topped with spicy pizzaiola sauce.

Last thing to try out at this restaurant would be the italian style pizza which this restaurant is famous with. The obvious difference between the normal pizza that we have at Pizza Hut and over here is the crust which is thin and crunchy like biscuits. Our order of the night was Pinnochio. Remember the Pinnochio story that we always heard during our childhood? Whereby if Pinnochio tells a lie, his nose would grow longer. Not so sure why this pizza is named after this character but for sure one's nose would not grow longer after eating it.

Pinnochio

Wish we could have tried some desserts however upon finishing the above, we were quite full already. Overall, we have had a satisfying meal. Maybe our next trip trip we would just order a pizza and then dessert.


Happy New Year 2011!!!