Salt N Pepper

Anyone of you ever heard of Top Hill Kitchen? First thing that comes to mind would be the restaurant is located on top of a hill... :P..  Well, the actual location of the restaurant is indeed nearby a hill. If you are a local, you would have known where is SRB Chung Hua No. 1. The shop is just at the corner lot of a block of shop located beside the foothill of SRB Chung Hua No. 1.

This is our first visit to the restaurant. We have been driving past it quite often but somehow never gone in to try but on this particular Saturday's afternoon, we paid a visit. When we reached, the shop is almost empty with only one table occupied by a couple. Not a good sign though.. :P However since we have reached and couldn't really think of another eating place if we were to switch location, we just went in.

We were served immediately and the waiter passed to us a Set Menu's menu. First thing we checked out was the pricing and the meals are priced reasonably. Secondly, we checked out what are on offer.


Salt ordered the Deep-fried Chicken Cube with Marmite Sauce and Rice. The plate used to serve the set menu is big but not the portion. It also comes with a piece of keropok (cracker) and fried egg.

Deep-fried Chicken Cube with Marmite Sauce and Rice

Pepper ordered the Deep-fried Prawns Meat with Salted Egg Sauce and Rice. Same serving style.

Deep-fried Prawns Meat with Salted Egg Sauce and Rice

Halfway eating, Salt felt like ordering another side dish and asked the waitress for the main menu, which is another menu that shows all the available dishes from appetizers to desserts. After browsing through, he ordered the small sized Oyster Omelette (beside small, there are medium and large size too). When the dish was served, we were surprised by the size as it didn't look small enough to what we thought and the price is only RM8. It is quite worth it.

Oyster Omelette

Drop by and have a try yourself at this restaurant.

Recently during one of our weekend lunches, we went to try out a new dining outlet which is located inside our most happening shopping mall in Kuching, the Spring. The dining outlet is opened not long ago, if not mistaken only a few months back.

It serves taiwanese cuisines so if you happened to be a fan of taiwanese foods, can consider giving it a try. The name of the shop? It is called Xian Ding Wei, which is the pinyin for the shop's name in chinese characters 鲜定味.

We glanced through the menu outside the waiting area before entering the restaurant to have a rough idea what is served and the pricing. But judging from the appearance and decoration of the restaurant, it seemed quite high class so the pricing one can guess that it is more or less reflected by that.


There are quite a large selection of dishes to order from but we decided to just give the set menu a try first as it is served with soup and appetizers. We too have trouble choosing which set menu to order as there are around 20 plus set menu to choose from. In the end, we ordered the menu with the recommended sign.

Side Dish of the Day

Salt ordered the Deep Fried Pork Chop Marinated with Wine's Grain. He was curious about the taste of wine's grain so give it a try. When the meal was served, both of us smelled something of strong odor, something smelly!!! Anyhow, the meal was served and Salt made his own decision to order this dish, there was no other choices but just to eat it. However upon eating the first piece into the mouth, it tasted not that bad. The smell was gone, directly opposite as when before it was in the mouth. This reminds me of stinky tofu (smelly beancurd), another popular delicacy found in places like Hong Kong which has this characteristic, smells bad but tastes nice.

Deep Fried Pork Chop Marinated with Wine's Grain

Meanwhile, Pepper ordered the Taiwanese Supreme Chicken in 3 variety of sauces (三杯鸡). It smelled nice and the meal was served in a claypot. This dish is one of the highly recommended and signature dish. As the name suggests, the dish is cooked using three (3) different kinds of sauces. To the exact details, we have no idea what are those sauces.

Taiwanese Supreme Chicken in 3 variety of sauces

This restaurant is not only available in Kuching but also available at Penang and KL. Do drop by if you happen to come across one around you. The place is not really only for heavy meals but you can try out their varieties of desserts and drinks as well.

It has been a while since our last post. Sorry folks for the dormancy. Although Chinese Lunar New Year celebration has just officially ended on 17.02.2011 (i.e. Chap Goh Meh), Salt n Pepper would still like to take this opportunity to wish all our readers a Belated Happy Chinese New Year and Gong Xi Fatt Chai.

Recently during the CNY holidays, we went to have one of our lunches at Imperial Duck Restaurant. Coincidentally, the day we went was also their first business day of the lunar new year. We have had this opportunity to witness the lion dance show as the 'taukeh' (i.e. owner) of the restaurant invited the lion dance troupe to perform as this would bring about an auspicious beginning for the year.

A short video clip of the lion dance show.


Let's move on to the foods here. As the name suggests, the signature dish here would arguably be the roasted duck. If not mistaken, there are three (3) different methods of serving styles but we could only remembered two (2) so far as we only ordered these two (2) before. The two (2) are Roasted Duck in Hong Kong Style and Roasted Duck in  Mango Sauce.

Roasted Duck in Hong Kong Style

Roasted Duck in Mango Sauce

Although the roasted duck is their signature dish, we think that the roasted pork served here is also one of the best in town. This dish without having any difficulties easily became our most favourite order. However, the percentage of we managed to order it is not high as it always run out of stock. So the tip is to reach early (best is before 12.30pm) in order to have a taste on this dish.

If you order specifically just the roast pork, the way they served and cut it is in big and thick piece with nine (9) pieces per plate. There is also wasabi sauce served as condiment for this dish.

Roasted Pork

If you are ordering a combination of roasted duck meat and roasted pork, the roasted pork is cut in thinner slices.

Combination of Roasted Duck and Pork

Salt especially likes the fried rice here. There are two types namely Yong Chow Fried Rice and Imperial Duck Fried Rice which both are as nice. Yong Chow Fried Rice would need no further introduction but the Imperial Duck Fried Rice contains some special ingredients such as small piece of duck meat, salted egg yolk and anchovy.

Yong Chow Fried Rice

 There are also other meats and vegetables dishes on the menu but we have yet to tried all of them.

Pork Rib With Pepper & Salt

Kailan with Oyster Sauce

Apart from foods, they do serve dim sum as well. Overall, it is a nice eating place and is also one of our favourites eating places. The restaurant is located along the row of shop houses that housed the infamous Lok Thien Restaurant. For those of you who do not know, Imperial Duck Restaurant's owner is also the same owner of Lok Thien Restaurant. Maybe that's one of the reasons the restaurant is located nearby with Lok Thien.

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