One Utama Food: ROCKU Yakiniku Japanese Charcoal Grill Restaurant - Smokeless Charcoal BBQ Buffet

What is the first thing that comes to mind about Charcoal based BBQ; the unpleasant feeling of smoke both from the charcoal and the grilled food that engulf your entire body after the meal. But here at ROCKU Yakiniku Japanese Charcoal Grill 1 Utama Shopping Centre located at Lot F355/356/357 1st Floor RainForest No.1 Lebuh Bandar Utama Bandar Utama Petaling Jaya Selangor; they have a special system that will make a barbecue meal; a pleasant dining experience as you will find out later.

As most of us know that Charcoal BBQ Grill is the most authentic and flavourful method to grill ny type of fresh food (if perfectly done) as it will exudes the right balance of smokey taste and aroma to the meat or vegetables. Here at Rocku Yakiniku there is no chimney like structure used to extract the smoke but it is using a vacuum system that sucks out the smoke at the side of the BBQ stove; making it a very pleasant and comfortable way to eat BBQ in the comfort of an air condition environment.

Another specialty in dining at Rocku Yakiniku; is that in the evening from 7pm to 11pm daily; you will be entertained by a Live Singing Performance serenading popular songs while you enjoy barbecuing your meals. The concept of entertainment cum dining experience enables you to dine and wine in a comfortable environment while the enjoying the numbers that are belted out by the singers.

During weekends there are also special Live entertainment happening from 1pm - 4pm; and there are special Magic show performance on Saturday too.

Customers can start out their buffet from the snack bar which has small snack /appetizer type food like squid, jelly fish, Sushi, Udon, Fried Nugget, Fried Rice while waiting for the meat and seafood to be barbecue. 

Others pre cooked food selection include the Kaarage, Tori Hanbaga, Tori Gyoza & Togarasi Potatoes, Chawan mushi and etc.

For the fresh BBQ item, you can ordered either ala-carte or as a platter, we started with the Seafood Platter which consists of Prawns, Squid, Mussels & Scallops. You can also ordered it individually if you have preference for the different type of seafood of your choice.

Next, we ordered the Pork Platter which has Pork Belly, Pork Collar & Pork Bacon. Each individual order comes with 3 pieces of the meat. As it is cut into a very thin slice; it does not take much effort to barbecue these meat to right balance of smoky aroma blended with the natural taste of the meat.

We love the pork bacon as it has that special salty charcoal aroma taste after being put onto the BBQ pit.

For Beef lovers you can order the thinly sliced beef Platter which consists of 

Beef Chuck Tender, Rib-eye and Strip-lion slices.

or try out the special Lamb Shoulder with a special marinade.

You can complement the meat dishes with vegetables like ladies fingers, corn, capsicum, brinjal, enoki, mushroom and more from the salad selection.

For those that loves alcoholic drinks to go along your BBQ, you can also order your favorite  drinks like beers, sake or you can order the ice cream which has a silky smooth texture.

Prices for the BBQ buffet are as above.

ROCKU Yakiniku Japanese Charcoal Grill Restaurant is indeed the perfect get-together barbecue dining for you and your friends to enjoy without getting into a mess after the meal.

Kepong BBQ: CEO BBQ Restaurant - Premium BBQ served on a Platter

BBQ meal is a very popular food among Malaysian; most of the time we like to do our own BBQ; but usually fails miserably as we are not used to the timing to ensure that the food are grilled perfectly with the right smoky taste. AT CEO BBQ you will be served perfectly grilled seafood and delicacies without any hassle; you just sit down and enjoy the freshly grilled seafood and meat served at your table.

With that CEO BBQ @Kepong have invited +BestRestaurant ToEat to taste out some of its special BBQ offering especially its fresh premium BBQ seafood. By the way CEO BBQ is located at 3 & 5, Block E, Jalan Metro Perdana Timur 2, Kepong, Kuala Lumpur and occupies the same premise of 4Get Hotpot. Next to Aeon Big (Carrefour) - Kepong (behind the open air food court).

We started our review with the French Brown Crab (a.k.a Lazy Crab) (market price) but you have to pre-ordered it one day in advance to savour this fresh live French Crab. We were fortunate to get to taste a live French Crab as most of the time this crab is imported as a frozen one which sorely lose it firmness and taste.

Why it is called a lazy crab; this crab is inactive most of the time, even you put something in between its claw, it will not clamp it. You can just take it up turn it upside down and it will not make any movement much like a death crab.

For this crab, it will be put straight to the grillers; it may sound a little cruel and torturing to cook a live crab, but Chef Yeoh assures us that this is the best method to grill it to ensure the firmness and texture of the meat while encapsulating all the natural juices in the meat. We just love the feel, the texture, the taste and flavours of this crab dish.

But the best part to eating the French Brown Crab; is in its roe; This crab is famous for the quality and quantity of the crab roe that every crab has.

Watch the Crab on Flambe Mode.

Next, we had the the oysters in sea salt, large scallop with cheddar and mayonnaise sauce, giant scallop on chilli cheese sauce, and mussels platters. The prices will be based on market price.

The BBQ Giant Scallop (RM25.00) up close with special Chilli cheese sauce. Great succulent and bouncy texture.

Next, is our platter of New Zealand Lamb meat; with a 3 piece set Lamb Cutlet (RM 28.00) and the 2 set of Lamb Chop (each set of Lamb Chop at RM 20.00) cut into bites size for easy eating pleasure. The Lamb meat was juicy with a soft firm texture and has no gamey smell. Accompanying the lamb is the special mint sauce and BBQ sauce to goes with this meat dish.

Our next platter of BBQ Squid (RM20.00), BBQ Pork Ribs (RM35.00) and BBQ Smoked Duck (RM20.00). The Squid has a nice bouncy texture and was sprinkled with the right balance of sauce to fully enhance the flavours of the squid. On the other hand, we love the BBQ Pork Ribs, which has a special BBQ Char Siew sauce added to it before being grilled. The meat was moist and texture was just right to give us some pulling effect which we like; unlike some BBQ ribs, which has its meat easily fallen out and with soft texture.

This is the Live Fresh Water Prawns minutes before going into the grillers.

Our last platter served to us is the Prawns Platter with the Jumbo Fresh Water Prawn (market price) taking the centre stage with BBQ Prawn Extra Large (set of 4 - RM55.00) in 2 flavour i.e. the Original and the Soya based sauce. For me, I prefer the original taste as you can really taste the texture and the natural flavours of the prawns.

Our final BBQ for the night is the Bacon Enoki (RM5.00 per skewers). Love the texture and the taste. You can taste the smoked salty bacon flavour mix into the Enoki mushroom.

So, there you have it, our super delicious seafood BBQ dinner at CEO BBQ @Kepong, Kuala Lumpur. Make a date with Chief Griller Mr. Yeoh to enjoy this delicacies.

Thai Syok Thai Restaurant Yakitori Sunway Mentari - A simple restaurant that serves real authentic Thai Food

If you are on a budget and loves to taste Authentic Thai Cuisine, then this review will be of great interest to you. Best Restaurant To Eat was invited to try out the newly open Thai Syok Thai Food Restaurant located at 15, Jalan PJS 8/18, Dataran Mentari, Sunway Mentari, Bandar Sunway, Selangor.

The decor and setup at Thai Syok Thai Restaurant Yakitori is a no frill, simple setup; on entry to the restaurant you will be greeted and welcomed by 2 special Thai figurine.

The chef in Thai Syok are all Thai's, so our expectation are sky high on the quality and taste of the food served from the restaurant.

Our review started with the Papaya Salad (RM10.50). This salad has a spicy and sourish taste. With the combination of toasted peanuts, shredded raw papaya, it was a nice appetizer to kick off our food review.

This is then followed by the Seafood Tom Yum Kung (Medium) RM24.30. It is loaded with a combination of seafood like prawns, squids, mussel, mushroom and more. But, what is more important was the potent concoction of this Tom Yum; which has a distinctive strong taste; of which you could easily get choked. The chef uses a special in-house made Tom Yum paste with the right amount of bunga kantan and lemongrass. The soup was very addictive as we can't stop slurping it spoonful after spoonful.

For the mains, we had another Chef specialty dish which is the Fried Tom Yum Fish. At Thai Syok, you can choose the type of fish that you like i,e Grouper, Tilapia or Barramundi; for us it was the Red Tilapia (prices for the fish is based on type of fish and weight). Fried to a bright yellow crunchy crisp and then topped with the appetizing special Tom Yum sauce laden with generous amount of cut Bunga Kantan; the entire dish was very aromatic and fragrantful. This is another dish that goes pretty well with the white rice. We finish this dish right to the last drop of sauce.

At this Thai Syok outlet, the owner is introducing some special skewers or Thai yakitori to its menu.  We had the Yakitori Combo (RM24.00) and only available for dinner. The main difference between the Thai and the Japanese Yakitori will be the Japanese usually does not premarinate its meat before being grilled, while its Thai counterpart will be marinated in special sauces. This makes the flavours of the marinate penetrate to the meat. In our combo set we had a skewer of pork neck, pork belly, pandan leaf chicken, basil minced meat with lemongrass, king prawns on tom yum paste and chicken wings.

The next dish is the Deep Fried Pork Knuckle (RM58.20). According to the owner, the pork knuckle are first pre cooked in a special broth, both to soften the texture and immerse it with the fragrant aroma of the broth. Before serving, it is then fried to a crisp; so that you can really taste the crackling skin while enjoying the juicy sweet flavour of the meat. Another dish that gets our thumbs up.

After that we had the soon to be released BBQ Lamb Chop. The pre marinated lamb chop are then grilled to the right charred while the meat still retains its juiciness and succulence. 

For vegetables, we had the Wok Fried Asparagus with Shrimps (RM24.30). We love the crunchy texture of the young asparagus and was a nice vegetable to accompany our other dishes. 

For desserts, we can't leave without trying out my favourite Thai Mango With Sweet Glutinous Rice. This dessert must be eaten fairly quickly as the glutinous rice tends to dry up quite fast; thereby having a hard texture toward the end. It was nicely decorated with the mango surrounding the Glutinous rice and the coconut sauce.

and the second dessert was the Ice Blended Red Rubies With Jack Fruit and Coconut Syrup to close off our dinner. The difference with the ice blended compare with the crush ice version, is that it is much finer, blended well with the coconut syrup and smoother to drink. We like this too.

As most people will know that Dataran Sunway Mentari is famous for steamboat, but you will never expect such good quality and reasonably price Thai Food from this area and certainly Thai Syok Thai Restaurant Yakitori  have proven their capability to dish out such a cuisine.

Set Lunch @Ri Yakitori St Giles The Gardens Hotel Mid Valley - Special Kozara Ryori Lunch Set Review

Dining the Kozara Japanese style is a form of art and passion where dishes are served in small portion with a combination of different taste to savour your taste buds. With that +BestRestaurant ToEat was invited to Ri Yakitori located at 7th Floor St Giles The Gardens Hotel Mid Valley to savour the latest Kozara Ryori Lunch set.

The lunch set is an array of 7 core dishes which includes an appetizer, salad, mains, rice set and dessert. Kozara which literally means small plates dish in Japanese will set the theme for this lunch review. All the dishes are served in small portions to enable one to savour all the different taste from each of these serving.

We started off our Kozara Lunch with an appetizer which is a Trio Japanese Platter; which has 3 dishes; the first of which is the Sakura Ebi Dashimaki, Chinese Cabbage With Chicken Roll and Tomato Mozzarella. The Sakura Ebi Dashimaki is a soft texture Japanese omelette, followed by the special chicken rolled in Chinese cabbage while the third has some European influence from the combination of cube mozzarella cheese with a cherry tomato on a skewer. 

Next, is a marriage of a western salad with fresh sashimi, The sashimi will be a chef selection of either 2 fresh fish/seafood combination of maguro (tuna), salmon and tako (octopus). It is topped with a special mayo sauce with ebiko bedded on fresh green salad.

The next is the Chawanmushi and Rice Set. The chef uses mushroom and crabstick as the main ingredient for his Chawanmushi while the steam white Japanese rice is topped with Edamame and Pickles. The soup that was served to us was the Osumashi soup.

This is then followed by the artistically decorated Braised Radish with Saba Fish. We love the radish that was pre-cooked and then added in with the specially prepared dashi broth and served with a fried Saba fish to give us a crunchy texture which is topped with a layer of chef prepared sauce. 

The main dish is the Chicken Sautéed which is served with a combination of chicken winglet, thigh and breast served with broccoli and cauliflower. The breast meat was surprisingly not too tough which we found out that it was pre-steam with leek and sake before being pan-fried. The end result is that, you would be able to taste the sake, in the tender breast meat.

There are 3 in-housemade dipping sauces to accompany the Sauteed Chicken which is the Shibazuke (sweet), Yakiniku (sour) and sesame salt (saltish). 

Finally the the desert we had was another trio delights which is the matcha mochi with honey, followed by the moist chocolate mousse, and the sourish fruit compote of strawberry, kiwi and orange juice. 

We were really delighted with this light Japanese cuisine which is priced at a special introductory price of RM 78 nett per set for a limited time. This promotional set lunch is available on every Friday from 12noon - 2pm, from 16 Oct 2015 onwards.

Ri Yakitori Bar is opens from Monday – Saturday at 5.00 pm till 1.00 am and closed on Sundays. The menu is available for orders up to 11.00 pm daily. Read more about our earlier Yakitori Review at RiYakitori Bar. To make a reservation or for further inquiries, please call Ri-Yakitori Bar at 03 2268 1188 (ext. 6323) or log-on to: www.StGiles.com