Black Canyon Coffee

The Food Street of Southmall smells laggard in terms of filling in the restaurant spaces along this new wing. With only limited choices, we find ourselves  dining in the same restos.

Black Canyon Coffee is one of them. It is so much more than a coffee shop. It serves Thai cuisine but again not limited to. I browsed over the menu and found it very extensive. From soup to salad to sandwiches to pastas to rice plates to cakes to many other dishes. It's so easy to forget that you are in a coffee shop. I only dined here twice. This was the second.


 

The first time was a month or two ago with my Sydney based girlfriend who loves Thai cuisine. I had a plate of  phad Thai which I liked and a rice plate with spicy shrimp for my friend. Both of us got tall glasses of   fraps. I think mine was chocolate something.  We weren't disappointed..

... So when daughters nudged me to bring them in, I was easy.


 
My girls went straight ordering each a glass of fraps.One got black hazelnut frappe and the other one got black crunch frappe. Both were almost done when their main dishes were served.

green curry stir-fried rice with tuna stuffed in omelette. I was not that keen yet on eating so I thought I would play and try. I got interested with this looong named dish. Nor I'm fond of green curry. I just thought this must be interesting. Looked like it but then I consumed no more than 3 spoonfuls and was done. The tuna tasted nothing fancier than the canned ones. The whole dish was real spicy. I was longing for some detour taste, like a dash of sweetness and a bit of sourness. Perhaps I was just being biased cos before that day I had a Japanese or was it Korean? rice omelet too with seafood on it, topped with mayo dressing which I loved so much.


 

fried prawn with tamarind sauce. This plate was my daughter's. She just ordered a plate of plain rice with it. I got to eat some pieces myself. Breaded prawns were good but the sweet tamarind sauce was kindah new to us. It's the sweet and sour of the Chinese cuisine with a kick of sourness of tamarind.


 
fried fish with kotsu fried rice. This was a hit to my other daughter. She had the plate clean slate  in less than 20 minutes. She always loves fish fillet that's why.

I guess my older daughter enjoyed our meal here, so much so that the following weekend..



... she had her date here with her bestfriend.


 

And guess what they ate --> the fried fish with kotsu fried rice.



For fraps they got cookie & cream frappe and chocolate frappe. good thing beverages here are relatively more affordable than other more popular coffee shop in the metro.

Sedap Corner

For decades, Mi goreng from Indonesia used to reign our table when the residents were struck with craving for  instant super spicy noodles. Used to, cos now we have a new favorite instant noodle at home. The one from Korea.



Anyway going back to " mi goreng" being a product of Indonesia, you would have thought that it was just appropriate that I should have had first tasted the "un-instant" version of it in Indonesia, where else??. But no! I had a plate of it at Johor Bahru, Malaysia. haha.



I was so ready to just "pizza hut" but brother and bff saw an outlet in the mall which was serving local Malay dishes. We were at City Square, a mall at JB where relatively most familiar international fast food chains can be found. But enough of Kenny Roger's, J. Co, Starbucks,etc., My travel buddies pushed me to sit on a chair in Sedap Corner.

But since this was just another fast food outlet in a mall, we cut ourselves from expecting for authentic flavors of the dishes. When we randomly walked-in, we had no idea that Sedap Corner has been in the culinary market since the late 80's and was actually quite popular in the region and beyond.

When you least expecting it, your expectation tends to be met easily. From zero, no other number to get down to. So, my carnivore of a brother had "beef rendang". I actually stopped counting how often he had ordered this dish, during that particular Singapore-Malaysia trip. I think, wherever/whenever it's available, he had this.

At Sedap Corner, it actually came as meal with rice, some veggies vinaigrette and a handful of "kropek" . Well, no need to ask brother how was it cos all beef rendang, he likes.

nasi goreng kampung

nasi goreng too. Two platters of nasi goreng kampung were ordered by the two girls.

Me ofcourse_ordered...

.. mi goreng, whatelse! Fried mee siam. Too spicy I didn't finish it and shared the plate to the group. I kindah like the instant pack version better, haha.

For desserts, I'm now quite confuse which one we got from this dessert outlet across Sedap Corner. But on the table we got the following :



bubur cha cha. It was quite like our local "guinatan halo halo". And just now I realized I already have a post about this dessert here.



 Including other desserts and coolers we had could be seen in that post also.

 

Banapple

Me and my girls are loving the new wing of Alabang Town Center. It got lots of restaurant outlets that are yet rarely found in the South, which most of them have already been around the metro for quite sometime. You know, #suburbs_ we're a tad late here. For this particular weekend, we had our eyes at Banapple. We had passed by it many times  and always jam packed inside. We're not  fans of queue and overcrowded diners, but we almost had tried every outlet there at the new wing and Banapple was still full. We decided to try it anyway and not bad in a minute we were offered a table.

The only table left was in the middle, which we hated..

The interior thu' limited in space, was nice with its homey-country design.

Younger daughter wasn't so happy about the long wait for the food we ordered.



So when the food came.. she quickly took the utensil and started her dish..haha.

chicken breast parmigiano. We were not yet familiar with the menu, and just ordered what initially took our fancy. This was my youngest's. I had a spoonful taste of it and it was yummy. The sauce was particularly tasty and I bet would be perfect to top on any pasta but quite well with the chicken and rice too. The buttered carrots were left untouched.

bacon fried chicken steaks with milk'sroom gravy. This plate was the older sister's. I also tasted it but by now have no recollection of it. I just remember, daughter hadn't finished it and seemed to have regret for choosing this dish.



asian sunshine salad. This was my plate. The dressing I didn't like. It was honey sesame oil. I don't know, some variants of sesame dressings are my favorites. Theirs_ not my type.

Ordinarily, a plate of green salad like this would be enough to fill me up on lunch or dinner. It's already a whole meal to me and would just indulge on desserts. But this particular salad plate failed me. I didn't finish it. Aside from the salad dressing I hated, I didn't like the wonton skin toppings. It ruined the freshness of the greens.



fudgymudgymud pie. Cos the name was so catchy, the girls ordered this but  failed to finish too. The slice was huge for this rich creamy pie to finish in one sitting..



cherry chocolate truffle cheesecake. I love anything with cherry and this I shared witht he girls but neither finished this too. Everything here was big serving for our preferred portion.



When cheese pie craving hits us next, maybe we'll go at Banapple to grab a slice or a box of their pastries, but maybe we'll skip their main dishes.