Continuing our adventures in London, we were at Koya for dinner after our meal at Gary Rhodes. Koya is well-known for its handmade udon noodles – a rarity in the UK. This little cafe-like establishment even made London’s top 100 restaurants! There is nothing 5 star about the deco or the service – the proof of the pudding is all in the handmade noodle.
As we were a party of 8, they had thought it appropriate to squeeze us into a table for 6. With a little organisation we could’ve been seated more comfortably – bacon was squeezed in a corner and could not move a muscle all throughout the meal. I had to balance my handbag between me & bacon, as there was just NO SPACE LEFT. There was a queue forming outside, but on the inside the service was most definately subpar. We waited ages for the sake to arrive, after all other drinks had already arrived. Orders were taken as soon as we’re ready, so I guess that’s not that bad.
The starters are pretty inventive -
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Fish & chips/ battered cod served with thinly sliced deepfried renkon/lotus root £ 7.50.
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Smoked duck breast – think this was ellefie’s – And yeah, they did not even bother wiping the mustard smear off the plate.
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Vinegered mackerel – which was what I had. Deelish, but why soooooo tiny for £5.50?!?
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My lonely tempura prawn udon
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ellefie‘s vegetarian tempura cold udon with hot broth – looks better, at least there is more than ONE item!
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Bacon’s gyu udon – thinly sliced beef with ginger & spring onion broth. I think his is the best amongst the lot – yummy, even though it is pretty simple. The flavours of beef, spring onions & ginger was lovely.
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Kelvin’s chicken udon.
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KJ’s kinoko (mushrooms) udon with walnut miso – the walnut miso is pretty special taste-wise.
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The quality of the noodles were indeed superb, but that was all there is – the dashi in mine was pretty watered down and tasteless. Tempura batter was ok – but I found myself having to fish out the batter bits as I was otherwise only eating noodles in a weak broth. Portions are minute, my starter looks like a hors d’ouveres and my main dish looks like a starter. It’s pretty expensive for what it is – if my noodles came with 3 prawns (or even TWO!) , I wouldn’t mind paying £9 for it. But for it to just come with one measly tempura prawn – that just broke my heart. The service is ok if it was a cafe – but most definately not worth the service charge they levied on our bill as they masquerade as a 5-starred establishment.
Would I go again? Hm. Probably not by choice. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed the fresh noodles. I would still encourage you to go and try the noodles, just once if nothing else to see that udon noodles are not the usual stringy noodles that is served in noodle bars. But Koya had left me very disillusioned about their grasp of basic Japanese flavour combinations of mirin, soy sauce, sugar & dashi. There are ingenious spark here and there (i.e. walnut miso & renkon chips) but maybe I was just too upset with my lonely tempura prawn…drowning in a bowl of underflavoured dashi. Maybe I have been spoilt as I had tasted one of the best during my visit to David Chang’s momofuku, but I would say that Koya is miles better than other noodle joints that I have been to in the UK – just, not the very best there is. Koya have been the toast of London town since opening their doors earlier in the year, and I will probably be public enemy no. 1 (Just look at the queue outside on the first picture!!!) ; but seriously, I just didn’t feel that (other than their smooth and lovely udon) there was much there.
Ah, New York, New York. My heart went all a-flutter when I spotted the Statue of Liberty down below as we circled Newark after 7 hours of flying.
It felt that it took us longer to get through immigration than to actually fly across the continent – queues in newark immigration is ridiculliously crazy, even worse than what I remembered JFK to be, which was annoying. We waited so long that our luggages were already removed from the carousel as bags from the next flights were going around it. You’d think that’s the end of the drama wouldn’t you? Nooo…more await us at our lovely rental car counter! After a super long wait at Newark’s Dollar rental car (never, EVER rent from them – they were horrendous – two hours late with car delivery and not apologetic AT ALL) we were let free at last to roam the freeways of the great state of New Jersey. We found Elvin’s studio in Whippany without a glitch – about 30 mins away from Newark.
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After a quick shower, we were ready to eat. Well, I was, bacon was bone-tired and after wolfing down the stale sandwiches offered up by Continental (he even wolfed mine down!). Why would anyone in their right mind eat that sort of garbage is beyond me. Stale dry roll with tasteless cheese – I much rather have a Ryvita. Anyway, it was onwards and upwards to the deli that me & Elvin had been plotting to go to for a couple of months – the infamous Harolds’ Famous NY Deli Restaurant.. We did get lost fighting the sat nav to find this place, as it was located in a semi-industrial estate – not quite what I was expecting at all.
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An unassuming front right smack at a Holiday Inn carpark hides one special little deli indeed, where everything in there is ANYTHING but little.
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They are REALLY not kidding, they are really the best in everything they do.
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Specialising in comically oversized deli food, Harold’s really do make food for giants. I was there for the comedy effect, but was suprised by the deliciousness. The comical sizes in no way stops it from producing one of the best deli food around – it was tasty, fresh and well flavored. I did the ordering for the four of us – there wasn’t much we could order as each portion ‘feeds 4-6′ . Uh-oh.
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We started off with a visit to ‘The World’s longest pickle bar’ – pickles of every variety
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After much persuasion from bacon not to pile my plate sky high with pickles I settled for a small selection. My favourite is the half-sour pickle.
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Love the old school scalloped frosted glass plates…reminds me of the 70s . It wasn’t long at all that our starter of the Jewish mainstay Matzo Ball in Chicken Soup appeared, complete with a tin mug as the scoop. The bowl was the size of a Lazy Susan – and the matzo ball was the size of a balloon. Scared yet? Here is the soup in comparision with our normal-sized plate of pickles.
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Elvin giggling at the size of our starter
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The matzoh ball was amazingly fluffy for something so large. I love the chicken soup – nourishing and tasty, like what chicken soup is supposed to be. I nearly did not order this, but the novelty of digging into a massive matzoh ball was too hard to resist…and I was glad I ordered it. Unfortunately we were unable to finish it due to bacon being full from his stupid stale sandwiches and elvin’s aunt seemingly on a diet…this was definately the place to check the diets in at the door!
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Stomachs full, it was time for our next course. We ordered the Large platter (feeds 3-5 apparently), consisting of your choice of two meats. We chose Hot Pastrami and NY’s best Corned beef. I wished we could’ve tried them all instead – but it would mean killing a whole adult cow.
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It was truly heavenley – tender fresh beef ( I couldn’t decide which one I love best – the hot pastrami & corned beef were both soooo good) eaten with pickles , some truly delicious coleslaw, spicy mustard and slices of bread.
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Me & Elvin posing with the platter of beef – ignore my shiny face – my skin always misbehave after a long flight
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Bacon & Elvin’s aunt did not eat much at all, leaving me & elv to munch our way through 1/2 a cow. We ate until we could not bear to move an inch anymore, and decided to just take the rest to go. There was still a good 1/2 portion left on the platter by the time the four of us were done with it – that was how much meat there were. Me & bacon had pastrami sandwices for breakfast for the next week….*burp*
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You’d think by now we would’ve been too full to even CONTEMPLATE dessert. Well, we very nearly. Elvin had his heart set on the World’s Largest slice of Chocolate Cake – but at this point we were so close to breaking point….However, we seemed to have projected our thoughts to our nice next table neighbours – they offered us their cake!! I had taken a picture of their cake (I asked nicely) when it arrived earlier, predicting that we would not be able to order it after wolfing down the cow and giant matzoh ball. Ahhh….the kindness of strangers warms my cockles. They even suggested that we wrap our leftover meat with breads and pickles from the pickle bar, perfect for tomorrow’s lunch. How sweet are they?
The cake in it’s full size – just compare it with the coffee cup behind it.
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And this people, is 1/2 of the slice of chocolate fudge cake that was donated to us. It took me & bacon another good couple of days having bits of cake for breakfast for us to finish this 1/2 of cake. Note that by the end of the night, this cake had been eaten by 8 people – and yet it took us another few days (more like 4) to finish it.
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On the way out, some giant cookies…
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Just compare my face with the rows of giant cakes in the chiller…
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The kitchen. Notice how unassuming the whole place is.
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Harold’s is an amazing place – reasonably priced ginorous portions of tasty deli food. It is not really near NYC at all, but well worth a side trip if you are driving through New Jersey. Obviously, go EXTREMELY hungry, and go with people….very hungry people. And be prepared to doggie-bag the rest home, the woman from the next table was right, nothing better than bread soaked with the juices of the leftover meats for tomorrow’s lunch. Mm mm good…
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Appetite for more? Well, click on the Man Vs. Food Youtube below!!
You know how some people say that good things comes to those that wait? Well, it’s true. I waited and waited and at last I’m getting a very good friend-in-law. Introducing Mr Wong..tall, dark, handsome, clever…you get the drift..hehe. He has bravely valiantly proposed to make an honest woman out of dreybee (and she said YES!!)…and a better match I cannot imagine.
Not only that, I like him, I really do! It’s always hard work if you think your dearest friend’s significant other is a twat, but I have nothing bad to say about Chris at all…and when I told them that, they both told me I was drunk…wtf. Admittedly, I was drinking like I’ve not seen my bottle of Chivas for 10 years – remember that night with that scary-flirty-whorelike woman serving us drinks (and trying to paw elv!) and not giving me the right change?
You know what the best part about this is? She’s planning her wedding very, very close to when I had mine; and I am just so chuffed at that….it means that in future years she would remind me that my own wedding anniversary is nearing because hers is. Yeah, I am absolute crap with dates. I did not remember mine this year until the very morning. How rubbish am I?
Anyway, I digress on making this all about me..haha.
So peeps, join me in wishing Audrey & Chris luck in the Bridezilla year – and the very best in their future life together.
After we polished out the food, it was dessert time. I had the foresight of grabbing some ‘jeli buah buahan’ – basically jello in a small cone container. This was a staple children’s party food in the 80s, before Ronald McDonalds and A&W bear hijacked the children’s parties genre. You would not be a Malaysian if you did not recognize these!
We also sliced up some bananas and popped them in a foil packaged. Leaving it on the bbq makes them go all soft and mushy…yummers. It’ll be much nicer if we had some ice cream to go with it, the hot bananas just contrasts so well with the cold creamy ice cream.
After desserts, we spent about 10 minutes looking at each other – and then the casino began. CW showed off his gangster skills in demanding that everyone played along in his game of blackjack. As an antisocial I refused to play, choosing instead to play with elv’s ipod touch..heehee. And I was playing mahjong as well – wished I had the foresight to bring my mahjong set with me. Fret not, I have brought it back with me to the UK!
We went to sleep pretty early at around 1am, to the gushing sounds of the stream underneath and the variety of creepy crawlies in jungle outside. We couldn’t shut the windows as that would literally cut out our circulation, and honestly, it was really hard trying to fall asleep with nature’s ruckus! At 7am in the morning, I felt bacon rolling out of bed, and promptly spread my arms and legs to his side of the bed…ahhh, space.When I felt him just walking around the bed instead of heading towards to the toilet, I opened my eyes.
bacon: OK, get out of bed…slowly now.I will hold up the mosquito net for you.
me: Huh?? Why??
bacon: Stay calm, just come out
me: OMG OMG (thinking that there is a scorpion or snake in bed with me) ok.
bacon: Look. (pointing at a huge wasp buzzing around inside the net)
me: HUh? So what we gonna do now?
bacon: Well, I think I need to kill it
me: How???
bacon: I donno
After which I just headed downstairs to try to crash out on the sofa. 10 minutes later and bacon was still thinking, so I suggested that we should use two tissue boxes to crush the wasps. After banging around upstairs and moanings of protests coming from the beds of the other city campers, he crept down and told me that the deed have been done…ahh, sleep beckons again.
Part 2- In the morn
When we eventually woke up again just past 9, our lovely packages in banana leaf was waiting for us. It was one of the yummiest nasi lemak that I’ve tasted – nicely separated rice infused with the creaminess of the coconut milk, spicy sambal sauce and topped with a boiled egg and french beans. It did cost RM2 each – they should really just provide breakfast as well, it would just be polite seeing that they’re charging so much for the shed.
After breakfast, we started clearing up our stuff as we were asked to be out there by noon. So I leave you here, with a couple more pictures
Saturday May 02nd 2009, 8:38 am
Filed under: escapism,friends
Courtesy of dreybee – can you see the two machos carrying our handbags?
Part 4 – the waterfall
It was a long lonely walk to the waterfall…well, not lonely, but it does seem longer than 10 minutes due to the scorching sun. Being the village roads it were, completely isolated with no cars in the whole duration of the 10 minute walk. I honestly couldn’t be arsed taking pictures (damn hot ok) , but some lovely ones are available at drey’s post on this. Anyway, we walked and we walked….and the waterfall in the end was best described as, umm….quaint. Not magnificent or massively chilly, it was really just a waterfall. I did not take any pictures as it started raining at that point.
10 minutes in the waterfall and the CHILDREN showed up..about 6 of them. So we sent cw upstream to check out if it looks good there. Apparently there were this couple trying to ‘get it on’….well, the way cw described it, it was more of him trying to get it on with her.Heh. We headed upstream irregardless, and went past the soon-to-be fornicating couple and their hastily rearranged clothes. The water upstream was fast flowing and slightly cooler than at the waterfalls….I think the water was clearer as well. We started laying down the picnic mat (to keep our prized posessions dry and safe you see) and arranging out our drinks and snacks. We each found a spot atop pebbles in midstream to sit on, and kinda just sat there…..talking shit like you do in the middle of a river.
Dreybee got us some yummy curry puffs back in DJ, and we were scoffing them down within 10 minutes. And then it came. Big plopping action on our curry puffs signalled a monsoon storm is on its way – AGAIN. It’s been raining cats and dogs every afternoon. So we waved goodbye to the stream/waterfall and started our trek back to the shed. By which point it’s already started raining heavily that me and drey used the picnic mat as a large tarpaulin. However, like most things made in Malaysia, the rain did not last long, and by the time we got to the main road it had already cleared up and we could walk picnic mat-free again.
Part 5 – the Pool
We did not get enough of the water, and headed on towards to the lovely pool when we got back. As it was midweek, we were the only people in the shed village ( there were a few other sheds around in the same compound) and therefore the pool was our own little private one.
Very minimalist, it was really just a cement tub, with no mosaic tiles like what you’ll get in a normal swimming pool. It was designed in a way to fit in with the environment, and it definately did in my opinion. Just a simple cement tub with water for us to splash around. With water at about the 4ft mark throughout, it was a paddling pool, really, but nice as we were not going to do olympic laps and stuff.
cw: Eh, come here come here
me: Why? Why?
cw: Look at elvin…
me: I can see him from here
cw: No,no, come here and look at him!
me: OH
And this was what I saw. He even posed for me smilingly as he thought I was just snapping his picture
Elv fits in quite well with the environment as well, don’t you think? He looked like a statue, designed to make you laugh as you potter about the pool . We dipped in and out of the pool for about another hour or so, until our tummies started grumbling again. I know, we’ve had nasi lemak and huge curry puffs in the past six hours, you’d think that we won’t be hungry until at least midnight…its all that splashing in the water I tell you.
Part 6 – The Dinner
When we checked in (in the loosest sense of the word), we have requested for the caretaker to start a fire for us at 6pm. It was either catered indian food ( at RM20 per head) or they were happy to start a fire for us. We (well, I) made drey prepare a whole host of barbeque foods:
her famous potato salad
fresh salad
Garlic bread
Corn on cob & corn in tin
Two different sausages (all-pork!!)
Garlic mushrooms
Stuffed mushroom
Teriyaki chicken wings
Sambal squid
All this, prepped by cw and drey late the night before. The food came in a large picnic basket plus a few freezer bags, how organised is she?? Unfortunately, the caretaker did not seem to appreciate our hunger, and did not turn up to start the fire. Being stuck with only lighters and no coals, we sat on our hands until 7pm – and then sent elvin out to seek him out. It was still raining, and we were actually still stuck indoors. The caretaker eventually turned up, with his DOG. When he left he failed to bring his dog with him, and he kinda looked at us all night with his puppy eyes for food scraps, which we, being the cruel city dwellers that we were, did not give him any.
By this point, the rain had cleared up slightly, and the men started work on the bbq. Me and drey were doing last minute prepping in the kitchen. In particular, I were cleaning the plates and cutleries like there was no tomorrow – double cleansing is the way forward. There were only enough for us to each have a set of plate, mug and cutlery. Obviously we needed somewhere to skewer the chicken ect, so kinda ended up with no plates, and whatever that’s empty I washed it up again. Probably our own fault, I used up 4 tin plates as a receptacle for the ash falling off the mosquito coil.
Being deep in the rainforest, it was, to put it mildly, hot like fuck. We were fannning each other to death, in hopes of getting some air circulation.The men were hard at work, especially cw here. The other two just hung around the periphary nibbling on the food that cw had cooked, giving the thumbs-up that it’s cooked after they’ve finished it .
Drey even came prepared with tealights for a romantic bbq outdoors, and we lit them and placed them around the verandah. However, with the creepy crawlies, raindrops dripping from the canopy of trees and the dark wilderness beckoning beyond the verandah, the city campers took the executive decision to cook all the food at one go, and eat indoors. HAhaha, we’re so not cut out for the great wilderness au naturel thingy. After locking the dog outside, we started on our feast:
We thought we could not finish it, but we did !! It was gone in 30 minutes, and we left elvin in peace, cleaning up every last bit of meat left on his chicken wing.
. It wasn’t long at all that our starter of the Jewish mainstay Matzo Ball in Chicken Soup appeared, complete with a tin mug as the scoop. The bowl was the size of a Lazy Susan – and the matzo ball was the size of a balloon. Scared yet? Here is the soup in comparision with our normal-sized plate of pickles.
