Pork Burgers!

Ninja Joe is a new burger joint in Malaysia that specializes in pork burgers. We've been wanting to try it but never found the time. We finally made the trek to a local mall to try it.

We were greeted with the Ninja Joe sign and another poster advertising that pork burgers were avaiblable here. Kent loves the Ninja Joe logo.

  The interior was decorated with catchy posters all about pork and pork burgers.

The burgers come in 6 different flavors. Since we were hungry, we ordered a set of 6 burgers. A set of 6 burgers with different flavors costs about RM 23.00.

The burgers were individually wrapped in Ninja Joe designed wax paper with the flavors specified with a sticker. The cute thing is that the burgers came in a brown paper bag with the words "Ninjas Inside".

The burgers are not large (more like small sliders), but definitely packs a punch of flavor. The buns were soft, chewy and had a slight of sweetness to it. Each burger came with its' own flavor profile, a slice of tomato and slices of lettuce.

Kent appears very happy with his burgers. I think he enjoyed it more than I did. Even though the burgers were not large, eating 6 of them in one sitting was definitely an overdose.

After that all pork, we just walked around the mall to burn off some calories. All in all, a good experience and we look forward to eating more pork burgers at Ninja Joe.

"Yuk Kuat Cha" (肉骨茶)???? You betcha'!!!

Sunday morning breakfasts are a big thing here in Malaysia, especially for the Chinese. Usually the image of a Sunday Chinese breakfast would usually be Dim Sum, but for some Malaysian Chinese, it's "Yuk Kuat Cha" (肉骨茶) or Bak Kut Teh in the Hokkien dialect.

To quote from Wikipedia, "
Bak-kut-teh (also spelled Bah-kut-teh) is a Chinese soup popularly served in Malaysia, Singapore, Mainland Chinese and Taiwan.....The name literally translates as "meat bone tea", and, at its simplest, consists of meaty pork ribs simmered in a complex broth of herbs and spices for hours....Bak kut teh is usually eaten with rice or noodles (sometimes as a noodle soup), and often served with you tiao / cha kueh for dipping into the soup. Soy sauce (usually light soy sauce, but dark soy sauce is also offered sometimes) is preferred as a condiment, with which chopped "chilli padi" and minced garlic is taken together"

So what did we do this cloudy yet balmy Sunday morning? Well..what else? We drove to a city by the sea called Klang (about 30 minutes away from Petaling Jaya) to have us some Bak Kut Teh. As mentioned above, the dish is usually served in an herbal-based broth but we have heard of one restaurant in Klang (also touted as the city best known for Bak Kut Teh) that have a "dry" version.

Without further ado....

A google map pictorial of our Sunday morning journey to try some good Bak Kut Teh

And got down to business by ordering our tea

 And trying new drinks such as Sparkling Fuji Apple, getting our condiments ready (chili padi with soy sauce) and our yu tiao.

Dad and Kent looking at the menu...lots of other foods apart from their specialty.  

Finally....the moment we have been waiting for - the Dry Bak Kut Teh. If you like the herbal based broth of the traditional Bak Kut Teh, then you would probably like the dry version. It's like a 10x concentrate of the tradtional Bak Kut Teh.

 

We also ordered the traditional broth-based Bak Kut Teh (left), pig innards (center) and some stir-fried vegetables just to be healthy.

Happy after a good meal!

Till next time guys......

A summary of my manifest destiny...

So I have now finally arrived into Malaysia for about four days, and slowly but surely the transition is starting, first with the time zone adjustment, and then the weather acclimatization, and finally getting administrative paperwork done (immigration, accounts, driving, etc). Here is just a sample of what I had to do to get to the point I am am now...

This was my last major holiday meal with my family back in Boston. Not seen in the picture are my many aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces and nephews who took time out of their day to send me off. As you can see we had a nice spread of turkey day fare to last a while. To this day I still yearn for them...

Here is my friend holding my Virgin America ticket to Los Angeles CA the day after Thanksgiving. I didn't do any shopping as my luggage was already maxed out and more, so I had to shuffle some things around to get under the weight limit. Luckily Happiness didn't add too much of a burden, besides his big head...

On board VX I helped myself to free food and drink during the flight, as well as entertainment beyond imagination (okay it was just Green Lantern and the Hangover 2 but still awesome)...

My arrival into LAX before pickup by my aunt/uncle/cousin headed towards Orange County for the weekend. I ended up staying in the LA proper area afterwards.

Just a sample of my large extended family having a nice meal on my cousins. It was a wonderful experience overall in Southern California for the most part, until...

... the day before check-in to my flight on Malaysia Airlines transiting through Taipei, Taiwan. As luck would have it, high winds were expected throughout the Los Angeles area thanks to Santa Ana, not Santa Clause...

As you can see, those high winds cause a backup of flights, resulting in mine taking off at 1:30am on Thursday morning rather than 11:10pm on Wednesday evening.

When I finally managed to settle into my seat, and what a seat it was... I was not dissappointed, to say the least... an awesome satin blanket, comfy pillow, and the capability to lie down instead of angling to sleep a few hours on a thirteen hour flight definitely helped the cause.

While in Taiwan, our transit was shortened by half an hour, so there was not time to explore the area or grab a souvenir, besides this shot of my gate. Strangely enough they made us step out of the gate just to re-enter for security purposes at the exact same boarding...

Here's my transit pass and original stub to show I actually belonged on the the flight.

This is proof that I finally made it to Asia...

And the wonderful Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. I live about half an hour outside the city, in a place called Petaling Jaya, which is a city in itself, but the trek to the federal district was nice.

Karen and I are finally re-united. Imagine that... two K's managing to come back together after a long duration apart.... now if only the other two K's can do the same (Koreas: North and South).

I wanted to say that I still miss Boston and my whole family back home, and hope that you all have a good holiday season coming up ahead. Please also do visit the area, even if not KL, but within the connecting regions, we welcome you the only way Malaysians do, with great hospitality! (Thanks to Malaysia Airlines for the paraphrased catchy slogan...)