ish.. ader lagi rupenyer gamnar muda mudi nih...nak tergelak la plak rasa...semua buat buat macho..tah mana mana dah deme nih skang...
posted by tawil @ 18:26
0 comments
Thursday, July 21, 2005
Wednesday, July 20, 2005
nst 20 july
COVER STORY: Savvy with food and wine
July 20:
From the bulls to the bears, Wee Jeh Teng stuck it in Bangsar with his restaurant and wine business. He tells EU HOOI KHAW how it all started for him there 16 years ago and why he has moved on.
YOU could say that Wee Jeh Teng grew with Bangsar, Kuala Lumpur. He was there with Barrique the wine shop in 1989, a pioneer in this trendy, upmarket area, long before the others came and made it hot, hot, hot. Then the heat got too much and the entrepreneur who originally studied to become a lawyer got out. He closed his restaurant, Chinoz, last year.
'When we started in Bangsar, Cocomo was already there, and Ronnie Q had moved in four months before us. Then came The Talk and a French bakery too. Alexis came a year later. Bangsar had a good catchment, with affluent residential areas. Within six months we had good business in Chinoz (his first restaurant).
'It was good in those days, especially with the Commonwealth Games in 1996. People were happy to find a place with such a wide variety of eating and drinking places.'
However, in 2000 it became more and more busy and residents had more issues with congestion.
Wee Jeh still has a stake in Bangsar, with Barrique there, and a production kitchen in the untrendy part of it which bakes all the breads, pastries and desserts to supply Chinoz on the Park in KLCC and catering functions.
Wee Jeh never thought he would be in the food business. He had been sent by his parents to England to study law, but there he developed a passion for food and wine. After graduation he worked a short while in the wine trade in Britain. Then he came back to Kuala Lumpur and wanted to do something similar.
'I went to a few big wine companies but none wanted to hire me. By that time I was interested in wine and food. I have always liked to cook. In London I used to cook dinners for friends. I decided I wanted to do something in this field.'
IN THE KITCHEN: Staffed by locals
'I thought wine was easy to do. Back in those days Barrique started supplying a lot of restaurants and hotels, and I got a good view of the business.
'Those days you would dine in hotels, or the Ship and Victoria Station. There was nothing in between. I thought it would be nice to do a casual place. I looked around and I liked Bangsar. The row of shops where Chinoz was, in Jalan Telawi 3 had just been developed in 1993. They were ideal. I took the plunge and started Chinoz with sandwiches, cakes and coffee.' This was way before Coffeebean and Starbucks even cast a shadow here.
'It became quite popular, we offered good food and good value, nothing pretentious.' In those days it was a good place to lepak at, when you needed a cup of coffee, a slice of cheesecake or chocolate fudge cake and a good chat with friends somewhat late in the evening.
After three years Wee Jeh decided to do a fine dining place. 'In 1995 it was the bull run, the strongest anyone had seen. Everyone was wealthy.' He had also seen, through doing his wine business, there was no dining place selling wines with reasonable markups. 'I thought it would be nice to do a place like this, with food designed to fit the wines.' That was q'doz.
'All went well till we got hit by the financial crisis in 1997. Business became harder. We got an offer and we sold it in 2000.'
Chinoz next to Finnegan’s in Bangsar started in 2001. It closed last December. 'The problem was because Bangsar had changed to more a drinking than an eating place. Our diners felt the congestion and the parking was too much of a hassle. They would sit for an hour waiting for their guests to arrive. Bangsar also had some bad press. Besides, the rental and operating costs were among the highest in Kuala Lumpur.'
Food, particularly western food, figured largely in Wee Jeh's childhood. 'We used to have kippers for breakfast at home in the Sixties. My grandpa worked for the British. He was a Class A contractor,' said Wee Jeh, who is from Seremban. 'In those days you could buy bacon sliced off from whole chunk in Seremban. Grandma would make us eat blue cheese. We didn't dare be late for dinner, which would be at 5pm, or else we would be glared at! But she made wonderful cakes and when we came home after school we would smell Chelsea buns baking in the oven. We grew up around food.'
His grandpa also had a crockery shop in Seremban and his father and uncle ran it. His mother, who was a teacher, had a title as the organiser of Chinese schools.
Studying in London, things were starting to happen around food and Wee Jeh became aware of them. Good restaurants came up and supermarkets were selling a variety of food.
Back in Kuala Lumpur, he had to learn quickly on the job, selling wines. It was a different scenario from London. 'The first three years it was just me and my telephone. I did everything myself.
'Barrique has been trading a while now. It's one of the oldest specialist wine merchants in KL and we have a loyal following.'
In 1998 Wee Jeh had an offer to open a restaurant in KLCC. 'It was a little daunting as it was right in the midst of the financial crisis. I looked at it and decided to bite the bullet. It has been good. The traffic is quite incredible. The Twin Towers have good clients.
FROM WINE TO FINE DINING: Wee Jeh has done it all, but there are parts of his old restaurants in Bangsar he wants to revive
'Our lunch is purely a la carte, no buffet. Seventy of our customers walk in with a 20-minute window. This means that our staff have to work at a frantic pace as this is a fast, heavy volume sort of place.'
Wee Jeh is at Chinoz on the Park three to four times a week. The wine shop is his office and he monitors everything from there. His wife Sandra looks after the production kitchen.
Chinoz serves Mediterranean food, with pastas and pizzas. It’s got a wood-fire pizza oven.
The restaurant is due for renovation.
Wee Jeh likes the restaurant location in KLCC, which seems to be busy all the time. “It’s a pleasure doing business in a place like this, which is high traffic, and has high-calibre management.
'People have asked us why not do a q’doz again. I may designate a special dining room on special nights here and offer wine dinners, matching wines with food. It will give the kitchen some room for creativity and gives me a chance to play around with molecular cuisine. I can behave like a mad scientist.
'A lot of people are taking flavours out of the natural form of food and redefining what it should look and taste like. It's equivalent to what modern art did to classical painting. I want to change the way you perceive food.'
Wee Jeh says he wants simple food after looking at restaurant food every day. 'I like Japanese, and dimsum is always a treat on Sundays.' He often goes for a very good fishhead curry in Taman Wahyu in Kuala Lumpur.
Dining all day, in tasty ways
YOU could sit at Chinoz on the Park in the early evening like we did and nibble on some Mezze or Middle-Eastern appetisers. These could include herb marinated olives, eggplant and bell pepper salad, marinated king mushrooms with lemon vinaigrette and lamb dolmas in tomato ragout.
They all make good bites; I particularly liked the smooth feel of the king mushrooms. These often masquerade as abalone in a vegetarian meal. 'These king mushrooms which as listed as Abricat, come from China,' said Wee Jeh Teng of Chinoz on the Park. 'You cut them in a certain way, season with herbs and grill them and they taste just like porcini mushrooms.' Indeed they did.
The dolmas are stuffed vine leaves, with a filling of minced lamb wrapped in them, sitting in a tomato base.
I always enjoy grilled eggplant and pepper, and these are presented on a slice of sourdough rye bread. I had eaten the juicy grilled vegetables before biting into this traditional German bread which is used a lot in this restaurant. I have not had a good sourdough bread for a long time, and this impressed me.
I also had a firm bite of it in the Salt Beef on Rye and Apple Sauerkraut Sandwich and liked it a lot — the thin slices of excellent salt beef which tasted like a good homemade corned beef, and the slightly sour, solid bread.
The freshly made bread comes from the Chinoz’s production kitchen in Bangsar, where six types of breads are made a day, among them chibatta, focaccia, baguettes and bread rolls for functions.
'We started the 'mother' two years ago,' explained Wee Jay about the traditional way of making sourdough bread. “It stinks to high heaven. Four years ago I went to see a baker who baked for Qantas and a chain of restaurants and he showed me a mother he started 10 years ago! The older it is the more complex it gets. It is a totally different skill for making good bread. It takes longer to rise and my baker comes in at 6am to make the bread for lunch.'
The dough is started with yeast and some grape juice. 'We take 2kg out and put back the flour. We keep feeding it. There is a baker in France who claims his mother dough has passed through three generations!'
The restaurant is well-known for their pizzas baked in a wood-fired oven, and we had the Chinoz’s 4 Cheese Pizza, with fontina, parmesan, feta and mozarella on a pesto base. The thin-crust pizza tastes light inspite of the cheeses. It yields piquant, crispy bites, because of the lightly sour feta cheese.
For something utterly sinful and delicious, the Seared Duck Liver and House Smoked Ox Tongue with Dried Longan Compote is hard to surpass. The duck liver produces rich bursts with each bite, and is perfectly matched with the dark, sweet longan compote. The ox tongue, which is smoked inhouse, is really good, with a nice aroma and rather tender meat. 'We also smoke our own duck breast and chicken,' said Wee Jeh.
We tried a pasta — the Linguine, Morels and King Mushroom, with truffle-infused oil. All the ingredients would have turned out a fine pasta, if it had been allowed to stay a little longer in the pan, with the sauce. It’s a pasta those who don’t eat meat would have liked.
The Squid Ink Spaghetti and Tiger Prawns tossed in garlic, chilli flakes and olive oil is hugely popular here, as is its Rack of Lamb with Port Wine Sauce.
The menu has had a new addition, a gourmet burger that has 250g hand-chopped prime beef. This Chinoz Burger should please those who like good meat in their burger.
It’s all-day dining at Chinoz on the Park, and you could have a freshly baked croissant or Danish for breakfast. There are plans to include a bigger display area for all the pastries and cakes done in the production kitchen.
There are desserts on the menu that I would go back for, such as the pear and ginger pudding with caramel sauce and vanilla ice-cream, chocolate marquise ballerina cup with orange coulis, blueberry crumble with icecream, and bread and banana pudding with orange coulis.
'We are reviving the cakes,' said Wee Jeh. 'We want to run afternoon teas here with the traditional two-tier offerings of finger sandwiches and scones.'
Wee Jeh notices that people are going for lighter meals. They are also more demanding as 'everyone watches the Discovery channel on Astro' and want to try new things. Well, the restaurant does not disappoint with its wide variety on the menu and reasonable prices.
hahhaa...wonder when will somebody will ask and write about my success like my uncle here haa????heermmmm.......
July 20:
From the bulls to the bears, Wee Jeh Teng stuck it in Bangsar with his restaurant and wine business. He tells EU HOOI KHAW how it all started for him there 16 years ago and why he has moved on.
YOU could say that Wee Jeh Teng grew with Bangsar, Kuala Lumpur. He was there with Barrique the wine shop in 1989, a pioneer in this trendy, upmarket area, long before the others came and made it hot, hot, hot. Then the heat got too much and the entrepreneur who originally studied to become a lawyer got out. He closed his restaurant, Chinoz, last year.
'When we started in Bangsar, Cocomo was already there, and Ronnie Q had moved in four months before us. Then came The Talk and a French bakery too. Alexis came a year later. Bangsar had a good catchment, with affluent residential areas. Within six months we had good business in Chinoz (his first restaurant).
'It was good in those days, especially with the Commonwealth Games in 1996. People were happy to find a place with such a wide variety of eating and drinking places.'
However, in 2000 it became more and more busy and residents had more issues with congestion.
Wee Jeh still has a stake in Bangsar, with Barrique there, and a production kitchen in the untrendy part of it which bakes all the breads, pastries and desserts to supply Chinoz on the Park in KLCC and catering functions.
Wee Jeh never thought he would be in the food business. He had been sent by his parents to England to study law, but there he developed a passion for food and wine. After graduation he worked a short while in the wine trade in Britain. Then he came back to Kuala Lumpur and wanted to do something similar.
'I went to a few big wine companies but none wanted to hire me. By that time I was interested in wine and food. I have always liked to cook. In London I used to cook dinners for friends. I decided I wanted to do something in this field.'
IN THE KITCHEN: Staffed by locals'I thought wine was easy to do. Back in those days Barrique started supplying a lot of restaurants and hotels, and I got a good view of the business.
'Those days you would dine in hotels, or the Ship and Victoria Station. There was nothing in between. I thought it would be nice to do a casual place. I looked around and I liked Bangsar. The row of shops where Chinoz was, in Jalan Telawi 3 had just been developed in 1993. They were ideal. I took the plunge and started Chinoz with sandwiches, cakes and coffee.' This was way before Coffeebean and Starbucks even cast a shadow here.
'It became quite popular, we offered good food and good value, nothing pretentious.' In those days it was a good place to lepak at, when you needed a cup of coffee, a slice of cheesecake or chocolate fudge cake and a good chat with friends somewhat late in the evening.
After three years Wee Jeh decided to do a fine dining place. 'In 1995 it was the bull run, the strongest anyone had seen. Everyone was wealthy.' He had also seen, through doing his wine business, there was no dining place selling wines with reasonable markups. 'I thought it would be nice to do a place like this, with food designed to fit the wines.' That was q'doz.
'All went well till we got hit by the financial crisis in 1997. Business became harder. We got an offer and we sold it in 2000.'
Chinoz next to Finnegan’s in Bangsar started in 2001. It closed last December. 'The problem was because Bangsar had changed to more a drinking than an eating place. Our diners felt the congestion and the parking was too much of a hassle. They would sit for an hour waiting for their guests to arrive. Bangsar also had some bad press. Besides, the rental and operating costs were among the highest in Kuala Lumpur.'
Food, particularly western food, figured largely in Wee Jeh's childhood. 'We used to have kippers for breakfast at home in the Sixties. My grandpa worked for the British. He was a Class A contractor,' said Wee Jeh, who is from Seremban. 'In those days you could buy bacon sliced off from whole chunk in Seremban. Grandma would make us eat blue cheese. We didn't dare be late for dinner, which would be at 5pm, or else we would be glared at! But she made wonderful cakes and when we came home after school we would smell Chelsea buns baking in the oven. We grew up around food.'
His grandpa also had a crockery shop in Seremban and his father and uncle ran it. His mother, who was a teacher, had a title as the organiser of Chinese schools.
Studying in London, things were starting to happen around food and Wee Jeh became aware of them. Good restaurants came up and supermarkets were selling a variety of food.
Back in Kuala Lumpur, he had to learn quickly on the job, selling wines. It was a different scenario from London. 'The first three years it was just me and my telephone. I did everything myself.
'Barrique has been trading a while now. It's one of the oldest specialist wine merchants in KL and we have a loyal following.'
In 1998 Wee Jeh had an offer to open a restaurant in KLCC. 'It was a little daunting as it was right in the midst of the financial crisis. I looked at it and decided to bite the bullet. It has been good. The traffic is quite incredible. The Twin Towers have good clients.
FROM WINE TO FINE DINING: Wee Jeh has done it all, but there are parts of his old restaurants in Bangsar he wants to revive'Our lunch is purely a la carte, no buffet. Seventy of our customers walk in with a 20-minute window. This means that our staff have to work at a frantic pace as this is a fast, heavy volume sort of place.'
Wee Jeh is at Chinoz on the Park three to four times a week. The wine shop is his office and he monitors everything from there. His wife Sandra looks after the production kitchen.
Chinoz serves Mediterranean food, with pastas and pizzas. It’s got a wood-fire pizza oven.
The restaurant is due for renovation.
Wee Jeh likes the restaurant location in KLCC, which seems to be busy all the time. “It’s a pleasure doing business in a place like this, which is high traffic, and has high-calibre management.
'People have asked us why not do a q’doz again. I may designate a special dining room on special nights here and offer wine dinners, matching wines with food. It will give the kitchen some room for creativity and gives me a chance to play around with molecular cuisine. I can behave like a mad scientist.
'A lot of people are taking flavours out of the natural form of food and redefining what it should look and taste like. It's equivalent to what modern art did to classical painting. I want to change the way you perceive food.'
Wee Jeh says he wants simple food after looking at restaurant food every day. 'I like Japanese, and dimsum is always a treat on Sundays.' He often goes for a very good fishhead curry in Taman Wahyu in Kuala Lumpur.
Dining all day, in tasty ways
YOU could sit at Chinoz on the Park in the early evening like we did and nibble on some Mezze or Middle-Eastern appetisers. These could include herb marinated olives, eggplant and bell pepper salad, marinated king mushrooms with lemon vinaigrette and lamb dolmas in tomato ragout.
They all make good bites; I particularly liked the smooth feel of the king mushrooms. These often masquerade as abalone in a vegetarian meal. 'These king mushrooms which as listed as Abricat, come from China,' said Wee Jeh Teng of Chinoz on the Park. 'You cut them in a certain way, season with herbs and grill them and they taste just like porcini mushrooms.' Indeed they did.
The dolmas are stuffed vine leaves, with a filling of minced lamb wrapped in them, sitting in a tomato base.
I always enjoy grilled eggplant and pepper, and these are presented on a slice of sourdough rye bread. I had eaten the juicy grilled vegetables before biting into this traditional German bread which is used a lot in this restaurant. I have not had a good sourdough bread for a long time, and this impressed me.
I also had a firm bite of it in the Salt Beef on Rye and Apple Sauerkraut Sandwich and liked it a lot — the thin slices of excellent salt beef which tasted like a good homemade corned beef, and the slightly sour, solid bread.
The freshly made bread comes from the Chinoz’s production kitchen in Bangsar, where six types of breads are made a day, among them chibatta, focaccia, baguettes and bread rolls for functions.
'We started the 'mother' two years ago,' explained Wee Jay about the traditional way of making sourdough bread. “It stinks to high heaven. Four years ago I went to see a baker who baked for Qantas and a chain of restaurants and he showed me a mother he started 10 years ago! The older it is the more complex it gets. It is a totally different skill for making good bread. It takes longer to rise and my baker comes in at 6am to make the bread for lunch.'
The dough is started with yeast and some grape juice. 'We take 2kg out and put back the flour. We keep feeding it. There is a baker in France who claims his mother dough has passed through three generations!'
The restaurant is well-known for their pizzas baked in a wood-fired oven, and we had the Chinoz’s 4 Cheese Pizza, with fontina, parmesan, feta and mozarella on a pesto base. The thin-crust pizza tastes light inspite of the cheeses. It yields piquant, crispy bites, because of the lightly sour feta cheese.
For something utterly sinful and delicious, the Seared Duck Liver and House Smoked Ox Tongue with Dried Longan Compote is hard to surpass. The duck liver produces rich bursts with each bite, and is perfectly matched with the dark, sweet longan compote. The ox tongue, which is smoked inhouse, is really good, with a nice aroma and rather tender meat. 'We also smoke our own duck breast and chicken,' said Wee Jeh.
We tried a pasta — the Linguine, Morels and King Mushroom, with truffle-infused oil. All the ingredients would have turned out a fine pasta, if it had been allowed to stay a little longer in the pan, with the sauce. It’s a pasta those who don’t eat meat would have liked.
The Squid Ink Spaghetti and Tiger Prawns tossed in garlic, chilli flakes and olive oil is hugely popular here, as is its Rack of Lamb with Port Wine Sauce.
The menu has had a new addition, a gourmet burger that has 250g hand-chopped prime beef. This Chinoz Burger should please those who like good meat in their burger.
It’s all-day dining at Chinoz on the Park, and you could have a freshly baked croissant or Danish for breakfast. There are plans to include a bigger display area for all the pastries and cakes done in the production kitchen.
There are desserts on the menu that I would go back for, such as the pear and ginger pudding with caramel sauce and vanilla ice-cream, chocolate marquise ballerina cup with orange coulis, blueberry crumble with icecream, and bread and banana pudding with orange coulis.
'We are reviving the cakes,' said Wee Jeh. 'We want to run afternoon teas here with the traditional two-tier offerings of finger sandwiches and scones.'
Wee Jeh notices that people are going for lighter meals. They are also more demanding as 'everyone watches the Discovery channel on Astro' and want to try new things. Well, the restaurant does not disappoint with its wide variety on the menu and reasonable prices.
hahhaa...wonder when will somebody will ask and write about my success like my uncle here haa????heermmmm.......
posted by tawil @ 21:06
1 comments
Wednesday, July 06, 2005
Tuesday, July 05, 2005
arghh..
apesal aku rasa sungguh bengang hari ini.................................................................................................................................................................tolong tolong tolong aku................................argh.............bengang nyer.....amat bengang.....sungguh bengang............hantuk hantuk hantuk kepala hantuk kepala......................
posted by tawil @ 14:29
0 comments
alop...sesungguh nya aku tak de keje betul la cuti cuti nih... selain drpd duk kat umah and ikut mak pak aku jalan jalan ( serius aku dah besar ni pun still ikut mak pak aku jalan jalan..hahaha..aku pun pelik) gi bayar bil bil tertunggak kat umah ni..nak jadi kes..ader la minah kat pos opis ni (lawa la gak, jgn marah ek..), aku nak bayar bil astro yg dah 2 bulan overdue..so disebabkan umah aku amik 2 decoder so dlm sebulan tuh bil dier cecah gak la 100++ , so bile dah overdue tu makin la byk. bile sampai kat kounter, aku nak bayar la abih, boleh la pulak minah tu tanya aku,
kerani lawa: boleh ke tgk byk byk channel skali bang? mesti asyik duk depan tv aje ni?
(muka conpius) aku : apesal tanya macam tuh?
kerani lawa: ni bayar byk ni, mesti byk channel kat umah ek, bang??
aku: idok le, pasai amik dua decoder la cik kak oi..
kerani lawa: ooo, boleh ek amik dua decoder?
aku: isk.. sape kate tak boleh..
kerani lawa: ooo, ingat abg nih jenis suka duduk depan tv 24 jam..sebab tu bayar bill mahal..
aku (sambil sengih) : ye la, ni duit bayar bill ni pun petik je kat pokok kuinin kat depan umah, kalau nak mai la dtg umah ye..
hehe, slambe rock je minah tu cakap aku macam tuh, ingat aku couch potato ker?tade keje? tp skang ni kirenye aku dah jadi la jugak couch potato tuh..cuti lama tak ingat..so lepas nih aku malas la nak gi post opis tuh lagik, 'ramah' sgt la plak kakitangan deme..heheh lawak betui la..
kerani lawa: boleh ke tgk byk byk channel skali bang? mesti asyik duk depan tv aje ni?
(muka conpius) aku : apesal tanya macam tuh?
kerani lawa: ni bayar byk ni, mesti byk channel kat umah ek, bang??
aku: idok le, pasai amik dua decoder la cik kak oi..
kerani lawa: ooo, boleh ek amik dua decoder?
aku: isk.. sape kate tak boleh..
kerani lawa: ooo, ingat abg nih jenis suka duduk depan tv 24 jam..sebab tu bayar bill mahal..
aku (sambil sengih) : ye la, ni duit bayar bill ni pun petik je kat pokok kuinin kat depan umah, kalau nak mai la dtg umah ye..
hehe, slambe rock je minah tu cakap aku macam tuh, ingat aku couch potato ker?tade keje? tp skang ni kirenye aku dah jadi la jugak couch potato tuh..cuti lama tak ingat..so lepas nih aku malas la nak gi post opis tuh lagik, 'ramah' sgt la plak kakitangan deme..heheh lawak betui la..
posted by tawil @ 07:17
0 comments
Saturday, July 02, 2005
engineering dept, SS Puteri Firus..
left to right, berdiri: 3/E asraf @ a c, 5/E kharti deramai, nazri @ E, C/Eng G.Cheyne a.k.a papa bear, 4/E robby @ luqman, 4/E najib bahwirith @ the italian don, 4/E nik, 2/E syariman @ chip, GPE zul, GPE sani @ adik mowkey, GPE atan, Fitter rahim, Oiler mat rodzian @ mat bond, E/C zarif, aku..
duduk, kiri ke kanan: 3/E yusuf, Fitter ainol, 3/E/C daud @ danny, E/C su, Fitter yusop, E/C adham @ usher, E/C hairy....
duduk, kiri ke kanan: 3/E yusuf, Fitter ainol, 3/E/C daud @ danny, E/C su, Fitter yusop, E/C adham @ usher, E/C hairy....
posted by tawil @ 11:32
0 comments
alop...dah dekat satu minggu aku cuti...first cuti aku lepas aku start keje...well...I SOOO DAMN BORED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! macam banyak je tanda seruan..but it's one way to show how bored i've been...bukan nye busan pasai jumpa family ek..jgn salah anggap..tah le..duk darat macam tak best lak rasa..tah...jalan jalan pun best jugak nih..tapi takde geng and tak tau nak gi mana..asyik duk lepak kl jer..buhsan...anyway cuti aku abih dalam 7 minggu lagi +/- 2 minggu..anyone have a good programe..ajak aku weih!!!jgn tinggal kan daku..sesapa yg nak cuti cuti mesia pun slambe je ajak aku..aku nak ikut............
posted by tawil @ 01:16
0 comments
