wordspics.com Of Foods and Travels

It was quite late evening on one fine Saturday when I was searching for dinner. Not wanting to eat something similar which I would normally eat on weekdays, off I went to this place called Xenri D’RiverView, a Japanese restaurant which I found from the net.

Like Nihon Kai Japanese Restaurant, this one is located off the busy street of Old Klang Road (BM : Jalan Kelang Lama). Occupying 2 shops at ground floor, it is hard to notice this said restaurant due to almost non-existence of signboard. If you know the location of Wisma Elken, then you are pretty safe.

Upon entering the restaurant, one could only see that there are limited table and chairs. But fret not, as they do offer Tatami seats too, which is located at another side. Apart from the table settings, one could feel that this restaurant has this cosy, close-to-quiet environment, or at least that’s how I felt on that day as everybody was minding their own business.

A couple of glance thru the menu, one would notice that they emphasize on quality dining experience. After all, they have already ‘displayed’ the experience via the decoration of the restaurant.

The ever favourite drink in Japanese restaurant; green tea.

As for starter trying to be healthy here, Seafood Salad would be it. Tuna, prawns and some-other-fish-that-I-do-not-know-of, it blended quite well with the sesame sauce they provided. For health freaks out there, try this salad!!

Initially, I wanted to try their Beef Sirloin. But, through recommendation / suggestion, all thanks to the waitress, and since the price is the same, I chose Teppan Beef Course Meal instead.

Beef cubes were pan-fried to perfection. Though it was cooked till well done, surprisingly, it wasn’t chewy-rubbery as I thought it would be. They managed to retain the juicy-buttery flavour in it. On the side, it was fried bean sprouts with sliced garlic.

Instead of normal fragrant white rice, they gave garlic fried rice. It was good. Not that great but good. And as usual, there were salad, fruits and soup to go along with it.

Apart from that, to make sure I’m stuffed, I ordered Sushi Pizza too. Funky name, isn’t it. Haha. Chopped salmon with cheese sauce above, it has this slight burnt taste yet cheesy flavour to it. Apart from the slight overly wet rice, I guess it’s a good dish to try.

Another dish we ordered that day was Tori Katsu Don. It pretty common dish, I would say, in Japanese restaurants. Underneath of the fried egg, there’s fried chicken with special sauce-soaked rice. It would great if the fried chicken was crispy but it was all good.

For desserts; Cream Tsutsumi and Mochi Ice Cream. I wanted to try their Sakura Mochi but due to popular demand / hot favourite, there weren’t any left on that day. So yeah, I’ve to settle for the first two.

They are awesomely cute yet awesomely little (portion wise). I could probably fit 5 of them in one mouth. Bahhh… But they tasted great. Seriously.

All in all, the dinner was fine. Good service, fresh food, reasonable portion and great ambience, from my point of view, the price they charge for the food and the service is quite justifiable. It is definitely more expensive than the ones by Sushi King and Sushi Zanmai. But hey, they’ve got a branch in Hong Kong too, if that’s if you wanna take into account as well, it shows how good they are. Oh yes, they do have Wagyu beef in their menu and on Sundays, they offer lunch buffet.

Address :
No. 9, Wisma Elken,
Jalan 4/137C,
Batu 5,
Jalan Kelang Lama,
58000 Kuala Lumpur.

Tel No. : (03) 7783 8118

Map :

*Blue circle denotes the location of the restaurant

On one fine day, out of sudden-ness, I packed my (camera) bag and off I went down south; the historical land of Malacca for a short visit again.

Upon arriving, I made my way to the city to stone there to for a walk. I took these…

1 hour later, I stopped by at Jonker 88 and ate this…

While stoning inside Jonker 88 shop, I snapped this…

Right after that, I met up with Jason and we drank this…

… while waiting for Jian so we could have dinner together. We ate here and by 8pm, I left for KL. More pics at my Flickr…

-The End-

Yet, after much consideration and numerous borrows, I’ve finally decided to get one for personal use. It was rather a difficult decision to make but with the powah of the internet, the verdict was made within 412318 hours.

There are different brands which offer different quality individually. But, at the end of the day, after various researches (via internet, duh!), due to its availability and wide range of products as well as price factor, I chose Manfrotto instead of other brands such as Markins and Giottos.

Then, came the type of head. IIANM, there are 3 types; ball, geared and three-way. Each of them has pros and cons. One might good in one situation but not in others and so on. I was torn between choosing a ball or a three-way as I might do panorama landscape photography in future. Three-way is the obvious choice in this category as it offers precision but having said that, I went for ball head. I didn’t not choose 484RC2 ball head (like the one I used during my Taiwan trip) as it supports up to 4kg only. Instead, I chose 488RC2 ball head for teh future.

From the specs sheet, it weighs around 0.7kg and it could support at maximum weight of 8kg. Apart from that, it has separate lock on the panoramic axis which is a good thing as it eliminates the ability of losing framing. And as usual, it has safety latch on the quick release to avoid any mishaps.

Once it is attached to Manfrotto 190XPROB, it weighs a spanking of 2.5kg!! It’s not an ideal weight if you want bring it out for traveling (especially backpacking). It looks alright when I latch my Canon EOS 40D onto this ball head. The size  for both of them somehow proportional to each other. But this is what it will looked like when I use it with…

Weird, eh….