Trace Restaurant and Bar at Element by Westin Hotel – 10 August 2018

The entrance to the restaurant

Bar area and also the entrance

Relaxing area

This year, I celebrated my birthday at this restaurant. Since my birthday fell on a weekday, this restaurant was very quiet. They served local and western fusion cuisine and the best thing is you get to see an aerial view of certain buildings in Kuala Lumpur as this restaurant is situated on the 40^th floor of the Ilham Tower.

As a starter, they will serve you complimentary fish cracker and Thai chili sauce.

Fish cracker

We ordered: -

Lamb Kuzi RM42.00. A big portion of lamb curry, comes with biryani rice, chutney and papadam. The lamb meat was quite tender and not quite spicy for the curry.

Check out the lamb

Beef It Up Pizza RM49.00. The pizza had a thick and soft crust, and was topped with pepperoni beef, streaky beef, grilled pineapple, jalapeno and thick cheese. The jalapeno adds a hint of spiciness to the pizza. If your kid wants to eat this, you need to remove the jalapeno, otherwise it could b too spicy for them.

Beef It Up Pizza

Satay (1/2 dozen) RM28.00. The satay tasted nice as the meat was tender, served with ketupat (rice cube dumpling), mixed of cucumber and onions and peanut and sambal sauce. The ketupat was kind of a disappointment as it was tough (seems like it was not heated up properly and just came out from fridge). If given a choice, I would still prefer the hawkers’ satay anytime.

Satay

The price for the food and drinks is affordable. We were quite lucky to have Maybank credit card where we managed to get 50% discount on food and beverage for minimum of 2 diners. If you have CIMB credit card, it’s 40% discount instead. Not sure when the promotions will end. 

Nice place to dine, looking out to the skyline of KL.  

The details of the restaurant:

Trace Restaurant and Bar

40^th Floor, Ilham Tower

8, Jalan Binjai

50450 Kuala Lumpur

Tel: 03-2771 3388

Opens everyday – 11.00am -10.00 pm

Website: http://www.elementkualalumpur.com/dining                      

Old Spice Café at M City – 10 March 2018

We were passing by the main entrance at M City and saw this café. We checked out the menu and decided to give it a try since it’s new. 

The café was quite quiet at the time (and on another occasion I visited since). It was quite easy to get a table. They serve fusion food, i.e. local Malaysian, Western and World cuisines. 

The menu:-

We ordered the following:-

Breakfast set – RM19.80, comes with 2 hash browns, 2 small roasted tomatoes, baked beans, 1 fried egg, fried mushrooms, 2 sausages, 2 stripes of beef bacon and 4 triangle toasts with butter. It’s very normal meal, but tasted good. The best will be the crispy hash browns.

Singapore Fried Meehon (Seafood) – RM14.90, the portion was huge when it came and I thought I would not be able to finish it. There were small prawns (not like in the picture of the menu), squibs, cut celery, spring onions, carrot and slice red chilly fried with the meehoon. It was actually quite good and I finished it all. It's not spicy but you can request for cut chillies.  

Roti Jala and Curry Chicken - RM8.90. As you can see, 5 roti jala and not many pieces of chicken and only 1 potato. The curry was not too spicy. It tasted alright. 

Nasi with Ayam Masak Merah set dinner – RM18.90, comes with acar, iced lemon tea and 1 scoop of ice cream. The Ayam Masak Merah was not spicy although it looked very red and spicy. It was quite good dish. Again, not enough of chicken for you to finish that mountain rice!

The service of this restaurant is good. Perhaps as there were not many customers. When I was looking around the café, I was told that if you order from an apartment within M City, they will deliver the food to your doorstep for free.

Not many tables, just imagine if it's a full house

The ambience of the café was good and it was nicely decorated with lots of things from the UK. They even have a huge projector on their wall for you to watch shows (no sound though). The price is on the slightly high side but overall, I will come back here again as the food was not too bad.

The details of the restauarant:

Old Spice Café, M City

R05-G Old Spice Café

326 Jalan Ampang

50430 Kuala Lumpur

Tel: 03- 2715 8123

Mobile: 019-691 2815

Email: info@oldspicecafe.my

Opens everyday from 9am-2am

Macha & Co (Banana Leaf Restaurant) – 21 January 2018

We passed by this restaurant and it was crowded. We told ourselves that the next time we are at the Curve, we must try the Indian food in this restaurant.

We were lucky as we didn't have to queue during dinner time on a Sunday evening. We arrived before 7pm and we got ourselves a table. Here is the menu:-

We ordered the following: -

Banana Leaf Set Meal – RM9.90 per set, comes with either white or brown rice, 3 types of vegetable curry, papadam and choose the type of curry (chicken, lamb, fish or dhal) you want on your rice.

Kurma Chicken Curry Tavams – RM7.50. The curry was slightly sweet and the chicken was fried and thereafter put into the curry. The chicken was not boneless either. I would not recommend this dish. It was not up to my expectation of what chicken kurma is supposed to be.

Lamb Curry Tavams – RM12.00. There were not many lamb cubes in the curry and mostly it was added with potatoes. However, the meat was tender and was not chewy.

Roti Tissue – RM5.00. Kids just love Roti Tissue. It’s tall, crispy and slightly sweet. There was no honey or condensed milk added to it.

Teh Tarik (hot) – RM2.60

Cincau (cold) – RM3.50.


The service of this restaurant is fast. The price was alright and reasonable. It’s more or less the price you pay if you were to have banana leaf rice at those famous Lebuh Ampang restaurants. I would say it’s like a modern type banana leaf restaurant with air-cond and nice ambience. However, you can’t compare the curries that are served at this restaurant with those in Lebuh Ampang; the curries at Lebuh Ampang are much better and tastier compared to this restaurant. Perhaps, it is also to suit the taste buds of the many foreigners that frequent this restaurant.

Overall, we paid RM55.45, inclusive of GST 6% and service charge 10%.

The details of the restaurant:

Macha & Co. (Banana Leaf Restaurant)
Lot G41, Ground Floor
The Curve Mutiara Damansara
47810 Petaling Jaya
Selangor Darul Ehsan
Tel: 03-7726 3366
Opens everyday

Runners Café (Taman Paramount) – 9 December 2017

As we were shopping for lights at Wong Lighting, Paramount, we came across this café and I was like “Let’s go inside and try”. So we went in at around 4pm and it was empty. We were given our menus and asked to place our orders and make payment at the cashier. This café only accepts cash and no credit or debit cards.     

Below are the special promotions:

Once you order your food, you will be given a number in the form of a trophy

                                                                                            

We ordered: -

Black Pepper Chicken Chop with French Fries RM22.00. A reasonable portion of crispy chicken meat and the chicken was quite tender. The black pepper sauce was alright, a little bit on a sweet side and it was not diluted.

Chicago Marathon RM15.00. It’s a hot dog with mustard and mayonaise, wrapped with lettuce and slightly toasted bread (which was quite nice). As for the sides, there were crisps and sliced mango and tomatoes on top of lettuce.

Mango Passion Chia Seed Sparkling Juice RM13.00 and Pineapple Lime Sparkling Juice RM9.00. Mango Passion was the recommended drink and it was quite refreshing.

The café was nicely decorated with all the marathon medals (I’m sure the medals belong to Chua Wen Kiat, the co-founder of this café) and there were also other medals being decorated to form the shape of a running man. A very nice, warm and cozy place with free wifi. You can get parking easily in front of the café or nearby. The price for the food and drinks is affordable but certain dishes may perhaps be on the pricey side. 

The details of the restaurant:

Runners.cafe

4, Jalan 20/16A

Taman Paramount

46300 Petaling Jaya

Selangor Darul Ehsan  

Tel: 019-2656568

Email: chua@runners.cafe

Opens everyday – 11.00am -10.00 pm

                       

They have another branch at:-

7-21-M (Upstairs)

Jalan Jalil Perkasa 14

Aked Esplanad, Bukit Jalil

57000 Kuala Lumpur