Wild Time at Wild Rice

Ok, we're writing about this place called Wild Rice, not because it's one of the better restaurants around, but more because the hotel room rates at Boulevard included breakfast.

So when you've paid for breakfast, you's have to go for breakfast. You's got to do what you's got to do!

Wild Rice had a nice balcony area for those who like to sit down & slowly take their time to read the morning papers, have their breakfast & sip their coffee. That didn't include us. We're with the other group - the one with not enough time, always squeezing out every drop of minute for shopping, & aircond intolerant.

Inside, huge red lanterns adorn the ceilings giving it a very oriental feeling.

Breakfast here is buffet style. Pick a plate & fill it up. They've got the usual local dishes like bee hoon, nasi lemak & sausages, eggs, baked beans, toast, pastries, etc.

This is the main dining area. I thought the zebra designs was a wierd choice for the carpet. It confused me. I kept thinking it had a wildlife theme. Wild Rice = Wild Life.

This must be the area for lone diners. So secluded. So ... sad & lonely. There's the paintings again. But this one looks harmless. Probably by another painter. Whew.

Usually at any buffet, I would go for at least 3 rounds (Local nasi lemak, Western breakfast, Toast, Cereal, Fruits). But like I said. We were in a rush.

So Nee had this. No description needed.

And I had this.

See the soft boiled egg? They had them readied in little bowls with glad wrap on them, on top of the steamer containers. I like.

And to satisfwy the wittle boy inside me - corn fwakes - YAYY!


At this point, Nee made a passing remark: The food tastes just like Cititel Hotel's.
I think she's right. After all, they're both under the same management.

How was the food? Look at the pictures. They don't look too great eh? In fact, they tasted exactly like how they looked. If I were to give a grade, it'd have to be hovering around 65-70%.

The Defection to Hotel Boulevard

Our Cititel Hotel has forsaken us! Apparently their business has been bombastically booming & they didn't have rooms when we checked with them. And since their rates (RM250) were almost matching Boulevard's (RM270), we sold our loyalty off. We took a room at Boulevard.

Actually this business of loyalty is just for dramatic effect only lah. Both the hotels are under the same management - CHM.

But between both the hotels, you'd start to feel the price difference right from inside the lift.

Wahh, RM20 difference & the lift has computer graphics display panel.


The first thing you'd notice about Hotel Boulevard's room is that it's quite spacious.

In fact, it had enough space for more than two people. Unlike Cititel, you don't have to ask for extra pillows.

If you're creative enough, you can always find enough space to stash a few relatives here & there.





The next thing you'd notice about Hotel Boulevard is that the paintings on the wall are ugly.

Whether it's hanging at the lobby, or at the restaurant, or in the rooms, they're all by the same painter. Very unfortunate. I try not to look at this wall most of the time.


The toilet's also very generous with space.


Unfortunately, Nee splashed her way thru before I could take untouched beautiful & serene pictures.

It is believed that all humans originated from Mother Africa.

And shower heads all over the world originated from this Big Mama. This was the biggest shower head I've ever seen. It's about a foot in diameter. No kidding.

Nee has a very peculiar ritual. Whenever we check into a new hotel room, she'd be the first one to hit the toilet. Then immediately after that she would be glued to bed & the TV. And most of the time, she would lucky enough cos somehow or rather, some kind of Hong Kong TVB drama would be showing.


Hotel Boulevard is located next to Midvalley Megamall's South Court Entrance (the one with Esquire Kitchen & Girls). There is a connecting doorway from the hotel lift area to the mall. It took this uncle & auntie a while to realise that.

Oh, the RM20 difference also includes an ironing set in the cabinet.

I guess you get what you pay for. No money, no honey.

The Dome

I had a very strange craving on Thursday for American breakfast. I did not know what hit me, but whatever it was, I knew I had to have a piece of that great Americana - sausages, greasy bacon, eggs & big fat pancakes. We did one round at Coffee Bean at the Kuching International Airport (of all places) before we left for KL. That was not greasy enough. It was way too healthy.

So naturally when we reached KL, I was tuned in to anything that might have been even remotely similar to what an American breakfast should be. That's when heaven was suddenly very kind to me.

Yeah baby. Bring it on. Load up the sugar and grease!

It's... so... beautiful... I wanted to cry.

We were in KL, and I guess it didn't matter which DOME we were in since the food is the same any which branch you go to.

What's dome without a dome? I'm sure this has something directly to do with the name of the company. It seems to be like one of those Da Vinci code thingy. Show this to my grandma & she'll think it's an upside down wok.

Nice pose sista.

Dome Club Sandwich with juicy fries. Did I mention the fries were JUICY?


Banana Burst.

And finally, the great grand heavy weight of the traditional American breakfast!

Big fat pancakes almost submerged in thick maple syrup with berries & fresh cheese. Heaven help me!

For franchise food, Dome is actually pretty good and consistent. But our plans for Chillis was totally spoilt because we had too much at Dome. It was about 4.30pm and that was dinner. I will not be eating pancakes for a while after today.

Our Hurricane KL Trip

Oh, we haven't told you. Both Nee & I were away in KL for a two-day Hurricane trip. Among the other more serious duties, it was another opportunity for Nee to stock up her baking ingredients & her MNG collection.

It wasn't so much a food trip this time, so you may think that our choice of restaurants were a bit off. But as usual, off or not off, we started eating even before we boarded the plane. It was sort of a pre-KL eating frenzy warm-up.

We don't usually hang around places like Coffee Bean cos we've past that stage of hanging out in cool places to be seen & to be cool. There's no point for us to induldge ourselves in this kind of pastime anymore cos nobody's looking at us anyway, & we're helplessly transitioning into the uncle auntie phase. That is definitely not a cool thing.

But at that point in time it seemed like the only 'safe' place to be when your flight is delayed, & you dread thinking about the food on board Airasia. Plus, it had the magic thing - free wifi! For a food blogger, food & internet is a deadly combination.

Oh look! It's Terri's A Daily Obsession! (Free advert although she doesn't need it anymore)


Anyway, here's what we got.

Chef's Tuna with Focaccia bread. Healthy!

Oh BTW, the actual serving is about double of what you see in the photos. We only realised we forgot to take pictures when we were walloping halfway through.

I had a sudden craving attack for American breakfast & this was the closest Coffee Bean could ever get to that.

Break O' Day. Nice!

Excellent Salad.

Oh look! A hurricane just swept thru town!

Really, we never did expect to enjoy this little meal amidst the tension during a delayed flight. It was really a very pleasant surprise.

Coffee Bean, you go boy!

P.S. We didn't touch a single drop of coffee.
P.P.S. Marybrown's opening at the depature hall very soon.
P.P.P.S. OMG I hope this recent craving for commercial food is just a passing craving. I pray our standards will not drop down to that level.

Christmas in KL

Here are a few pictures we took of the Christmas decoration in KL. A few only lah. We were on the go with shopping, so taking pictures was really at the very very back end of our minds. Imagine when the bus conductor says 'Ahh, masuk lagi. belakang lagi. Lagi Lagi. ' That's how far back it was.

This is the Christmas tree at Cititel Hotel, where we were staying.

I loved the lights. You don't get those kind of lights in the jungles of Kuching.

Usually the photos we take end up looking not as good as really being there. But somehow this one actually looked exactly like being there. Not bad for a lazy photographer like me. Don't ask me how I did this. Nowadays I have my camera sensitivity set to the highest ISO at 3200. So I just snap whatever is indoors with that.

When we got to Megamall Central Court, we were greeted by this huge display of lights on the centerstage.

There were a lot of scheduled musical performances on stage. This is one of them.

We didn't know what it was about & being Malaysians, we didn't even bother to find out. We just knew that it wasn't a story about shopping.

We didn't know what kind of theme this was but the decor had some kind of moss covered egg shaped rock. Maybe it was environmental.

And we also didn't know why there was this grass thing going on.

But we took pictures anyway, just in case, so that we wouldn't lose.

Nee also took one.

The difference between our photos is that mine looks dorky & her's got a bit of effort in posing.

Megamall had a different Christmas decor on every wing. That's how much they spent to be competitive.

This is at South Court. Not as exciting, but people just have to have their photos taken anyway.

There's this one display which we really liked. This is one of the most creative ones that we've seen.

I guess the display worked cos we were suckered into buying two slices of cakes to try. I chose this one. It's called a Bavaria coffee or cappucino or something.

And Nee picked this one out. It's a mango swiss roll something.

Guess what? They both suck.

It's strange. You'd expect that KL being a big city, would have people with very sophisticated taste. But rich cakes are hard to find there. It seems that they don't seem to mind light spongy cakes like this & similar ones from Secret Recipe.

KL people seem to go for convenience. As long as the food is a little over the average, then it's ok. Both Nee & I concluded that probably that's the reason why a lot of food franchises from KL doesn't really work here in Kuching. In Kuching, when something doesn't taste nice, they'll just drive on to the next one. Everything else is 15 minutes apart.

Surprise! We Were in KL!

Hi to all our readers! Sorry for not posting over the last two days. But thank you all for dropping by anyway. We appreciate that. :)

We were actually in KL on Monday. This was one of our annual shopping trips. Whenever we're there, we made sure to stay at Cititel Hotel at Midvalley.

This hotel has become something like our second home.

The rooms may be a bit small. But that didn't really matter. What really mattered was that it was NEXT TO MEGAsuperrrMALL.


For lazy people like us, this was a very convenient arrangement. This meant that there was very minimal movement required of us from the bed straight down to the shops, and back again to the bed at the end of the day. No hassles with the taxis & the KL jam. If Megamall had rooms, we'd stay there, and shop from our bed.

Anyway, we got our one year supply of new clothes. That should last us through the Chinese New Year & the whole of next year. For many of you who might not be aware, Kuching don't have clothes. We only have dried leaves strung together. That's why we need to make the trip every year.

This trip was also an opportunity for Nee to stock up on her baking ingredients. She was shopping like she owned a baking factory. You should have seen us. If you were there, you'd think we were geting ready for a major flood in Sarawak.

People probably thought we came from the jungle. We were like mountain people coming down to the big city.

I don't know about Kuching, but the Christmas mood was really ON in KL. We just couldn't understand why there were so many people at Megamall. It was full of people even on a working day.

Then we realised that half the people there were either from Kuching or from Sibu. You could easily tell the Foochows apart from the rest. They're usually loud & you could hear them coming around the corner.

Do you remember how the birds fly & the turtles swim to other continents when the season changes? Well, Sarawakians are like those animals. They migrate during the Holiday season.