Dinner at Esquire Kitchen (14/09)

The day after dinner at Nihon Kai, my parents and I went out for our usual grocery shopping which was usually followed by dinner. Since I needed to buy some household items for Uni, we decided to go to Atria since there was a Giant there. And so we ended up eating at Esquire Kitchen in Atria, another restaurant we frequent to. Though Esquire is quite common and has been around for a long time, I am still inspired to feature it in my Brighter Side blog.

We ordered about 4 dishes but my dad was the only one who ordered a bowl of rice to go with the dishes. I ordered another individual noodle dish whilst mum ate the dishes with no rice.

We chose...

this... -Pork ribs with old cucumber soup-

this... -Chicken with chashew nuts in paprika sauce-

this....
-Soft tofu with mushroom and veggies-

These dishes (including the noodle dish) were special because I managed to order them in Mandarin!!! (and a tinge of Cantonese la) Yaaaay!! :-) My dad went out for awhile so he assigned us to make the orders and since the captain spoke in Cantonese at first, so i responded in Cantonese...lor . I then switched to Mandarin as I was more comfortable speaking in Mandarin. Well.. at least, it made good practice. :-)

I did not manage to take pictures of the 'Noodles with Fried sauce' dish because I destroyed it before I thought of my blog. -sweat-

The soup was very well boiled. The flavour was there, though I swear I did not see a full pork rib. There were only small pieces of meat in the soup. Sigh..I suppose the current economic situation has made them stingy. Speaking of which, we noticed the other dishes were much smaller than before. Sigh. We can't escape the fact that Malaysia is seriously suffering from the current inflationary pressures and political situation.

Right, back to the food, the chicken with paprika was just right. Not too salty. The chicken was tender and not too old. The dried chillies were edible too, you can suck on them to get the sauce out that had been absorbed by the chillies. Because the sauce was quite thick, you obviously need to eat this with bread or rice.

The tofu, on the other hand, was plain..of course, this was already expected. Mum made the right choice in choosing these dishes because one was tasty, the other was plain. Again, it was all about the combination of too 'opposites' as I've mentioned in my previous post before.

My dad was still not full and satisfied, thus he decided to order one of my favourite dishes..

this!!!-Eggplant cooked Sze Chuan style-

Erm.. well..dad ordered this dish..so I did not get the chance to practice my Mandarin or Cantonese. -sweat-

Eggplants/brinjals have this distinct creamy taste that keeps me going for more. So this dish was definitely creamy and it was so soft and smooth. I even found the spring onions addictive. Sure it was oily..but this was (and still is) one of my favourite dishes!! :-D

However, like other dishes, it shrunk in size...-sniff..wipes tears from eyes-