Philadelphia: Malaysian in Philly & Amis Trattoria

Best thing about traveling is discovering something new, but Malaysian?  Never thought I would be eating Malaysian in Philly.  I can only name one Malaysian restaurant I've tried in LA, but coworker and I were down to try something new, so for lunch, we walked over to Chinatown, which was about 2 blocks away from the convention center.

Penang

117 N 10th St 

Chinatown

Philadelphia, PA 19107 

penangusa.com

Apparently, Penang is a popular chain on the East Coast.  Good Yelp and Zagat rating too.

Our server was this old dude and he recommended us the Roti Canai.  Said that it was a must. Very glad we ordered it cause it was damn tasty.

Roti Canai, a Malaysian favorite, is a crispy style pancake from India, and at Penang, they give you a little cup of chicken potato curry as dipping sauce.  After I tried the curry, I sorta regretted ordering noodles instead of a curry cause it was fantastic.

But still, I was glad with my Chow Kueh Teow.  It's another Malaysian staple: stir fried flat rice noodles with fresh shrimp, squid, bean sprouts, eggs, soy sauce, and chili paste.  First time trying it!  I got it medium spicy, but totally could have increased the heat level.

Coworker's Mee Goreng, which is Indian style stir-fried egg noodles in a mild dried squid sauce with tofu, potato, shrimp, egg, grounded peanut, and bean sprouts.  It was his first time eating anything from Southeast Asia besides Thai food.  I tried a little bit and gotta say, it is good. Looks like pad thai, but definitely doesn't taste like it!

After eating at Penang, I've decided to seek out some Malaysian restaurant in LA!  A little late to the party, but I liked what I tried in Philly!

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Last time at Philly for the company dinner, we went to Fogo de Chao.  While Fogo is good, I wanted something that I can't get in LA, and with me in charge of reserving a restaurant for the company dinner this year, I chose an Italian restaurant, Amis Trattoria, which is about 15-20 minutes walking from the convention.

Oh also, sorry for the pics... since I was with some of our sales rep from other regions and customers, I didn't want to be rude and hold everybody so I tried to take the picture as fast as possible... resulting in some mediocre shots.

Amis Trattoria

412 S 13th St

Washington Square West

Philadelphia, PA 19147

amisphilly.com

Amis Trattoria.

Menu.  Amis'  menu is actually pretty modern for an Italian restaurant so some of the guests from the Midwest and the South, they were a little bit confused.

Open kitchen.  Very dim everywhere else.

Flying Fish Farmhouse Summer Ale.  Decided to go with a beer since our table were more beer folks.  Pretty good choice though!  Very drinkable Belgian brew from New Jersey.

Since most of the folks didn't know what to order except for their main plate, I ordered a few appetizers and the first to arrive was the Mixed Salumi Plate.  It is all made in house!

Mortadella with Hazelnut Honey.  Love moradella and that hazelnut honey is perfect with it.

Rabbit Terrine.  I think some of the folks at our table was weirded out by the rabbit terrine, but after they tried it, they all liked it!  Terrine is sorta like meatloaf, except this one made with rabbit.

Salami del Giorno with marmalade.  Very lightly cured.  

Meatball with tomato potato.  I wanted to try the swordfish meatball but decided that the old fashion meatball is much more familiar to everybody.

Fried cauliflower with Pecorino and salsa rossa.  I'm a sucker for cauliflower, especially ones that are fried!

I actually ordered something else as my main, but they messed up so I got the Rotini as my main.  Came with a variety of mushrooms and a fresh pea ragu.

Huge fan of the pea ragu and they certainly know their cooking time for the pasta!  Perfect texture.

Overall, good dinner, except for the mess up.  Luckily, my pasta was still tasty and I didn't want to make the others wait.  Not too sure how the others felt about Amis since it was a little different from the Italian they are used to, but hopefully they liked it too because these dinners are so important in developing good business relationships!

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After dinner, a coworker and I decided to walk back to our hotel instead of taking the cab to help digest a little bit.  On the way back, I remembered that two years ago, I went to the old fashion ice cream shop called the Franklin Fountain with the same coworker.  He's a huge fan of the sweets so we decided to make a little pit stop on our 30 minute walk back!

Franklin Fountain

116 Market St 

Old City

Philadelphia, PA 19106

franklinfountain.com

Outside of Franklin Fountain.

Inside. Exactly how I remembered.  They definitely go for the old fashion feel.  

Ordering counter with a list of the homemade ice cream available.  

Rather than ordering just ice cream like last time, I went all out and got the Franklin Mint sundae. 

Holy it was a big sundae and so damn good.  I like mint chip so I went full speed for the first half.  The minty Creme de Menthe helped too, but I definitely slowed down quite a bit after that.  The marshmallow glaze was way too thiiick and in the end, I just ate all the ice cream, with about half the glaze left.  

Got back to the hotel with this crazy sugar rush for a good hour or so!

Vancouver: Granville Island Public Market

Sorry for the lack of updates!  Been busy lately and I really wanted to make sure I had free time for this post since I had a ton of fun exploring Granville Island.  I'm a sucker for these sort of public market or farmer's market.  Usually you can find a lot of interesting and unique things that you can't find anywhere else, so I always try to make an effort to visit a local farmer's market if I can when visiting a new place, even if it is one as touristy as the Granville Island Public Market.

Granville Island Public Market

1661 Duranleau St

Granville Island/False Creek

Vancouver, BC V6H 3S3

granvilleisland.com/public-market

Since the market opens fairly early and we were short on time, we woke up around 8am, checked out, took the cab to Granville Island, and started to explore the place.  It wasn't packed but plenty of people already.  Of course another gloomy morning.

It reminds me of a smaller Pike Place Market in Seattle.  Lots of local and organic fresh produce.  Not cheap at all O_o.

Seafood.  Again, not cheap, but the quality of the fish here does look amazing!

This particular vendor had lots fishes that Asians love haha.  

Starting to get crowded around 9am.  Lots of tourists, but plenty of locals as well shopping for the holidays.

One of the butcher shops.  There carry different wild games you don't really see in the States.  I remember seeing a pound of rib eye steak for over $20CAD!  By this point, I have decided that you must be fairly well-off to be buying your grocery here..

Stuart's, one of the first place we stopped by, cause we could actually afford it :P  

Variety of pastries and cookies!

Since the three of us didn't have breakfast yet, we decided to each get something.

I went with my usual Chocolate Croissant.  Chocolate-y, but not as flaky as I'd thought.

Alice's fruit pastry.  I actually like this better than the chocolate croissant. 

Strawberries on the other end!

Calvin's cinnamon roll.  Big!  Probably amazing if it was fresh out of the oven.

The chocolate croissant wasn't enough and as soon as I saw a donut shop, I had to get something.  Gotta eat donuts in every city!

Asian owned!  They had all these Asian flavored donuts.  Very interesting.

Breakfast round two.

I decided to go with the mango filled and the melon cake!  Wasn't a fan of the melon cake donut since the melon flavor was really light.

Mango-filled donut was awesome though!  Just like your normal jelly donut, except this has a mango custard/cream!  Tastes just like your Asian mango candy haha.  

Variety of fresh raviolis!  If we stayed longer and the hotel had a kitchen, definitely all over this.

Crazy packed vendor selling charcuterie.

They have all these crazy house-smoked items!  Wanted to buy a few slices just to try but the line was ridiculous.  I guess many were buying it as gifts to families and for Christmas dinners.

Cheese vendor.

Cheeses.  Some imported, some local.

Of course, gotta have a florist at a market.

After devouring the two donuts, I needed a drink.  Decided to get something from Petit Ami.

Fair trade, organic, estate grown coffee!  Went for the latte.

Latte.  Nothing too fancy. 

The whole time we were in Canada, we were searching for maple flavored gummy bears.  Didn't really know if it existed but we figured there was a very good chance that they do sell it somewhere.  Finally found it at the market!

Calvin super happy with his maple-flavored gummies!  Tasted odd though :P

Fresh wasabi!  $22/100g meant that is is roughly $110/lb of the spicy stuff o_O

Shot of the back of the market.

Want to buy stock to bring home so you can lie to your family and friends about how you spent hours making the soup?  Stock Market is your best friend then!

Before we left, I stopped by Granville Island Tea Company to buy some loose-leaf tea as gifts.  Learned a bit about all the different type of teas.

Decided on the organic Assam and the Formosa Oolong as gifts.  Granville Island Tea Company also sell chai tea, in addition to the loose leaf and the guy helping me out said that the organic Assam was the type of tea they use as base!  As for the oolong tea, Formosa oolong tea is quite common, and my family gets a lot from Taiwan, but I gotta say, the quality from Granville Island Tea Company's pretty good!  Even my mom was impressed.

In the back of the market, in addition to more food vendors, there were a lot of vendors selling paintings, crafts, soap, jewelry, and anything that people hand make.  You can also get a great view of Vancouver so we spent a bit of time outdoors taking pictures.  Since we were short on time and wanted to grab ramen in Vancouver, we did a quick walk and window-shopped through the rest of Granville, then took a cab back to downtown area for lunch.