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: Salt Tasting Room

We wanted to find a place to relax a bit since we didn't know what else to do.  Saw that Salt Tasting Room had a high review on Yelp, so decided to check it out.  Took us awhile to find the place though since it listed an alley as its address, and it really is located in an alley!

Salt Tasting Room

45 Blood Alley Square 

Downtown, Gastown

Vancouver, BC V6B 1A4

salttastingroom.com

Blood Alley.  It is literally located in an alley.

Not much of a sign either o we couldn't find it from the street when we looked it.

Glass of red that I got.  I think it was a sangiovese.

So it turns out this place is a meat & cheese spot only!  Good thing we all like that stuff.

We decided to get 1 meat plate with 3 condiments and 1 cheese plate with 3 condiments as well.  Since we didn't know what to get, we had our server decide for us.

Meat plate with Smoked Beef, Hot Capicola, and Argentinian.  I liked how they write on the side what they served us!

Smoked beef and mustard.  You can use the condiments with any of the meats.  They just placed it like that to make it look better.  The smoked beef sorta looked like tongue haha.

Hot Capicola and basque olives.  Really good capicola.

Argentinian and piparra peppers.  Probably my favorite meat and condiment from that plate.  The Argentinian is very similar to salami.

Our cheese plate!

Local BC chevre and cipollini onions.  Chevre is a spreadable goat cheese.  It was my first time trying cheese from Canada!  Onions were marinated with balsamic so that was very tasty.

La riopelle and quince paste.  Another spreadable cheese.  

Lincolnshire Poacher and cornichons.  Cheese is from UK!

Baguettes for the cheese.

For lunch, they actually have a few items, so we decided to try the grilled cheese combo.

Forgot what cheeses were in there since they change constantly.  Not as oily and I like how they use the panini press.

Salad with pine nuts.  Very light cream dressing.

Butternut squash soup.  I was hoping for tomato soup or something more acidic since it goes well with grilled cheese, but this was good too.  Very smooth.

We ended up sitting there for over an hour just relaxing and sorta planning what to do next.  Since it was pretty empty (afternoon), we had the whole place to ourselves, and it was pretty nice just to be warm, hang out, and eat some great meats and cheeses!

New York: Becco

We were all able to secure a flight out of NYC that week on Friday so Thursday night was our last dinner in NYC.  We walked around Hell's Kitchen for a bit, looking for a place to eat.  At first we though sushi, then it turned into BBQ, and then we finally decided on Becco. 

Becco

355 W 46th St 

Between 9th Ave & 8th Ave 

New York, NY 10036 

Hell's Kitchen

becco-nyc.com

Becco, means to peck and nibble.  The bird logo is quite fitting haha.


Complimentary starters.


I forgot what they called it, but I'm just gonna call it white bean hummus :P  It's exactly like a hummus but instead of garbanzo beans, they use white beans.


Olives.


Assortment of bread.  The bread at the front with the rosemary and caramelized onion was very good.  Salty though.


Becco is known for having a $25 wine list, so we picked a Fattoria Paradiso Sangiovese.


Our antipasti.


Prosciutto San Danielle.  You can choose between San Danielle or di Parma.  I'm a fan of San Danielle.


Chunks of Parmigiano Reggiano.


Tonnato di Vitello.  Roasted veal loin sliced paper thin & topped with diced plum tomato, capers, scallions & tuna aioli.  I was not a fan of this... thanks to the tuna aoili.  It was like tasting creamy canned tuna on top of veal.


So we found out that the only pasta option is if you order the Sinfonia di Paste, which is unlimited pasta.  There's three different pastas daily and those are the options.  Instead of ordering individual pastas, the guys just ordered an entree, with the unlimited pastas as an add-on.  Janice just got the Sinfonia di Paste.


Penne Bolognese.  Probably my favorite out of all of them.  Heaty meat sauce.


Gnocchi Gorgonzola.  It was good, but gnocchi was definitely overcooked so it was very soft and mushy.  


Server serving the spaghetti from the pan.  That's probably the reason why the pastas are so overcooked since it just sits in the pan while the servers are serving it.


Spaghetti Marinara.  Overcooked as well.


Comes with Caesar's Salad.


Jimmy's Porterhouse d’Agnello.  Grilled domestic porterhouse lamb chop with scaffata, and finished with extra virgin olive oil.


Edwin got the Osso Buco alla Becco.  Braised veal shank served with farro tossed with butternut squash.  Very heavy and hearty.  They also give you a small spoon for the marrow.


Link and I went for the Costoletta di Vitello alla Joe.  “Joe’s Veal Chop” grilled & served with garlic mashed potatoes, caramelized shallots & escarole with prosciutto, then finished with extra virgin olive oil.  Very thick piece of veal.  Cooked perfectly.


The super garlicky mashed potato.

In the end, Becco was more like an Italian steakhouse than a pasta place.  Nothing to complain about, but we had crazy food coma once we were done.  I think Edwin, Link, and I were tired both mentally and physically from everything that happened that week when Sandy hit.  It was fun since it was with good friends (bromantic trip) and everything is more fun with alcohol but we were definitely ready to go home.