CheezBox Cafe & Restaurant

We finished watching Iron Man 2 on that day and we have yet to have dinner so we decided to eat at the closest place, which is CheezBox.

This be the signboard and outward look of the restaurant. It's situated just right beside The Mall. Just set foot outside at the main entrance and pass the drink shop Chill and you are totally there. It's fairly new, roughly about 1 or 2 years old, I suppose. The rave about this place is that it sells all sorts of food, mostly western, at a cheap and very affordable price.


This be the outdoor dining of the place, although no one seem to want to sit there and enjoy free TV and stuff, and the workers there didn't even bother to turn on the lights. Typical Bruneians, unable to take the heat and always wanting to have air-conditioning...

This is the stairways upstairs to the indoor dining





This be the interior of the restaurant. Nice, retro style and slightly reminds me of being in Coffee Bean or something, or maybe one of those fancy retro dining club in the '70s or something. There's free internet access, though they're still using the frickin' old Internet Explorer version rather than the new one, and the internet line is really, really, REALLY slow, so I don't even bother anyways.

Here's our drinks. Both of us asked for milk tea, though I totally forgot what flavour my hubby ordered. All I know is that it is a cold drink, while I ordered a hot one, which is chocolate milk tea, just without the jelly pearls


Close-up of our drinks


This is what I ordered: Lamb shanks with mash potatoes and boiled vegetables. They were generous on the potatoes but not the veggie, though the meat was actually pretty huge, though it's technically mostly bones, I suppose. The meat is nice and tender, and at least I'm not having trouble trying to eat it since it slides off the bone pretty smoothly, though some get caught in the edges


This is my hubby's order: medium rare steak with mushroom (or was it black pepper?) along with potato-in-a-jacket and boiled veggie. To be honest, his steak really bloody small, and in fact my hubby got a little jealous seeing my lamb shanks compared to his little itty-bitty one. The potato itself is bigger than the steak. LOL! I tried a bit and it tasted pretty good, though I think I enjoyed my lamb shanks more.

So, got a craving for western food but a little tight in the pocket? Go to this place to try it out. Nice and affordable. Worth the money.

Bombay Palace Restaurant & Catering Services

A new restaurant just recently opened at our area, and since we were craving a bit of Indian food, we decided to venture to this place.

This be the signboard of the restaurant. It's really impressive, like it's really a gateway to North India when you approach the door or something. LOL! I wonder if whoever set this up spent most of his expenses on this rather than the interior itself. And they say Chinese are the only kiasu creatures around XD It's situated in Kiulap area, across the street almost the same row with the Korean restaurant





This be the interior of the restaurant. It's got a really nice comfortable feel to it, almost like a rather high-classed restaurant with the great match of black and red, and the Indian music in the background was rather soothing, though it kinda reminded me of the times when I was a kid and often sit in front of the TV watching those Tamil & Hindi movies (I still can't tell the difference between them, gah!)

This be the menu of the restaurant. It's got a very interesting cover, very Indian feel to it, although it probably had caused me to be approached by the head waiter saying that I should not take pictures. What? I'm just a blogger and you have no disclaimer outside your door saying that I cannot take pictures, so he has no right to say whether or not I can do it. Meh~!

Our appetizer while waiting for our main course to arrive. Nice and crunchy, slightly salted, but more or less nice

We've got our lassi which is nice, cold and sweet. I tend to wonder why is it that Indians can stand eating hot and spicy food all day and not getting problems like heatiness or hemmarhoids or whatever but I guess it's because of the lassi that cooled them down somehow. The wonders yoghurt could do, huh?

This is what we ordered: chicken (or was it beef?) masala for my friend (the red one) and fish masala for me (the brown one). They're all rich and tasty, and most importantly: spicy! Spicy in just the right amount to give you a nice kick to it. I could literally feel the prickles on the top of my head (it happens when I eat something really spicy) and my nose was sweating bullets. Thank goodness we had lassi, or we'd be breathing fire while eating.


Close-up of our foodiez, which totally sinful indulgence XD

So, got a craving for Indian food, specifically North Indian? Go ahead and check this out

Cook & Chilli

I went down to Miri with my hubby and my mother-in-law to go survey on potential photo studio places to have our wedding photos done. After finding only two that seemed to be cool (coz it's a Sunday and not much businesses open on Sundays), we decided to do our usual shopping, but first, lunch. We couldn't really decide where to go, so we just tried our luck eating here.

This be the signboard of the restaurant. Never really heard of this place before. It's new and situated at the extended area of Parkson (which we almost bloody couldn't find any parking spaces), and it does have a unique name: Cook & Chilli. Why not Cook & Fry? Or Spices & Chilli? Odd.






This be the interior of the restaurant. Looks almost classy and retro at the same time. The fish tank is cute and the chandeliers were really fancy. The seats were pretty comfy too, though I wonder why was it that there wasn't really that much people


I saw the customer problem as soon as I saw the menu. Everything was so fucking EXPENSIVE~!!! Gah!! No wonder! I bet they used up all their expenses on the utilities, decors and whatnot that they had to mark up the price so damn high~!


All three of us ordered fish & chips because it seemed to be the only thing that is more or less one of the cheapest around in the menu. It tastes pretty good and authentic, but can you imagine it actually costs RM19.90 for this? What did they use to make this with? A barracuda? And they could've been a bit more generous with the fries and mayo.

So if you ever come down to Miri, I would strongly recommend that you attempt this restaurant if you are feeling fat in the wallet only, other than that, if you're a flat broke person, avoid this like the plague!

Restoran Aminah Arif

Back again with another installment of foodiez~! For starters of this month (other than the crappy article that I posted about tea), we decided to entertain my friend's craving of ambuyat, which is a local Brunei delicacy way back when.

This be the signboard of the store that was said to sell the best ambuyat in town. It is situated in the Kiarong area right beside GT Store (I think that's the name) and slightly beside the building where my hubby works. LOL!

Apparently ambuyat was one of the most famous and most staple of foods back then in Brunei during the WWII area. When the Japan dominated the food supply and most of the locals escaped into the jungle, they basically soaked starch with water, turning it into a gooey substance and hunt or grow whatever they can to be made as side dishes to flavour it up and go with the tehcnically tasteless ambuyat, making it something like a substitute for rice. Since then, it officially became Brunei's local delicacy, though my friend said that there was once a tourist who claimed to say it was the worst local food ever! XD Maybe coz he never came to this place before



This be the interior of the shop. It definitely has a Malay feel to it, and being that the population of people here were Malay, it really makes for the atmosphere. While making and waiting for our order, we noticed that the most gender that dominates this customer group was women! Guess it's true that we are getting more daughters than sons nowadays.


We got our ambuyat scooping chopsticks. It's technically a training chopsticks for beginner users, and I even have some at home that I use to cook instant noodles. Heh.

Our dish has arrived. This is our first side dish, which is a type of acar basically made from raw carrots and cucumbers with chili paste as dipping.

This is the official dipping for ambuyat. Guh! I have to be honest, I didn't like it. It's got a very terrible after-taste and it almost has a durian-ish smell to it. Blergh~! I let my friend have it all.

This is pakis, or fern. Tastes pretty good. It's fresh and crunchy, and the sauce is proven a better dip on the ambuyat than the official dip itself, along with sauce of other side dishes as well. It's been a while since I ate this though. I guess this is really one of those Malay dishes

Mince beef chunks on the house! And mostly the fatty part and the tendons too! Mmm~! Sinful indulgence!

Here's the life of the party: the grand ambuyat itself. It really looked like something we'd see inside those starch glue we saw when we were kids during arts and crafts. The way to get to it is to stab the chopsticks into the goop and twirl it around as you pull it up, almost like what you'd do if you're eating spaghetti, only it's a pile of goo. And speaking of which, it really is totally tasteless, and I am really just eating a pile of goo and the sauce is the ones that makes it tasty. Even real rice has more flavouring than this goo, but it's an interesting experience.

Mmm~! My favourite that I ordered as a side dish to go with the ambuyat, which is kangkung~! Ever since my mom-in-law fell for the story about kangkung having bugs that'll kill you in the gut in forwarded mails, kangkung was banned from the kitchen! My most fav veggie banned from the kitchen~!! GAH~!! And I thought you were supposed to eat all kinds of veggie

Then we have the fish which was also part of the ambuyat official side dish. Tastes pretty good. The sauce seemed like a mild version of the official dip, but tastes more of the sweet & sour kind, though I think they need more salt.

So, if you got a craving for ambuyat or just feeling a little patriotic and want to eat and get to know Brunei's local food, go to this restaurant to have the best.

Are you drinking the right tea?

1. People who use their 'brain' to work or students who study hard day and night.
--- Should drink more Chrysanthemum Tea.

2. People who need a lot of body energy to work or those people who exercise a lot everyday.
--- Should drink Wu Loong Tea.

3. People who travel on a bike or work in dirty and polluted places.
--- Should drink Green Tea.

4. For people who like to sit down all day long and not do anything, even exercising

--- Must drink Green Tea and Flower Tea.

5. People who smoke and drink a lot of alcoholic drinks.
--- Should drink more Green Tea.

6. Carnivore (i.e. People who must eat meat at least once a day, or feel sickly)
--- Try to drink some Wu Loong Tea.

7. People who go to the washroom too often or not often enough.
--- Should drink more Honey Tea

8. People with high cholesterol and high blood pressure.
--- Wu Loong Tea, Green Tea.

9. Those who work with computers everyday.
--- Need to drink a Lotof Tea (any tea will do)..

Whenever you are working with the computer, you should make some tea; drink it when you are free.

Drinking Tea is healthy, it can protect and prevent the harmful Ultraviolet light from harming us (when using computer).

Furthermore, it can also relief us when we are tired and help make our body feel fresh again.