Eat: Go Burger Kitchen, Puchong

Remember my last post about the burgers in Smashies? I said then that, there are so many burgers joint mushrooming faster than I can say “Buuuurgers”. Well, guess what there’s another new burger place and this time, it’s at Setiawalk, Puchong.

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Before I go on about the food, let me just say that I hate that place. Setiawalk is the new hip and happening place to be in Puchong area, especially among couples, families and the young people. The concept is lovely, they have a lake(?)-ish place and boardwalk with restaurants lined alongside. But, parking there is absolutely horrible. It is very confusing and the spaces are very weirdly allocated albeit, being pretty huge. And it turns out that I parked close to the mall area when the restaurants were actually miles away from the mall. =.=” Like wtf. So, if you are heading to the restaurants, park near the blocks. It’s like office blocks at the higher floor and restaurants at the ground floor.

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Now, finding this place is also a pain. I was there early, but I actually got lost trying to find Go Burger Kitchen. To make matters worse, I didn’t see any directory around the area. I walked for at least 30 minutes with my heels, before I finally found it. It was located on the first floor, so you would have to take the stairs up. You can take the stairs up once you see BMS Organics. If you take the lift, look out for the door scribbled with words (as shown in the picture above) because you will be greeted by doors when you take the lift up.

The Menu | A really huge menu, written with chalks on a wall painted with chalkboard paint.

Now that I know such paint existed, I am so going to paint my wall with this paint.

So anyway, let’s get on with the burgers shall we? They will be pictures of a number of the burgers but I only managed to try a few of the burgers. So for those that I did try, I’ll comment on them but those that I hadn’t, well you be the judge yourself from the pictures, yea?

The Hungry Hog, RM25 | Two pork patties, double cheese, double bacon, onions, pickles, lettuce and tomatoes

I had a taste of the patty and I quite like it. It was marinated well, but the patty were thinner than what I was used to. The charcoal bun was soft and easy to eat. (I didn’t really get a taste of this burger, just the patty.) If you’re wondering where the bacon is in the picture above, it was because of the angle of the picture taken. You’ll find the double bacon below.

The Hungry Hog, RM25 | Ta-da! The double bacon in full blown 900px. ;)

Swiss Piggy, RM20 | Pork patty, swiss cheese, sautéed mushrooms and grilled onions

The mushrooms used here were Champignon mushrooms, which pretty much reminds me canned button mushrooms that my mom used to cook. I found it funny that they used this mushroom to sautéed as I would have chosen to use Swiss brown instead. They are more flavorful, IMHO. This is the Go Burger Kitchen’s best seller. Looks delish, right?

Go! Chicken, RM18 | Grilled chicken breast, cheddar cheese, caramelized onions, lettuce and tomato

I love the sesame buns used for this burger, it is such a nice change compared to the common black charcoal buns. Nowadays, everyone is going black and that becomes the norm. The cheese appears somewhat transparent here because it was flame grilled before being served.

Go! Vege, RM15 | Mushroom, cheese, hash brown patty, onions, lettuce and tomato

Vegetarian burger have never looked so good before, I would actually eat this burger. Although I would say the price is a bit steep for a vege burger. The next few burgers are ones that I actually tried and tasted, so I guess the review actually starts here. :) Also, point to note that these burgers are actually part of a special menu in which the recipes are still a work-in-progress.

Das Nürnberger, RM35 | Nürnberger sausage patty, grilled onions, double cheese, bacon and mustard

This is probably the most hideous looking burger I have ever seen, but it was also the first and the best sausage burger I have ever tasted. It is served rolled up, logically it isn’t the typical type of burger to eat using your hands, I used a knife and a fork to eat this. The sausage was really tasty with spices and the beef bacon was just mhmm-awesome. Usually served with pork bacon which apparently, would be a better pairing. Also, this burger is pricier than the rest because it is 5oz compared to the 4oz patties.

El Chorizo, RM27 | Pork patty, Chorizo sausages, double cheese, GBK salsa, pringles

I have never tasted Chorizo sausages and I had no idea they were this tasty. It was slightly spicy and totally flavorful. I really suck at describing flavors, but this is the bomb. The sausages are imported from Spain, so you can be assured that this is as authentic as it can get. I don’t know what to say about having Pringles in the burger, it’s a nice touch but one I don’t feel necessary. (Maybe cause I ate it separately.) Also, I didn’t really taste any salsa sauce in this, but overall I loved the burger.

The Goblin, RM27 | Beef patty, grilled beef bacon and cream mustard spinach

I CAN HAZ 10 OF THIS AND I WILL DIE HAPPY. I’m dead serious about how good this was. But, this is just my opinion okay, don’t come and hunt me down when if you didn’t like it that much as I do. It’s a downright, super simple burger, even you can make it at home if you’re like a chef. But no one, has ever thought of marrying creamy spinach with patties so kudos to Chef Rao. He is the chef and the owner of Go Burger Kitchen, super nice and friendly guy. He appreciates comments on his burgers, so the next time you’re there, let him know what you liked or disliked about the burgers.

The Goblin, RM27 | Cross section of the burger. Yummy!

If I am not mistaken most of the the burgers have tomato paste as a base and if it comes with cheese, it would be flame grilled with a torch. All burgers comes with fries (made in house, with no added preservatives) and a drink.

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Fanta drink | Served in old school glass bottles. The Coca Cola has a really nice vintage feel.

Flamed grilled Goblin, RM27 | Cross El Chorizo. Usually the cheese would be flamed grilled over patties.

Sauces | GBK Mild Mustard, Chili, Catsup, Mayo

Cepek? | Never played this game, no idea how to play. But, ;)

Marilyn | Love the deco in the place, it is a pretty cool place to hang out and chill.

HAHA | The guys at GBK have a really good sense of humor. :)

<3 | I do, and I’m definitely going back. Especially so, because Chef Rao said he’ll make even more improvements on the burger.

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&. Thanks to Foodirector and Go Burger Kitchen for having me. +

Pictures in this post were shot in RAW with an Olympus EPL5 with (mostly) 14-42mm kit lens and some with Panasonic Leica 25mm f1.4. Edited using Adobe Lightroom.

Snaps: Markets @Jaya One

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After years of not being able to attend Markets in Jaya One, I finally managed to head down there last weekend. I’ll be completely honest and say that within five seconds, I just went….”whaaat? this is the bazaar?”. Within five minutes, I was already bored. Why? Maybe I have had my expectation sky high. I thought it would be like those summer bazaar they have in the west. It have the similar feel to how The Curve’s weekend bazaar is like, except more spacious. Maybe I had expected more festivity with girls going all out to dress up. Except they don’t. They do dress up, with less extravagant and more ordinary basics. Not much of fashion scene going on here, for a fashion bazaar. Oh, well.

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This is my first time shooting, and the girls were gracious enough to let me take a picture of them. Picture in this post are shot with a Nikon D7000 and a Nikon 50mm f1.8 AF D lens.

#TSDayOut to Skypark Subang

Every month or so, the awesome peeps from Tourism Selangor will organize a fun day out. It’ll be somewhere in Selangor (of course!) and it will probably be at a place you never thought of going to for a day trip. That’s the whole concept of the #TSDayOut, short for Tourism Selangor Day Out. Now, I have been following @TourismSelangor on Twitter for some time and I have always somehow seen posts about the TS Day Out, but I never did have a chance to join them. I never thought I could, because I never came across a place to sign up for it.

Until one fine day, of course. It was a fine day indeed; the skies were blue, the sun was shinning and the birds were chirping when I actually came across a tweet by Tourism Selangor that, the applications for #TSDayOut was open. Yay, like finally! I signed up for it, waited patiently with fingers crossed that I will finally get to for it. And ….

Ta-da! Obviously, since the post is titled as such, you would have known that I was selected to join the Day Out but still.. Haha. It is pretty exciting to finally get to head out one of these trips, I’m like a virgin #TSDayOut-er. And this time, we are brought to the Skypark Terminal of the Lapangan Terbang Sultan Abdul Aziz Shah. Do you know what my dad (or maybe almost everyone else I know) call this place? The old airport.

Completely honest, I only vaguely remember going there once when I was really really young. I don’t remember much since, but the airport didn’t that much of impression on me. Years later, going back there, I am surprised at how modern it looks like. It almost look like a shopping mall, if I’m not mistaken they have refurbished it.

So, what did we do in Skypark Subang?

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We started the Day Out with a tour of the Subang airport, with each of us being given a pass, allowing us access to the areas of the airport. Apparently, if you lose this pass a police report has to be made. It is that strict, but hey, this affects the airport security. Hence, the need for that.

And this is the check-in counter. All together, there is only 13 counters for check-ins, significantly less than KLIA since there are less flights operating here. If I’m not mistaken only Firefly and Berjaya Air fly from this airport. If anything, the whole check in process seems a lot less stressful than in KLIA. Something I’d greatly appreciate especially before I take off to my vacation destination.

Basically, for the airport tour we started the tour from the passenger’s perspective, starting right from the check-in counter, and then moving on along to the security checks before heading to the departure lounge.

And at the departure lounge, we met these gorgeous air stewardess from Firefly decked in the signature color of the airline, bright cheery orange.

The highlight of the tour would of course, be seeing the propeller fan airplane on the runway strip. :) An airport tour wouldn’t be complete without seeing an airplane, right? This is my first time seeing a propeller plane up close, and it was indeed interesting to see it took off as well. However, we weren’t allowed to get on the runway and we had to stand on the walkway. This picture was shot, zoomed with my Olympus EPL kit lens.

And another picture, before take off. During the take-off, it can get a bit noisy. I do wonder if the noise can be heard from inside the plane. I have never flew with Firefly before, so I can’t tell. I do wish we could have a tour and perhaps, a ride around Kuala Lumpur in the plane. :P Now, that would be fantastic. We could probably have airplane food for lunch, and maybe a crash course on how to be air steward or stewardess?

While we were there, we managed to catch the pilots and the stewardess from the previous flight which just landed. I have to say the Firefly stewardess are really friendly and cheerful. :) They were smiling for us, once they saw the lot of us standing by the walkway armed with our ‘weapon’ of choice. Ahem, our cameras.

And, that wraps up the airport tour. The first one I ever been one to. Now I didn’t have any expectation on the tour, prior to this. While it was nice that we managed to walk around the airport, understanding a bit more of the process, I would have loved if we managed to see more behind the scenes of how the airport works. This is in terms of the operation. We were brought into the Firefly control room, but we didn’t manage to see how the control was being handled and no pictures were allowed there. I supposed that could be confidential information there. Even so, it would be nice to hear how the control was being organized. Maybe a mock up would be good. I mean, I have seen those in movies, but I do wonder if it works the same way in reality.

Ah, another thing I would like to see in an airport tour is how the food is being loaded into airplane and how does the stewardess prepares the meal when on board? I always wonder how they do that. Where do they keep hundred packs of food in the plane? I know they are packed into tiny boxes, but still, right? Oh, oh and also the flow of the baggage. You know how you check in your baggage? Where do they go to after that? Is it like in the Monster’s Inc movie, where you have tonnes of door flying around? So, maybe there were tonnes of bag on the conveyor belt?

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This is just some of us, and going around the air port wearing matching T-shirts feels like I’m back on a school trip to somewhere. Haha. This was shot when we were on our way to the SimFlightKL

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If you would love to try to fly a plane without going through the hassle of going to a flying school, you can do that in SimFlightKL. It’s basically a simulation, but definitely much more advanced than those video games one, the controller/buttons/stuffs on the control panel is actually from a real plane. So this is as real as it gets. I tried my hands on trying to land the Boeing 737 and well, I didn’t crash the plane! Haha, it landed but it was off the runway by a bit. Okay, maybe a lot. Haha.

This is the Boeing 737 simulator. A pilot will sit next to you explaining what and how the controls work. And they would basically guide you. As you know, I never been one to play games or like flying, so when she explained, I didn’t understand a thing! I bet the boys would be better at this.

And this is the Airbus A320 simulator. They actually fitted the whole cockpit into the place, and this simulator actually moves. The Boeing one doesn’t, that is just stagnant. This one follows the airplane movement and of course, the screen changes according to where you’re flying to. This is really as real as it can get. You can choose to fly from almost any airport at all. Super uber cool! Didn’t get to try to fly this, but oh well.

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And that’s a wrap of my first ever #TSDayOut! It was a really fun and different experience, visiting the airport again after so long and trying my hands on the simulator. After the session with SimFlightKL, we headed over to the Peugeot lounge to have lunch served by Bubba Gump Shrimp and Co. I love their other food more than their shrimps, to be honest. Heh.

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Till next time, lovelies. (Also, I can’t wait to go on the next Day Out!)

Eat: Smashies (Burgers!), Setapak

Like fashion, there are trends for just about anything else. It was trendy to get an iPhone when it was first launched some years back. Of course, now Samsung spawns devices every few months. It’s getting hard to catch up, you know. Just like how there are so many burgers joint mushrooming faster than I can say “Buuuurgers”.

Honestly, I have lost count. The first I know was myBurgerLab, thanks to a friend who was very fond of them. Next thing I know, there are places like Burger Junkyard, Burgertory… you get what I mean. And now, will you be glad to know that they is another burger place called Smashies? The peeps in Setapak would probably be, considering the other burgers places are in PJ.

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I Am Single, RM11 | Black bun, single beef patty and cheese (veggies too).

This was my first bite from Smashies Burger, i.e the one that sets the first impression for me. I like the beef patty, it was juicy and chewable soft. As the name of the restaurant would suggest, this burger joint ‘smashes’ their patty to cook them, hence Smashies. From what I understand, there is a technique to smash cook these patty. Leave them too long, they would be too dry. But these patties I had here, were juicy, nice and fresh.

Lord of the Mess, RM17 | Single beef patty with cheese, fried portobello mushroom, fried nachos

This was something different with nachos, but because the burger was so huge it was difficult to eat them all together that I ended up eating them bits by bits. As usual, I loved the patty. I wished they had more portobello mushrooms for this, though.

Hot Chicks, RM14 | Single chicken patty with cheese, pineapple, sunny side up egg, hot sauce.

This is one hot gooey juicy goodness, I can’t get enough of. I had no idea there were pineapples in them, until I took a bite and then, the sweet pineapple taste coupled with the tangy hot sauce… ahhh, so good. It is very very messy, use all ten fingers to fully enjoy the experience. Haha. Chicken patty was okay, nothing fantastic.

Hot Chicks, RM14 | Another picture because it’s too delish! You can see the golden juicy goodness here. Trust me, it’s not too sauce-y.

Chicken Run, RM12.50 | Fried chicken, pineapple, tartar sauce and hot sauce.

I didn’t try this because I personally am not a fan of fried chicken patty.

Twillight Bella, RM11 | Single grilled portobello mushroom with cheese.

The buns for these were really soft, it almost felt like sponge cake. Especially since it was the orange flavoured ones. The mushrooms were good, but I’d still pick patties over this. If you’re a vegetarian though, this is quite nice and something different.

Shroom Bomb, RM17 | Double fried portobello patties with mozarella and cheddar cheese, tartar sauce

This was so so freaking mega huge. Like really huge I cannot imagine even eating it. Haha. I didn’t try this, but cheese lovers should. It has no meat, vegetarian since it is just mushrooms and loads of cheese. Some commented that the batter masked some of the taste of the cheesy mushrooms.

Shroom Bomb, RM17 | It is oozing with cheese, overloaded with them!

Red Moo, RM19 | Single patty with cheese, hash brown,bacon, sunny side up egg

I didn’t get to try this, but it does look really good. I mean it has bacon, patty, egg and hash brown all in one burger! Can it anymore perfect than that? I will probably hop by there again and will try this the next time.

 One More Night, RM18 | Double patties and double cheese

Red Moo, RM15 | Single patty with cheese, hash brown, fried egg, extra hot sauce

Fries (300g), RM7 | Cajun seasoned, served with cheese and hot sauce.

I didn’t like the fries one bit, it wasn’t fluffy or soft. It was bit hard and just plain salty. The sauces were also just mediocre. I don’t think it complemented well.

Onion Rings, RM7 | Served with the same sauces as the fries.

Never fancied onion rings and after having these, I still don’t. So, you can say it was just okay. It’s onion rings, not that mind blowing of a food if you ask me.

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This burger joint may just be another burger place, with a couple hits and misses but it would still be worth a shot. Especially for burgers like Hot Chick. That is probably one burger I would actually have cravings for, because it is that good. :)

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&. Thanks to Foodirector and Smashies for having me. +