Sunday, February 5, 2012

KL Food Diary, Post #5 - Bangsar Cafes

Antipodean, 20 Jalan Telawi 2, Bangsar


So I was back in KL, and yet somehow missing spending time in the cafes of Melbourne... Weird. How I longed for clean floors, wooden chairs and tables, the smell of coffee and bread wafting in the air. Of course, I didn't realise that I was actually missing the Melbourne cafe scene at the time, but the moment I walked into Antipodean in Bangsar, I knew. Don't get me wrong - I will always love the greasy 'mamak' stalls with their various rotis, and the corner Chinese restaurants with the amazing seafood, and the tiny night market stalls crammed lining the streets near my house on Thursday nights. But in the midst of all the noise and chaos that is Malaysian eateries, I do long for the occasional 'escape' to the cafes dotted around Bangsar.

Antipodean was introduced to me by my sister who couldn't stop gushing about how amazing their pumpkin pasta dish was. I was slightly skeptical as to whether or not it was actually that good... Because I don't really like pumpkin that much, and I can be quite fussy with my food, more so than my sister. But to my delight, the pasta actually was very tasty! It was quite interesting because they had tossed it with some fennel - giving it a slightly curry-like flavour. The feta and pumpkin complemented each other beautifully. So it was a good dish after all :)

Pumpkin, sage and feta pasta

My health-conscious cousin had the roasted vege salad which she said was pretty good.

Roast vege salad with feta
I had the lime-infused lamb kebabs with couscous. The lamb must have been Australian lamb - it was soooo good! It was nice and moist, and cooked just right. They could've been a little more creative with their presentation of this dish, but it tasted so good, I can't really complain :)

We completed our meals with some healthy freshly-squeezed fruit juices. Yum! The whole bill came to around RM 60 (about AUD 18).

Lime-infused lamb kebab with couscous

Our healthy fresh fruit juices :)


The Daily Grind, Bangsar Village 1





My sister insisted that I HAD to try the red velvet cake from The Daily Grind. So I did. (At this point, I was full to the point of exploding from my previous eating experiences in the day).

It was a very pretty cake - perfect layers, perfect deep red-coloured cake, sandwiched and coated with perfectly iced icing. So it looked perfect. Taste-wise... I can't say it was a bad tasting cake - it did actually taste really good. The only slight let-down was the the icing was plain vanilla cream icing. Using cream cheese frosting instead of vanilla icing would've been the bees knees for me. Then I'd be raving about how amazing it looked AND tasted. But perhaps they didn't want such a rich icing to go on top of this cake, which is fair enough considering this lighter vanilla icing may appeal to more of their customers.

The cafe itself is quite interesting. It's got lots of red pipes running along the walls. Kinda like what you'd see in basement carparks. I thought it was quite a cool and unique interior feature. The brick walls are cool too :)

They have many other cakes on sale at this place, and a very extensive lunch menu as well. I didn't have the capacity to sample any more of their dishes, but it's probably worth the try if you're ever in the neighbourhood :)


Almost there :)