Hubby who went to park his car earlier had paid for one hour parking fee and the man refused to go elsewhere ‘cos he said the money will be wasted. So, I had to stand there, pondering hard whether I should eat at the Bulgarian restaurant next door. I had a rather unpleasant experience in my last visit to this Bulgarian restaurant. We can’t think of any other places serving pork except Edelweiss so we decided to eat Bulgarian.

They were having some set dinner at only RM50++ per person which include a glass of red wine, soup or appetizer, main meal and dessert. We ordered two sets because we know their portions are huge. My hubby ordered a plate of spaghetti with cream sauce from the ala carte menu.

My son ordered the salad which is loaded with shrimps and smoked salmon. Meanwhile, I had the mushroom soup which is tasty. They also provide generous portion of butter and hot dinner rolls.

My son’s steak with cheese and potatoes is overflowing with melted cheese. The meal come with a portion of pickled cabbage, asparagus, fries and other type of greens.

I love the pork knuckle which is huge. The pork knuckle is roasted till tender, with some melt in the mouth fats. They give some barbeque sauce but I didn’t pour the sauce because the knuckle is tasty as it is.

With the two main meals and the spaghetti, four of us were already struggling to finish them. Lucky we didn’t order three meals or we would need to pack them again.

The dessert was banana cheese cake and it was yummy.

I think this restaurant has changed all their waiters and waitresses. The new batch seems better compared to the previous visit where they tried too hard to be hospitable.

The only bleh of the evening was this moron who was trying to show off his cheap glass of red wine. He sat there, trying to impress the girlfriend by swirling the glass almost the whole time! Doh! Just because he watched some crappy Astro AEC cookshow, he must think he is some fine dining connoisseur. I feel like going over to his table and pour my glass of red wine on his head and tell him to stop swirling because the action is giving me headache. LOL.

The cost of the dinner? It was just RM155 which compared to Secret Recipe, is value for money. (Read my bad review of Secret Recipe)

It is actually not difficult to make burger patties. All we used are :

INGREDIENTS TO MAKE BURGER PATTIES

600 grams minced pork
1/2 cup bread crumbs (we used the yellowish type meant for deep frying)
1 egg
1/2 cup chopped onions
1 tablespoon cornflour

Flavourings (depending on what you have)

dash of Worchestershire sauce
dash of Maggi seasoning (the yellow cap, thin, tall bottle with square bottom?)
dash of black pepper
dash of cayenne pepper (a mix of spices)
salt

Mix all the ingredients and flavourings in a big bowl and smash the blob of minced meat against the inner side of the bowl to sort of firm up the patty. Then, using a clean plastic bag or cling wrap, roll the patty to the thickness you want. Leave this layer of meat in the fridge for a few hours for it to firm up further.

Using an appropriate size cup or bowl, ‘cut’ the patty into equal sizes and wrap them into clingwraps and freeze if you want to store the balance. Alternately, you can roll the patty into balls, and then, flatten it. We found that to be more tedious than to ‘cut’ them like how you cut cookies.

My two older sons pan fried the burger patty till cook and brown. Then, they wrap it with egg like how burger stalls do. Plenty of black pepper, mayonnaise, Worchestershire sauce and cheese made the burger as good as Ramly’s. Only less halal.

I never like the idea of buying local burgers from the burger stalls because the meat patty contains a lot of animal fats. If you don’t believe, try frying a piece and see how much fats oozed out. I wonder which part of the animal they use for these burgers?

Now, barbee burger is a easily available because we can store them in the fridge. You can use minced chicken or minced beef but we have never try them yet.

So, I thought that this bread (before baking) with pieces of bacon, sunflower seeds and poppy seeds are going to make me an Italian. After all, it took me two days. But the texture is not what I had expected.

The bread is to be baked with a pan of water to make it soft. The texture is soft and the crust crispy. However, it is rather dense and heavy.

The saving grace is the pieces of bacon on top which makes the bread really yummy. We finished the one with the bacon but the other plain loaf is still standing on my dining table. I have turned it into mini pizzas by baking with ham and cheese.

So pissed that my excitement of a light and fluffy bread turned into :

Eldest son : What is this mom? Bread or cake? Like huat koay.
Husband : Why the bread so heavy? Like kueh bingka
#2 son : Like mee-koo
#3 son : Why the bread so sourish smell one?
#5 son : I don’t want the crust, take away the black-black thing…ewwsss

I went to this newly opened restaurant call Vintage Bulgarian. I love the cosy multi-level restaurant with large slab of stones on the wall. It is just so homely with the chequered table cloth and all. However, the place was a bit packed and I was sitting one level below the kitchen and toilet. The above is the view I get. Being there, it means two things. Some smoker one level above actually put his hand with cigarette out, resting on the rail. The ashes dropped on my hubby’s head because he was sitting below. This spoilt the man of the house mood already. Then, one of the waitress tripped and dropped some plates as she was going into the kitchen. If that’s not distracting enough, the Bulgarian owner almost tripped too. Bad idea to have the kitchen door opened to stair case, huh?

Hubby ordered the pork on skewers. The meat is rather tough and over burnt.

I asked them for a pork dish with the most fats. They recommended pork ribs to me. Again, it is too tough and over grilled. However, what I think they should improve is their presentation. With the meaty pork ribs, they should at least serve some sourish salad. Instead, what they put on the plate, without any arrangements are boiled carrots, cauliflower, broccoli, potato and a bunch of alfafa without any dressing. Therefore, the plate of pork (both hubby and mine) are totally dry with no sauces and nothing to balance out the taste.

My two older sons had the set meal. The main dish is the chicken spindle and it is a little bit like chicken cordon bleu, only much bigger, much tougher and much boring-er.

The set meal consist of an appetiser, the main meal and dessert. The appetiser is a dish call kuypolo or something like that. The price of the dish is RM10. I would not recommend it because it is three pieces of toasted french loaf and a dip that is sourish and leaves a strong onion smell in your breath. The description was roasted eggplant and peppers dip. The eggplant seeds and the strong onion flavour is a bit turn off. Again, the presentation of the appetiser has much to improve because they slapped on three pieces of toast and a simple bowl of greenish stuff on a plate.

I guess I must have watched too much AFC food channel and I have become such a critic! However, it will be good for the Bulgarian owner to relook into their food presentation because it looks like their kitchen is concerned in churning out foods without caring for how it looks.

So, after the main meal, I was hoping the dessert will pacify me to write a much nicer review. However, the bavlava turned out to be a very, very rubbery pastry with overly sweet honey and nothing much to remember.

Meanwhile, my other son complained so much about the crepe. It is two pieces of rubbery and tough crepe with dribble of chocolate. Totally, unimpressive and tasteless. They joked about the crepe which I won’t dare to repeat what they said.

So, yeah, not a place I would recommend. As we were walking out after finishing our dinner, I smelled a very strong stench of fish from the diners outside. Lucky we didn’t order the fish and chips which is part of the set meal.

It is a pity that a nice establishment like this did not work harder to produce tastier morsels. Oh ya, I saw one dish in the appetiser section which sounds interesting. It consists of chicken liver, chicken gizzards and venison tripe. However, it costs RM25, so forget it. I am not going to spend RM25 to eat chicken innards, you know?

The total bill for our dinner is RM135.

There was an alumni dinner consisting of 250 people and they requested for a whole grilled lamb. Then, another roasted pig was thrown in as roasted pork goes perfectly with liquor. So, on that night, I pig out on roasted pig and grilled lamb.

Notice how they chopped off the head of the lamb but not so for roasted pig? I wonder why? Maybe pig is awfully cute even when roasted but maybe lamb looks gory?

The dinner was catered from Tauree (I am not promoting so you got to find their contact if you wish to hire them) and overall, it is not bad. We had hawker stalls with char koay teow, laksa, pasembur, mee mamak, ice kacang and lots more. Per head was RM18 but it is not inclusive of the roasted lamb. The lamb is about RM600+.