Sometimes I really take it for granted. I assume that all mamaks would serve at least "decent" roti. But it would seem I have been mistaken. A recent quick meeting with my landlord at the neighbourhood mamak proved me very, very wrong.

The roti telur is completely inedible. Nevermind the extremely weak curry and diluted dhal - the roti was dry and paper-like. Neither crispy nor soft - it was like trying to eat cardboard, and it tasted like it, too. There was hardly any noticeable amount of egg in it. Usually the part where there's egg would be soft, but this did not taste like there was any egg at all. The problem is, I could see some yellow and white - so it did have egg.

Even the onions tastes quite raw - it didn't seem like they took a lot of effort to cook my breakfast.

Worst. Breakfast. Ever.At least the teh tarik was drinkable. Thick and foamy, but a little heavy on the "powdery" tea taste, but forgiveable.

Interesting cold spicy chicken appetizer - taste kinda like kimchi, minus the sourness. The cold chicken meat does not take with me very well. I found the chicken tastes undercooked. The sauce tastes nice though; good balance or spicy and salty.I'm generally a fan of eggs, and anything with the "holy trinity" of eggs (salted egg, chicken's egg, and century egg) has my favour. However the "egg cake" at Paradise Dynasty didn't quite strike a chord with me. It's cold (intentionally so) and doesn't have much flavour beyond salty and dense.

I guess I still like my savoury stuff hot.

Recently I decided to indulge in the recent "trend" of ramen. Many places have popped up recently, but this day I decided to try one of the earlier birds.

Prices were lower, but you also get less.

Number one transgression that I cannot forgive - they use chicken soup instead of pork (it is the same soup base for all their ramen). It does not have the same taste and does not achieve the same effect at all. The soup was as thick as how pork-based soup should be, but lacked all character beyond that "maggi chicken soup" taste.

I would probably try overlooking this transgression (but probably still fail) if at least they made this choice because they opt not to serve any pork at all; but this is not the case. Most ramen came with some sort of pork - and mine was a single slice of pork. They had options for more pork for a higher price, but that would make it match the price of other better ramen places which served killer soup instead of the weak stuff at Marutama.

The onsen egg was decent but not really exciting - the textures were about right (firm outside, semi-runny yolk) but I guess the chicken soup spoiled everything.

Twenty-ringgit maggi mee. Gosh. Never again.

Oh dear! Probably the only thing I actually totally disliked at Tong Pak Fu. The mung bean cream dessert tasted a little too natural (natural flavours is their ideology). It is not sufficiently sweetened, and had too much dried orange peel that it tasted like beans and orange peel only.

Texture was thick enough, but without the sweetness and the right balance, it just felt like I was eating mashed boiled green beans. Not salty, not sweet, just... weird.

I didn't even finish this dessert.

Oh dear, sometimes I make really poor choices. This is one of them. The smoked turkey pizza at Prego. The smoked turkey was perfectly salty - not too much, not too little; but was a little bit on the dry side. Quantity was not enough to cover the extremely dry pizza.

It's supposed to have smoked turkey, asparagus, pesto and goat’s cheese; but there was not even a hint of noticeable cheese of any sort and slight coloring of pesto which I couldn't even taste. The asparagus was nice and tender, but so what, really?

Pizza base was thin and crispy as usual but, again, so what if there's no flavour or moisture in most of the other ingredients.

Look at it - it even looks like it's some kind of disaster pizza that an amateur kitchen helper would create in a B-grade cafe.