A Good Dinner

What makes a good dinner?  The food...check.  The company...check.  The conversation..check.

I haven't seen my friend Arrex since forever it seems. Okay, that's an exaggeration, maybe in the last five years or so. Thanks to the power of Facebook we finally found each other.  Dinner plans were made only to be bumped off a week later because of Arrex's busy schedule.

Restaurant of choice: Penang Hill, only because it was at Shangri-La Mall, sort of a midpoint for everyone and the reviews I read are pretty good.  Everyone arrived on time and the chatter started. We had no idea that they had generous servings, good for 2-3 people, and ended up ordering a lot.  More surprising though is the fact that we almost finished everything, credits to me and Arrex.

While waiting for Rivka, we ordered appetizers, soup and salad.  I was so engrossed in the conversation that I forgot to take pictures of some of the dishes.

The Malaysian Beef Wrap is the night's winner thanks to Henry who insisted we order this.  It's beef strips with vegetables in a sweetish sauce (tasted like mayonnaise actually) wrapped in Roti and dipped in curry.  This was so good on its own, the curry is unnecessary. 

 We ordered the Sambal Kangkong just to have some kind of vegetable.  This one's okay, nothing special but it complimented most of the dishes we ordered.

The Thai Grilled Spareribs is worth every calorie, salty and peppery at the same time, the way I prefer my spareribs.  This has a sweet vinegar sauce which again I think is unnecessary.  This porky goodness is good on its own.

The single piece left of our Chicken Pandan is a testament on how we all enjoyed this one.  The chicken was moist, a bit greasy but other than that, this is another yumm-o.

Dishes that I forgot to take pictures of that are: Roti Canai with curry sauce which I enjoyed at first but was quickly overshadowed by the Malaysian Beef Wraps, Tom Yang Goong, sour, sweet and spicy all at the same time, you can taste the cilanro and lemongrass with every spoonful, perfect for the rainy night.  The Yang Chow surprisingly went well with everything.  The only dish that disappointed me was the Crispy Catfish Salad which could've used more green mangoes and was too sweet.  My preference for this salad is a lot of green mangoes, sour, salty with sweet undertones.

After dinner we moved on to Starbucks  and continued our chatter and more laughter.  Everything wrapped up just past midnight to which Arrex exclaimed "Grabe, 5 hours na tayo nagkwentuhan and kulang pa."

When I arrived home I got an email from Rivka, she said, "Good dinner."

It was a good dinner indeed.