Good Food with Good People....

Surin & Brenda (affectionately known from now on as Sir & Akka) - called me on Sunday. We met up for lunch and they took me to this awesome place for banana leaf. Ok, before that, I have not expressed my gratitude in meeting this absolutely amazing couple.

We go way back to my days in Ipoh. I was doing my A Levels in ILTI Ipoh in 1996 and that was when I met Mr. Surin (my Law lecturer) and Ms. Brenda (now Mrs). Akka was a final year Law student. We were on the same debating team which made it to the KL National Finals as well. Anyway, to cut long story short, we used to be so close in Ipoh. We met up for makans, tanni sessions, occasional jamming sessions and so on. We also had another partner in crime, well, actually my partner in crime a close friend of mine from Taiping - Ranjit Singh Randhawa. The 4 of us were very close then. As we all moved our separate ways due to work and study commitment, we lost contact for an amazing 8 years.

Now, Akka with her FBI locater skills managed to track me down about 2 months ago. And ever since then it has been the best 2 months I have ever had in KL. For those of you who have not met these people, you won't have the slightest clue how cool and how amazing they are they are. Anyway, from then on, we kept meeting for food and drinks and even just hanging out. Akka (FBI, remember) even managed to get a hold of Ranjit who is currently running Hard Rock Cafe in Makati (Philippines). I knew he was running the Singapore one for a while, but now he is in the Philippines. So, we are glad to keep in contact with him. He will be down soon, so I hope to get a group picture of all of us and post it. So, that is about Sir and Akka. I will be referring to them as Sir and Akka in some of my posts' - so you know who they are now.

Now, getting back to the issue at hand. They took me to this superb restaurant in Hartamas - Yathras. It is an Indian restaurant. Till today, I am very sure that this is the best place I have ever eaten 'yellai sappadu' - a.k.a. banana leaf. There is a good variety of meat and vegetables and the taste...yummy! This is the closest I have eaten to Amma's cooking. Well, till today, no shop has beaten Amma - to be fair, I have eaten in a lot of South Indian or Chettinad eateries. But this one came close. I had chicken parattel, 2 types of veges, appalam, pickles, tairu (yogurt) and rice. Superb! In fact, Appa and Amma will be down this weekend as Appa has a meeting in St. James, Jalan Ipoh on Sat and is conducting the service at St. Mary's Cathedral, KL on Sun. So I will be taking them there for dinner on Sat.

So for those of you who would like to experience one of the best south Indian cuisines there are in town, try Yathras. It is in Hartamas, behind the row of shops where BullDog is located. Or rather on the same row of shops as Backyard.

That is all for now. I will take some pictures of what I am talking about and post it soon.

Cheers!