My Very First Blog

In my last post, I intended to blog about my dining experience at Jogoya but ended up blogging about art sculptures and Vietnamese oil paintings, of all things! I am not even good at art to begin with, but then to appreciate art, you don't have to be good at it, do you?

Anyway, let's get back to what I really wanted to blog about, and that's Jogoya buffet at Starhill. I know, countless bloggers have already blogged about this wonderful dining place. But that's them. Now it's my turn. Anyway, it's my first time in Jogoya so I really have to blog about it.

If you read my previous post, you would know that I and my friend went for some window shopping at Pavilion before we went to Jogoya. It's the natural thing to do as we had 2 hours of time to kill. Well, were we glad we did that because we were really hungry after all that walking in Pavilion! So when we reached Jogoya front entrance at about 5.30pm, we were all ready to eat! But you can't go in unless you pay first. That's right! You have to pay before eating. That's how it is with Jogoya.

Looking around, I was amazed at the amount of food and the varieties available. Although Jogoya is primarily known as a Japanese buffet restaurant, it actually offered much, much more. There were in fact so many choices of food, I was totally at a loss at what to eat!

Luckily my friend had eaten here before and she guided me around.

I started with the lobster salad, escargot, lobster and slices of abalones.



The lobster salad was delicious! I took a few more rounds of that later, but had to be careful not to over do it, because there were many more food waiting for me!

There's one drink that no one will miss in Jogoya and that is the coconut drink. It was so popular I could see that every table had at least one coconut on it.



As for me, I found that I could not stop drinking it! It was just so sweet, cooling and refreshing! My friend promised me that by the time the buffet ended, I would have drunk from at least 3 coconuts. And you know what, she was right. As it turned out, I took a total of 4 coconuts! I wish I could ta pau (take away) them and stock them in my fridge at home!

Next, I went for my favourite Japanese edamame beans, genki handroll, sushi and some Japanese vegetable mix.



Notice I took another round of the lobster salad (in between the edamame beans and genki handroll) in the photo above!

Oh, before I forget, there's this very tasty Chinese herbal soup I must tell you! I forgot to take a photo of it, but it was absolutely delicious! You know those nice soups with chicken, red dates, kei chee (gojiberries), yuk chuk and pak khei. Except for this one, I tasted a hint of ginseng in it as well! It was like those home made Chinese herbal soup that you would love to drink during those cold, wet rainy days.

Next, I went for the lamb, garlic oyster and the crab otak-otak. I didn't quite like the otak-otak, though.



Then I had some satay, crab, prawn and unagi. Oh I love the unagi! I took lots and lots of unagi because I knew how expensive this meat was when I ordered ala carte at Japanese restaurants!



I did not forget about the sashimi of course. How could one forget about sashimi in a Japanese buffet? I love the raw fishes and the scallops!



If you notice, that's my second round of edamame beans ( I just love them!) and my third round of the lobster salad! And then there's the pei dan or century egg with slices of pickled ginger.

Sorry some of the photos did not turn out well here. I guess the environment was a little dim and it was a bit tricky to take photos using my Sony Ericsson C902 handphone as it does not work very well in dim lightings.

Oh, if you love wine, then I have got good news for you! Here in Jogoya, you can have unlimited, free flow of red wine and other types of alcoholic drinks! Some may say these are cheap wines, but I don't really bother too much as I'm not an expert at drinking wines!

Although I am not that much of a drinker, I still helped myself to a glass of red wine and a glass of mai tai. I also drank this drink called African Coffee - I really do not know if it's just coffee or it was another alcoholic drink as I tasted a hint of alcohol in it.



That's the mai tai beside the red wine. It tasted a little bitter at first, but I gradually found it to be very smooth and nice! Expert wine drinkers may scoff at my praises, but you would have to excuse me as I am very much an amateur when it comes to wine.

As I am not a drinker, I can get drunk easily. Normally before I get drunk, I would feel hot inside my body. Surprisingly, after drinking 3 different types of alcoholic drinks, I did not even feel hot! Could it be that I am getting better at drinking?

Perhaps it was the coconuts that helped cool me down?

Or perhaps it was these guilingao or tortoise jelly that I took?



The black coloured balls are the guilingao and the brownish ball next to them is actually green tea jelly. For the uninitiated, the guilingao is slightly bitter in taste and is dipped in honey to make it more palatable.

At Jogoya, you can eat unlimited amount of these guilingao, which I did! Some say the authentic ones are made from tortoise shell, hence the name tortoise jelly but I really don't know if that's true. Anyway, it helps to detoxify and is especially good for the skin. Perhaps because of its detoxyfing attributes, I managed to drink those alcoholic drinks without getting drunk.

Or was it the combination of coconut and tortoise jelly that did it? In any case, that's a weird combination! But who knows, this might just be the solution to cure those hangovers after a night of drinking!

By the way, I found that the red wine paired very nicely with fruits!



There were lots of nice desserts to choose from and I was spoilt for choice. First, I had these cakes which I shared with my friend.



Then, we had the tiramisu and the pumpkin panna cotta. No, this has nothing to do with terra cotta from China. The panna cotta is actually an Italian dessert made by simmering together milk, cream and sugar and mixing this with gelatin, then letting it cool until set.



The one on the left is the tiramisu and on the right is the pumpkin panna cotta. Both tasted delicious, but the pumpkin was my absolute favourite! I went for a few more rounds of it!

And what is a buffet without ice cream, right? But in Jogoya it's not just any ice creams. No, it's Haagen-Dazs ice creams! The famous expensive brand of ice cream is yours for the taking, in unlimited amounts!



I mixed some grapes with the ice cream. It was really nice! Look, there were just two of us, and I took three bowls! Well, I could have taken more if not for the long queue at the ice cream counter.

That taught me one thing, so here's a piece of advice. The next time you go Jogoya, take the Haagen-Dazs ice cream earlier. Most people would eat ice cream last as desserts at the end of their meals, so there would be a lot of people queuing for it. Eat it earlier and you can avoid the queue!

There were some dishes that needed to be cooked. Jogoya has a very effective system for this. They provide 3 metal clips on every table and all you need to do is to drop the metal clips with your table number on the plate of the dish you wanted to the chefs. They will then deliver to your table once the food is ready. Isn't that brilliant!



I ordered the stingray and salmon to be cooked using these metal clips. But I forgot to take pictures of them! Anyway, they were really good!

I don't think I have tried everything there is to eat in Jogoya. There were simply too many choices, too many varieties!

The dinner was supposed to end at 9.30pm and we diners were supposed to leave to make way for those coming in for the supper buffet scheduled to start at 9.40pm and end at midnight. But guess what? I and my friend did not leave. We sat there chit chatting and as midnight drew closer, we even took a few more rounds of food! No one asked us to leave, so why bother!

Time really flies when you are enjoying yourself, doesn't it? When my friend looked at her watch and saw that it's almost 11.30pm, we thought we had better make our move. My goodness, only after we left did we realise we were in Jogoya for 6 hours! Did we make the money we paid worth its full value or what!

The bill might be a tad expensive at RM101.20 per person, but if I were to eat all those food I ate ala carte, I believe it would cost me much more than that! So in a way, it was not really that expensive after all! Imagine the free flow of wine, unlimited bowls of Haagen-Dazs ice creams, those lobsters, abalones, and I have not even mentioned oysters, although I have to say that the best, juiciest and biggest oysters I have eaten so far were at Lemon Garden Cafe in Shangri-La Hotel in KL.

Currently, there's a promotion of 50% discount for ladies only till 19th December 2008. This offer applies to all day long buffet from Mondays to Thursdays, and lunch and late lunch on Fridays. Now this is what I call sex discrimination! How come men don't get to enjoy the 50% discount?

If the management thinks that men eat more than women, they are wrong! Some women eat a lot, more than men! Not only that, they choose the most expensive foods and eat lots of them!

Now, since they don't check your IC, if I can do a Mrs Doubtfire, I may just take advantage of this promotion! Now anyone wants to help me transform?