The second part of our October break plans was a staycation at the Four Points Sheraton in KL's Chinatown. They had a special deal for families where you paid for one room and got the second room for free with breakfast for everyone, plus a mini-chef class. It was a great price and a great location, so we booked it and set off on Wednesday morning with high hopes.
The drive there was relatively smooth as we're getting better at navigating in KL, but once we got there, there wasn't really a proper place to drive up to the entrance. The main lobby was on the 7th floor not on the ground floor, and there was no one on the ground floor to point us in the right direction. Luckily, right next to the entrance was a public parking lot which we could tell connected to the hotel, so we drove in, parked, and eventually found our way to the lobby. Jeff stayed with the girls while I worked on getting us checked in.
There were lots of great decorative touches, and the lobby was open to the 8th floor as well, so it got lots of light and there was even more room for fun decor.
We got checked in easily and headed up to check out our rooms. As part of the package, the girls got a welcome activity pack, but there was an extra surprise waiting for them in their room, a tent!
There was also a nice surprise for Jeff, traveler friendly outlets.
The rooms were compact, but nicely decorated and the space was used really well. The hotel also has a bar and a restaurant. The bar is called Jann, and it has a happy hour from 4-8, so we left the girls to enjoy their welcome fun, and Jeff and I went down to check out the bar.
The main bar is really cool, but there were people sitting on one side, so I could only get an off center picture.
They have outdoor seating as well, but it had been pouring rain all afternoon, and it didn't seem to be planning to let up any time soon, so Jeff and I got a cozy table in one of the corners. The waitress brought us a menu, and we perused their creative cocktail selection.
I like to try the signature drink if a bar has one and it's up my alley, so I felt like I needed to try Dear Jann, which is a gin cocktail. Jeff was more responsible and picked a rum drink from the happy hour menu.
The Dear Jann was accompanied by what the menu said was her favorite treat, preserved orange peel. It's meant to be a compliment to the drink. It was a salty, sweet, citrus mouth punch, and I only managed a couple.
You can eat a full dinner at the bar, but we settled for trying one of the three kinds of egg rolls that they serve, Peking duck with plum sauce aioli. They were delicious.
I really appreciated the small decorative touches, like the beautiful fabric drink coasters and the pretty pattern on the sauce bowl.
We had been hoping to try one of the Chinatown restaurants, but it was still pouring rain, so we decided our best bet was the hotel restaurant, Quan's Kitchen. We got the girls and headed to the 8th floor. Quan's Kitchen is where the daily buffet breakfast is served, so it's a bit cafeteria style, but it has a really cool open kitchen.
Jeff set the girls up so that they could watch the cooking show.
He ordered seafood aglio olio, and I ordered tiger prawn char kuey teow (a way of frying up noodles). Both our plates came with the same decorations on top. It wasn't terribly photogenic, but it was delicious.
They didn't have anything very simple on the menu, but we managed to get the girls pasta tossed in butter and green beans, which were listed as hericots verts on the menu, a fact which I found perplexing. There are enough languages swirling around KL without throwing French in the mix. The girls declared it all delicious though.
The dessert menu listed carrot cake, a family favorite, so we ordered a couple to share. When they showed up though, we were concerned that our order hadn't translated correctly, because it didn't look like any carrot cake we'd ever seen before.
We did the only thing we could do under the circumstances, dig in and see what we had.
It was decadent. Carrot cake wrapped in cheesecake icing and drizzled in caramel. Yum! We ate it all.
When we went back up to our rooms, we saw a blue light glowing in the distance through the shears, so we opened them up to get a better look.
We looked it up on Google Maps and figured out that it's the National Mosque of Malaysia. We got a better view of things in the day.
The netting behind the mosque is the free flying part of the KL Bird Park, our Thursday morning destination, and across the street from the mosque is the Islamic Arts Museum, our Friday morning destination. I'll do separate blogs on those, but we got up bright and early Thursday ready for an outdoor adventure, and luckily, the weather cooperated.
The breakfast buffet at the hotel was really nice, and it was the first buffet we've done since the pandemic started. Everyone has to be vaccinated or be staying with their vaccinated parents to be at the hotel. You have to wear a mask whenever you leave your table, and each person gets plastic gloves when they enter. It seemed to work. They had a good bread, fruit, and juice selection as well as a salad bar, egg station and interesting Asian and English breakfast options.
As with all breakfast buffets, it took us a while to figure out where things were, but there was plenty of choice, and everyone breakfasted well while we were there.
We had a wonderful time at the Bird Park Thursday morning. Even though we had gotten an early start, it was still hot being outside for so long, so Jeff took the girls to the hotel pool when we got back.
At two, we had to head back up to Quan's Kitchen for the mini-chef class. It was part of our package, but we had no additional information, so we really weren't sure what to expect. Elena was super excited and happily got out of the pool to clean up, but Viv was afraid it would be babyish, so she took some extra convincing.
It turned out that the class was just for the two girls and was taught by one of the sous chefs. That day's menu was egg salad sandwich.
Neither of my girls has ever had an egg salad sandwich, or a hard boiled egg for that matter, so I was interested to see how it would go. The first step was teaching them how to peel a boiled an egg. We showed them how to roll it to break the shell, and then it took a while for them to peel it.
Next up was mashing it and mixing in the mayo.
Then, buttering the bread.
And finally, getting the salad to lettuce ratio just right.
Turns out both my girls prefer triangles to rectangles. Vivian doesn't like mayo or butter very much, so she opted not to eat hers, which was fine because it turns out the Elena LOVES egg salad sandwiches and was happy to eat her sister's too, which she did later that day.
Elena asked if they could do the cooking class again tomorrow, so I signed them up for another round.
I had one more family adventure planned for the day. I wanted us to do some walking around Chinatown. The hotel has a fabulous location right on Petaling Street, the main restaurant and shopping street of the area, so we just walked out the front door and down the street.
At the end of the block it becomes (technically) a pedestrian only street, but we saw cars and motorcycles venturing up it.
The market part is covered, which helps with rain and heat from the sun.
I've seen pre-pandemic pictures where this street was packed, but this is what it looked like Thursday afternoon as we walked through. The good news is that we got some good deals on clothes for the girls, and they were happy by the time we got to the other side.
That was good, because I had one more stop on the agenda, and the street that we came out on was much busier than the street we entered on. We had to use a pedestrian foot bridge to get across it. Then we walked a few more blocks to Central Market.
It looked like they were starting to set up Christmas decorations outside, but it definitely wasn't fully up and running yet. There were a lot of interesting arts and crafts stores inside, but only about half of them were open. We enjoyed walking around though, and Elena especially loved the paintings. We didn't want to push our luck on the rain, so we headed back to the hotel after our walk through.
After our day of adventuring, Jeff and I decided we deserved some us time at Jann's Bar and then out to dinner, so we got the girls room service and headed out. I decided to be responsible and order from the happy hour menu this time, so I got a Coconut Kaya. Jeff, however, was too tempted by a drink that included "duck fat-washed" rum, so that's what he ordered. We started outside for the view.
But the rain clouds were approaching at an alarming pace, so we moved inside before our drinks came. We also got complimentary chips this time.
We also tried the smoked salmon spring rolls with remoulade sauce. I forgot to get a picture, but we decided we liked the duck ones better anyway. It's good that we decided to come in, because the rain started shortly thereafter, and they shut down the outdoor, uncovered seating.
There are so many restaurants to choose from in Chinatown, and I had a long list of recommendations, but we settled on Da Bao, because I love baos, and because the drink menu looked really cool. The downstairs has an open kitchen where you can watch them make the baos, but the guy at the door recommended sitting upstairs, and I've learned that it pays to listen to the guy at the door. We had a clear view of the bar, and we had a lot of fun watching the bartender prepare all the different drinks we tried.
They had an extensive drink menu to choose from, so we worked our way through most of the left hand side.
I started on the right though with a Da Bao G&T (gotta start with signature, especially when there's gin!)
Part of the fun with the drinks was the presentation. Jeff got one called Cooler Than Cool, and it was pretty darn cool.
while I found one called Tea Time Snack that had gin and strawberry jam in it. I was tickled to see that it came with a steaming ice bear.
After a few sips though, he "drowned" and joined his ice friends.
We got food too. I ordered the pork bao, and Jeff ordered the spicy chicken one. We also got pork and shrimp dumplings to share.
The bao were delicious, but the dumplings were in a seafood broth, so they were a bit too fishy for us. We finished up with a third round of drinks, Dark Capirinha for me and The Chosen Juan for Jeff.
It was a great night, with just a short walk back to the hotel at the end of it. The rain had cleared up, so Jeff and I went to the bar patio to grab a few pictures before bed.
He noticed this mural that was lit up between rows of restaurants,
so he zoomed in for a better view.
It was a really cool sign of the revitalization that's happening in the area.
The next morning, our main outing was the Islamic Arts Museum, which will be its own blog. Then, it was back to the hotel for swimming and cooking class. Viv didn't want to swim that day, so Jeff and Elena worked on their acrobatic tricks.
There was no way Viv was missing cooking class though when the recipe was chocolate lave cake.
We quickly made sure Elena understood that this egg was NOT hard boiled and needed to be handled differently. Vivian is getting to be quite good at cracking eggs, but Elena needed some help with her first egg cracking.
The girls added and stirred in all the ingredients, and then carefully poured their concoctions into the waiting aluminum bowls. Then they had to wait about seven minutes for them to cook.
Finally, the cakes emerged and were plated, and the girls poked them to see if lava would indeed flow out. They were not disappointed.
Viv wasted no time eating her lava cake, but Elena did some art work with hers.
For our last staycation night, Vivian did the room service order for her and Elena all by herself, and Jeff and I met up with some friends for drinks and dinner. The weather cooperated for our last night, and we sat outside for drinks and got a nice view of the sunset over the city and on the enormous building under construction that you can see from almost everywhere in KL.
Since it was Friday night, things were busy, so I had made a reservation at the hotel bar and at one of the restaurants several people had recommended called Concubine. The hotel staff had helped me make the reservation, and I had gotten one, but with the condition that we had to leave by 9 to fit between other reservations. When we got to the restaurant, the lady at the door checked the list for our name and then said we should walk through the restaurant and our table was in the alley at the back. I was so worried that I had inadvertently gotten us a horrible table, because alley at the back certainly didn't sound good, but we all had a pleasant surprise when we walked out and actually saw the alley.
There was greenery, lanterns, and murals painted all over the walls. Then, we got an even better surprise when we looked up and realized that our table was right under the mural Jeff had been admiring the night before.
We lost him for a while as he walked around the alley taking pictures of the smaller murals too.
He even found a picturesque bridge leading into the alley.
Eventually he came back to admire the mural we had right behind us that was appropriate for a restaurant called Concubine.
There was even an interactive scarf that kept flirting with him throughout dinner.
Turns out that the table in the alley at the back was the cool place to be. The drinks menu was a bit shorter than the one from the night before, and there didn't seem to be a "signature" drink, but there was one called Pornstar Martini that sounded yummy :-)
My friend and I both ordered it, and the waitress told us to take a sip of prosecco after a sip of the drink. We tried it a couple times, and then decided it would be better to just dump the prosecco in and give the drink some bubbles. We both agreed it was better that way.
Jeff decided to get a neat shot of Plantation Rum which we kept seeing on all the menus and that he had never tried before. He didn't take a picture, since it wasn't very photogenic, and he said it was "fine", but I don't think he'll order it again. He stuck with wine for the rest of the meal. The food was super yummy. They had specialty gyozas that we wanted to try. One was duck and foie gras, delicious!
The other was called Double Cheeseburger Gyoza, and, bizarre as it may seem, it did taste like a cheeseburger, and it was really good!
Since Jeff hadn't gotten a cocktail, I felt that I was obligated to try at least one more. We were interested in the one called This Is the Whey, but the waitress said they don't make that one anymore, so I moved on to Assam Jambu which contained two of my favorite things Sauvignon Blanc and gin, yum!
Our friends got a salad and a burger which they said were both delicious.
Jeff and I also tried a tuna with avocado and salsa on chips. It was nice and fresh and a perfect compliment to my second Assam Jambu.
As we were eating dinner, people came into the alley to take photos, and when we were leaving, we saw that there was a covid check-in spot, complete with guard, set up at the foot of the bridge. Apparently, we had been dining in an Instagram spot, and people came just to take their pictures there with the murals. We felt even luckier to eat in "the alley at the back". Our friends took a picture of Jeff and I on the bridge, and I realized after the fact that Da Bao's back entrance is in the background of the photo.
I take it as a blessing on my decision that Chinatown is now my favorite neighborhood in KL. The next morning we had another lovely breakfast at the hotel and then drove home, but we will definitely be back.
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