Yi Jia Seafood 億家海鮮 - Restaurant at a quiet corner for good Seafood!

• Operating Days: Daily
• Operating Time: According to their locations
• Address: Multiple Locations
• Facebook Page

In Singapore, there is a zi char stall named Yi Jia Village Seafood Restaurant, and just across the custom in Johor Bahru, they have a similar restaurant called the Yi Jia Seafood restaurant 億家海鮮. Currently, they are 4 restaurants outlets in Johor Bahru. Each of them has their own unique decoration. We went to this new restaurant at Permas Jaya.

The restaurant is just a 20 mins drive from the custom, located in a quiet neighbourhood block. Plenty of parking lots available (which are shared among other restaurants along the stretch) and most importantly, did I forget to mention that parking is free?

The exterior of the restaurant looks new and good. When we were there at dinner time, there was quite a bit of crowd and we were a little worried that we have to wait for some time for our food to be served. We were lucky that the waitress saw us and quickly allocate a table to us in less than a minute. 

People who came after we had to wait for a bit before they were seated.

Their "aquarium" displaying different types of live seafood.

The menu was presented to us almost immediately after we were seated.

This company has won many prestigious awards as indicated on the menu.

The Yi Jia Crispy Chicken 扁扁鸡 seemed to be a famous choice around other tables and so we decided to order a small portion to try it.

A must order dish if you are eating at a seafood is, of course, the crabs! They have 3 types of cooking using crab - Golden Egg Yolk, Honey Sauce or Otak. We went for Golden Egg Yolk as recommended by the waitress.

They have different operating hours at each outlet, be sure to check the timing if you are heading down.

First came was their signature dish, the crisp flattened chicken, 扁扁鸡. It is quite a unique dish as we did not see any similar dishes before in other restaurants.

The taste of the chicken was not bad in our opinion, however, the portion is considered small even for just 2 people. It cost 9 RM for this 8 small pieces of chicken.

Next is pork ribs 排骨王 (15 RM), this is one dish that does not appeal to me as the skin of the pork ribs presented were too soft. The meat was also too hard to my liking. It would be better if the chef can pre-fry the pork ribs to brown at the side, before mixing them together with the usual sweet and sour sauce. The overall taste was normal.

Next was potato leaves with sambal sauce (10 RM). I like how their sambal sauce, not as oily as others with mild sambal taste did not overpower the original taste of the potato leaves, preserving the crunchiness on the stem. One of the recommended dishes here.

Next came was the Fuyong fried egg 芙蓉蛋 (8 RM). Difficult not to love, it is one of the most popular dishes commonly found in a typical Chinese restaurant in both Malaysia and Singapore. The egg here was mixed with ingredients such as char siew, shrimps and plenty of spring onions, and pan-fried to golden brown, on the whole, ending with a crispy side around. Definitely, one of the best dishes to go with rice.

The finale, golden egg yolk crab came after a short wait. Priced at 1kg for 120 RM, the price was reasonable and worth the money. Most importantly, the meat was sweet, tender and very fresh!

Unlike the usual dry salted egg crab dishes, we were quite surprised to see the generous portion of salted egg yolk sauce given! We even scooped the sauce onto our plain rice! We like the sauce so much that we decided to order mantou 馒头 (fried buns) just to soak up all the sauces of the dish and ate it. Really a must order when you are here!

The price isn't the cheapest you could get in JB, but at least it's a decent eating environment with quality food. And they accept credit card payment as well if you have not enough cash on hand.

If you are a lover of seafood, you should try out Yi Jia seafood as the seafood they serve there is of a higher quality as compared to the usual zi char stalls in JB. Though they are not the cheapest you can find, it is still worth visiting if you are around the Permas Jaya area. 

D'Shanghai 大上海點心酒樓 - Dim Sum restaurant offer much more than Dim Sum

• Operating Hours: 10 AM - 10 PM
• Operating Days: Daily
• Address: 
• KSL - Taman Century, 80250, Johor Bahru, Malaysia
• Sutera Mall - 1, Jalan Sutera Tanjung 8/4, Taman Sutera Utama, 81300, Skudai, Johor, Malaysia
• Permas Jaya - 56, Jalan Permas 15/1, Bandar Baru Permas Jaya, 81750 Masai, Malaysia
• Facebook Page

Trying to look for good dim sum restaurants in Johor Bahru? D'Shanghai is definitely one of the top choices. D'Shanghai is also available in KSL City and Permas Jaya. We went to the one at Sutera Mall.

The Oriental exterior in red with big Chinese words "大上海" on the top (a translation of "Big Shanghai" in Mandarin) can be easily spotted from far.

The place was quite crowded but there were enough seats for us in the waiting area. It was a busy restaurant so you might have to wait for 20 mins to be seated. Typically, the environment will make you feel like you are dining at Crystal Jade or Tim Ho Wan.

There are a lot of varieties of dim sum offered. Besides dim sum, this restaurant also offered fried rice, noodles etc.

There were quite a number of varieties on the menu. You will be spoilt for choice.

They recommend D'Shanghai special Dried Shrimp Chili which they sell it in bottle format too. I'm sure anyone will enjoy the Dim Sum dip with this.

The first item that came was the XO fried carrot cake. This is one of my favorite here, it was fried with bean sprouts, spring onions, eggs and Taiwan sausage.

The exterior of the carrot cake was very springy and chewy, while the interior was soft and tasteful! It was something I have not tasted before, a good dish to start off with.

Next item brought to us was the dry Wanton Char Siew Mee.

The dry version was really really dry, till all the noodle were in a pile together. We had to use the spoon to separate it up. Overall the noodle was a bit too soft for me as I like my wanton noodle to be cooked slightly harder. The char siew and the wanton were also pretty normal, but it was a good portion for one.

Their next chef recommendation, fried prawn dumpling with wasabi mayonnaise sauce was very crispy on the outside and chewy on the inside. The wasabi mayonnaise adds another novelty taste to the fried dumpling but it tastes good on its own as well.

Liu Sha Bao 流沙包 is a mixture of egg custard with salted egg's yolk, which the mixture will usually flow out of the bun like golden sand. But it was not hot at all, so not that much of the 'lava' flow, but it is still good to have it if you visit.

Their Prawn dumpling 蝦餃 was plump and juicy with shrimps just barely visible through its translucent dumpling skin. When you take the first bite, the elasticity of the minced shrimp and meat mixture has a nice contrast to the skin. The skin was neither soft nor feeling plastic-y, definitely, a must have!

The Xiao Long Bao 小笼包 here is their highlight dish. It is often referred as soup dumplings. The skin is extremely thin and we can easily see through the content in each dumpling. The broth in the dumplings was really good that we finished it all three clean just within minutes!

Siew Mai was also one of the chef recommendation here. Each of it was filled with at least one shrimp, with a generous amount of pork given. The meat was tender and does not split into pieces when you take the first bite.

Steamed rice rolls 猪肠粉 is another dish which we will usually order whenever we eat dim sum. We ordered the one filled with You Tiao, and they came with the sauce separated.

The skin was thin, soft and chewy. As for the You Tiao, it is crispy to our mouth, but it was too oily for our liking. Be sure to share with three or more people for one portion.

The food served was relatively fast but they were all warm, none of the dishes were steaming hot, the temperature of the food was acceptable so do make sure you finish your's food ASAP so not to get them cold.

Price is definitely not cheap for the locals, however, their Dim Sum is one of the best I have eaten in Johor Bahru (though still not comparable to Din Tai Feng or Tim Ho Wan).

Overall, the environment was good, spacious and cozy with friendly services. If you want to dine in an air-conditioned place and in big groups, D'Shanghai is one of the places for your consideration.

Sunday Pasar Malam @ Permas Jaya JB (Fried Carrot Cake, Fried Chicken & Everything Else)

-=Relocated! Address Updated=-

• Operating Hours: 4.00PM to 10.00PM
• Operating Days: Sundays
• Address: 2, Jalan Permas 11/19, Bandar Baru Permas Jaya, 81750, Behind Renaissance Hotel
• Food I had: Fried Carrot Cake, fried chicken

In Johor Bahru, every day after 4 PM there's somewhere on the street where Pasar Malam is set up, today we focus on Sunday's Pasar Malam in Permas Jaya. If you are taking a cab to this place, just let the driver know you are going to Aeon Permas Jaya. And once you reached Aeon Permas Jaya, look around and you will see a lot of blue tentage across the road.

Their Pasar Malam unlike Singapore, sell more of daily necessities as the photo shown below.

Fruits, from as small as Cherry to as big as Durian.

Home use items like nail clippers, wallets, fingernail paint, bags.

Vegetables

and even egg!

So once over that section, we come into cooked dish like this crab with a different sauce.

Fried chicken, I have tried this before, they used chicken breast meat for the chicken which not to my liking.

roast duck and meats, they really look appetizing

Japanese bbq skewers, have not tried this before but will come back for it in future.

fresh sugar cane drink which they sell in 2 sizes, small for 2.50RM which is 350ML, and big for 5RM which is 1L. The sugarcane might not be pure sugar cane juice as they were really too sweet as if its drinking syrup. 

So this Kampung Nasi Lemak is one of my often visited stalls, no not for the rice but just for the fried chicken as you can see they put it just in a basket, you can just order this fried chicken by itself without buying any other thing, it cost 3.20RM per piece. Don't worry about the parts, all are either drumstick or thigh meat, so choose the one you have the most feel with.

After I bought a piece of thigh meat, I immediately took a bite, and I regretted it very much. The juice and the oil just keep flowing out, spilled onto my clothing, enough about the dirtiness. Even when you have not bite onto the meat, you know that it is worth buying. The fried flour with skin was totally crispy that you can hear the crunch more than eating cereal. The meat as expected was tender as and flavorful with their seasoning. The taste of it was applied with spices which you can taste in most of the Nasi Lemak stall. So taste wise, don't expect too much from it.

Next food I've tried was Tampoi Radish Keuh which is so called fried carrot cake, the stall owner always kept both his hand busy stir fry the radish kueh, with eggs, garlic, black sweet sauce, and chili

You won't see queue here as everybody ordered and continue on with their shopping before coming back to collect as normally it will take 30mins to have your order. Do let the lady boss know how much you want and with or without chili.

They only have 1 standard size selling at 5RM, the box does keep the warmth of the kueh.

Although it might not look appetizing to you, once you take 1 mouth, it's full of egg, the sweet black sauce, chili and a special taste which I suspect its cinnamon flour into it, they did not disclose to me what was it but it does taste like it. The egg was exceptionally generous! Every spoon I scoop bound to have a piece of an egg. So be sure to try it whenever you are at this Pasar Malam but be prepared to wait for it.