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An Allergian Abroad

~ A blog about travelling, with allergies.

An Allergian Abroad

Tag Archives: Malaysian travel

The KL Breakfast Club

03 Sunday May 2015

Posted by allergianabroad in Far (South) East Movement - Malaysia, Nut Allergy

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

kuala lumpur, malaysia, Malaysian travel, Nut allergy, Nuts, peanut allergy, Peanuts, Travel

In Kuala Lumpur, I stayed at the Grand Millennium Hotel. It had an extravagant buffet breakfast – probably one of the biggest I’ve ever seen.

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But of course, a buffet breakfast isn’t really that exciting to me between the nuts, lactose, avocado and egg allergies.

I just have a few things to mention in this regard.

Firstly, they had peanut butter by the breads/rolls, of course. This is pretty standard and hoping for the all-loved PB’s expulsion from the breakfast buffet really is just wishful thinking.

Usually, I’ll take my little sealed sachet of butter and my toast and live happily ever after. And usually the peanut butter is similarly in a little sealed sachet, whereby the person eating it will spread it at their table, hopefully far away from me (although I always seem to find myself sitting next to or opposite the one person in an entire room full of people who is eating peanuts.. but that’s another story).

But in this case, at the Grand Millennium, all of the spreads were in giant jars sitting next to each other with a serving spoon. Not quite as contained. I obviously wouldn’t go near the other spreads in this case, but the problem was that it was also sitting right in front of all the breads and rolls. I probably would have assumed it would be OK until I saw a lady balancing (and yes, I really do mean balancing) her plate on the ledge above the spreads trying to get the peanut butter off the spoon and onto her plate. There was a lot of maneuvering and waving about and it obviously made me feel pretty uncomfortable. So I ran for the hills.

Luckily, the very nice head chef assisted me and brought me my own plate of waffles/pancakes, with maple syrup, and a roll, with butter, from the back “safe” zone. Phew.

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It wasn’t just that though. The next day my mum went and served herself some coconut spread and found a dollop of peanut butter in the coconut spread. Uh oh. This always has me really perplexed. Because for a brief moment I’m thinking “OMG WHO WOULD DO THIS? This is so inconsiderate and people really should be more careful”. And then I have to stop and remind myself: most people in the world are “normal” and invincible and can withstand a little bit of peanut butter in the coconut jar, even though I can’t possibly imagine how that combination would taste good. Most people do not have the slightest inkling of a thought about why this would be a problem. And most people, even if you pointed out that you were allergic, probably still would not realise why this was such a problem (and certainly their idea of “being careful” would not be even close to my standards).

I guess I haven’t really imparted much wisdom upon you, because you would probably already know the risk of cross-contamination in a case like this. But there, I said it.

Perhaps more importantly was my discovery of red peanuts. Maybe I’m just a bit behind, really. But after having a browse of the buffet I concluded that there weren’t any nuts standing out. I’m sure there were nuts hidden within some of the hot meals (and might I just add: I don’t understand how anyone can eat curry in the morning), but no peanuts jumped out at me, to my surprise. After getting my special plate of food, I sat down at the table and declared to my family “oh – I didn’t even see any nuts”. Apparently I had missed the memo because there was a giant bowl of red peanuts next to one of the curries. It wasn’t that I hadn’t seen this bowl, it was that I didn’t think they were nuts! They looked like beans to me. I would never have thought they were peanuts. I guess my excuse is: if there are peanuts around, I’m outta here so how would I know all the different types?!

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Red peanuts

Nuts aside, I still got to enjoy my waffles (which I LOVE) and had a substantial, filling (but probably not so healthy) breakfast. I also got to enjoy some delicious fruity ice blends poolside which were super refreshing, healthy (hey, they were full of fruit!) and nut & dairy free! What a life!

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Poolside pineapple ice blend

I guess my main piece of advice that comes from this post is to not hesitate to ask to speak to the head chef. They will advise you of what you can and can’t eat and will bring you a special meal if necessary. I haven’t ever come across a head chef that wasn’t super helpful and accommodating. So don’t miss out or take a risk just because you are too afraid to ask!

So I will conclude by saying that you definitely learn something new, maybe not every day, but definitely in each city you visit. And I will continue to share my learnings with you all!

Until next time…

The Allergian Abroad.

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Easy, Breezy, Beautiful… Kuala Lumpur

14 Tuesday Apr 2015

Posted by allergianabroad in Far (South) East Movement - Malaysia, Nut Allergy

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Tags

asia, asian travel, malaysia, Malaysian travel, Nut allergy, Nuts, peanut allergy, Peanuts

Following our 6 nights in Hong Kong, we moved onto Kuala Lumpur. This meant a total change of culture, weather and style of food.

I was very apprehensive to go to Malaysia, given the prevalence of peanuts (particularly satay sauce) in its cuisine. At KL airport, there was even an entire restaurant called Satay Club – an entire restaurant dedicated to my biggest fear. I spotted this when we were at the airport on the way to Hong Kong, so I pretty much spent the next week in Hong Kong incredibly concerned about what my time in KL would hold for me. But this fear was entirely misplaced.

My dining experiences in KL were surprisingly easy and breezy, and nuts weren’t particularly prevalent outside of the Malaysian restaurants. Thankfully, I don’t think I spotted any other ‘DESPERATELY STAY AWAY FROM THIS ZONE’ sort of a satay-dedicated restaurant.

Reassuringly, there were heaps of different dining options with lots of variety, and I enjoyed some really delicious food! It was actually much much easier to find food in Kuala Lumpur than it was in Hong Kong (where I often embarrassingly resorted to McDonalds).

Once again, I’ll just say point blank – I didn’t eat any Malaysian food. I didn’t even attempt it. But as a whole, the whole food thing was much easier than in Hong Kong for two main reasons:

  • there is way more Western-style food around and about.
  • the Malaysians spoke much better English than was my experience in Hong Kong.

We stayed at the Grand Millennium hotel which was perfectly located for 2 very important purposes – 1) food access and 2) SHOPPING.

You probably aren’t so interested in hearing about my shopping escapades (or maybe you are?), so let me rather talk about some food. Firstly, on the outside of Pavillon shopping mall, there is a strip of Western restaurants. From memory, there was Italian, American, Mexican and Spanish food. The area is always buzzing, with music, people enjoying good food or having drinks, and even dancing (yeh – the waiters/waitresses at Johnny Rockets engage in a dance and song routine every now and then which was interesting, but hay, it got my attention!) Feeling reminiscent of my days in Spain, I decided to eat at La Boca to enjoy some tapas. Fiesta!

Now I don’t think there is any comparison for paella outside of Spain, but I am willing to make a bold statement. Are you ready?

For me, the tapas were better than in Spain.

That’s right .. I said it.

But let me back up a minute and clarify something: I didn’t actually have many tapas in Spain, given the prevalence of seafood and fish. So yes, the tapas were better in Malaysia than in Spain, but I am probably not the fairest of judges. It was pretty much because the tapas weren’t really the typical Spanish tapas, for they involved lots of chicken and far less seafood.

So first up I had Pollo Picante – fiery, sizzling diced chicken breast in olive oil, garlic and chilli, served with fresh baguette. It tasted as good as it sounded. It was damn spicy, but then was perfectly balanced out with the fresh baguette. I loved every mouthful of it.

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Second, I had the Corcovado chicken wings – delicious chicken wings, cooked in La Boca’s special BBQ sauce, served with sour cream. I ordered it without the sour cream of course, but it was still really delightful. The special BBQ sauce was very delicious and I’m sure the sour cream would have been a great addition.

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Overall, I was really impressed with my meal. It was also way too much food for me, even though it only came to about $15 (which is actually very expensive for food in Malaysia). My waitress was also very helpful in relation to my allergies – she checked everything with the kitchen and understood me perfectly. It had an awesome vibe (although it didn’t quite feel like I was back in Spain).

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La Boca, Kuala Lumpur

I also ate at Johnny Rockets (the song and dance worked I guess) as we felt like burgers one night, but it unfortunately wasn’t quite up to the standard of a good ol’ Aussie burger.

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Then in addition to the strip of restaurants, there is also a food court at the bottom of Pavillion shopping centre called Food Republic. The food court had every kind of Asian cuisine imaginable – from Vegetarian to Teppanyaki to Taiwanese – and there were also some fast food places like Subway and Boost Juice, as well as bakeries and candy stores. It was filled with some incredibly cheap (i’m talking a couple of $AUD) and (apparently) delicious food. It is definitely worth visiting. Being a food court, you can bring food from different restaurants (including those from the strip mentioned above) so my family could all eat together. What did this mean? I could enjoy whatever food I wanted without having to hinder my family’s true cultural culinary experience. They had a ball! And so did I!

I had some delicious Japanese in the food court a few times – tuna / seaweed handrolls were the perfect break from all the heavy eating over the past 2 weeks.

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So that just about covers the lunch and dinner portion of our days in Kuala Lumpur, but I do have a few peanut-related stories to come in relation to breakfast at our hotel, as well as a few other handy tips and hints.

Now all that food talk has really made me hungry… and craving chicken wings.

Until next time… menikmati hidangan anda.

The Allergian Abroad.

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