Pink and Undecided: cake

Foodgasm 02 : JJ Royal Brasserie

Hey guys!!!

I didn't plan to write another food-related post so fast after my first Foodgasm, but i just got back from Makassar yesterday after an exhausting but thoroughly fun big family gathering/cousin's wedding/culinary trip and i want to update my blog without having to think too much, plus the foodgasm file is getting longer (which file isn't, anyway...) so here i am... Attempting to introduce yet another food place for you! (To be completely honest i feel like i shouldn't try to describe food right now coz we just had a crazy 6 days full of nonstop eating in Makassar, just the thought of food is enough to make me start gagging now *sigh* but i'll try my best!)

This time though, the place is located in Jakarta (so in a way this is a part of my Jakarta trip series :p)-in Lotte Shopping Avenue, Ciputra World Mall to be exact. It's called JJ Royal Brasserie :

Baby Boy and in front of JJ Royal Braserie

Now, i am not too familiar with the word Brasserie, which apparently is a type of French restaurant-but i totally thought JJ Royal was more of a dessert place than a restaurant by the way it was decorated *LOL*, especially because i was attracted to get in because of the beautiful cakes they have on display at the front-but of course they actually serve main courses too. I've seen this place the first time we went to Lotte Avenue the year before but didn't get a chance to check it out (i was always attracted to its colorful and unique decor) so i'm very glad we finally did!

The place is located in the basement floor of Lotte Shopping Avenue, it's not too big and honestly the sitting arrangement became a bit tight and cramped because they put a lot of fancy (Victorian inspired) sofas there. Here's a line from their website that i think fully reflects their theme and decoration :

JJ Royal Brasserie offers an extraordinary experience when it comes to its distinctive eclectic "manga" inspired interior design and its comforting cosmopolitan cuisine.

Yeah, a manga inspired design for a French restaurant. Pretty unique, no?

They have some huge paintings on the left wall, depicting different ethnicities (Japanese, Chinese and Indonesian, amongst a few others) with a twist, they painted the ladies' faces in a manga style!

There's the biggest painting of all on the ceiling!

And all of the beautiful ladies were sipping coffees/teas, from JJ Royal of course *LOL* (i just realize i could be talking about the patrons from this line, so i have to clarify : I'm talking about the paintings! LOL)

And just like the first Foodgasm, i must apologize for the picture's quality... My hunny often leave his NX-300 at our apartment whenever we go out in Jakarta because he didn't expect to be taking pictures, so had to resort to using my Pinko again. I took pretty decent pictures, but Baby Boy's nanny took very blurry pics of us :(...

Us with my 'rents

This pic turned to be so blurry so i insisted to take another pic later

But hunny's always so embarrassed of me taking pics in publics zzzzzzzzzzz look at his annoying pose!!!


It's not like i deliberately want to put bad pics of him in this blog, but if he insists on posing like a stoned person then there's nothing that i can do, right?

My sweet Baby Boy is much more willing to take pics with me (at least most of the time) even though he also cannot help his wandering eyes *sigh*. Look at the sofa! I kept on asking hunny to take pics of the unique sofa and he finally (very reluctantly) did. My niece BB said that one of the rare things that could spark a fight between us is picture taking (i'm being the incessant camwhore that i am and his unwillingness to take endless pics of me), she's not wrong!

Last one, i think you have the idea of the ambience by now already!

Keeping with the manga theme, the coaster also depict a girl in a funky costume sipping on her drink

We just had lunch when we arrived, i was just attracted to the place and the pretty cakes so we only ordered some coffee and three pastries to split between us :P.

The iced coffee (can't expect me to remember what we ordered, right? Something like iced latte, or iced cappucino, stuffs liddat lah okay hahaha) was quite nice, nothing to complain about but nothing to rave about either-just okay i guess.

Now this cake i remember the name vividly, it's called the "Richie Rich"! Hahahaha. Makes you filthy rich when you have it? LOL

Love the aesthetic, the dollar bills and glittering dollar symbol's added to the attractiveness of this sweet cake

I don't have the biggest sweet tooth (and whatever sweet tooth i do have is reserved for cupcakes, rainbow cakes, red velvet and molten lava cake!) so... I'm not the best judge of cakes, really. It was pretty nice though, nothing that rocks my world :p. A tad too sweet for my liking. The next item, however...

The Red Velvet Cronut

Was absolutely divine! I only tried cronut once before in Harvest Patisserie and i didn't like it, Baby Boy is crazy about cronut though so we ordered this and it was not enough for us! LOL. Super yummy, not too sweet, not overwhelmingly creamy that is makes you sick after a few bites, in short... Just right! A must try if you ever find yourself in this place! I do admit that i love red velvet (although i cannot stand cheesecakes) so it might cloud my judgement a little bit :P.

Last but not least :

Caramelo

Ordered it because my mum is a huge fan of anything with caramel in it. It's just so so, i can't remember much about this cake. The macaron on top was also just so so. It might be everything else paled in comparison after the red velvet cronut *LOL*...

We didn't order any main dishes or savoury treats so i cannot comment on that, i do love the eclectic decor, friendly ambience and of course-the red velvet cronut (i cannot stop raving about it hahaha) so this is a place that i would definitely love to come back to. I'd love to try their savoury menus and main dishes, as well as having another red velvet cronut! Quite recommended!

I should stop now, i'm feeling very nauseated now (it's that time of the month)-gotta get some more much-needed-rest! Toodles!

#Pink

7:19:00 PM
8 Comments

Gluttony Runs in the Family...

cafe

Hiya everybody!

I'm gonna dip my feet into food blogging again now! Okay, just kidding, we all know i suck at describing food (heck, i have hard time even remembering food names :p)! But since i love food (i am at awe but also envious at the same time with people who actually aren't interested in food! You know, the type that only eats to sustain themselves and even find it to be a total chore? Why can't i be one of them? WHYYYY? *whines incessantly*), i can't help but feature at least pictures of them in this blog!

As the title suggested, i'm not the only glutton in my family, in fact i can safely say that most of my family members are total gluttons as well *LOL*. And whenever my big bro KC and his wife CL is in town, we'd be eating out a lot more than we normally do (because most food like steaks are not readily available in Banjarmasin-where they are staying, so they would have more than a few food cravings on every visit), we also like to try out new places that we've never been to with them.

I'm just gonna mini review (and show food pictures, so if you're hungry-just like me-while reading this... I'm sorry!!!) a few places (old and new) that we went to on their last two visits (that i remember to take pictures on).

1. Harvest Patisserie

Well, this one must not be a stranger for most of you who lives in big cities like Jakarta, Surabaya, Bandung etc because they have branches everywhere. It's also our go-to patisserie whenever we need a ready stock, super yummy rich cakes! One of my old fave from this patisserie would be their mean Devil's Food (that is now baptised Devil's Cake for some reason)!

You might think our outfit looked familiar, that's because we went there (before a shopping session at CW) straight from Etienne's birthday party!

CL was actually craving for some gelato but since we seem to go to Pisa Cafe whenever they're in town, we decided to go somewhere else (not much choices for nice gelatos in Surabaya, sadly). Just our luck (it seems like whenever we're looking or craving for something, then the universe would deliberately make sure that it's the day that those particular something's not available! Have you ever felt this way too?) but their gelato machine (or was it their frigde?) was broken. We ended up stuffing ourselves with cakes and macarons instead.

Au's errrr... Chocolate something something :p

Hunny and i's caramel something something >.<

At least i remember this one! It's CW's Black Forest! LOL, that's the easy one

Some macarons. Same as gelato, it's definitely NOT easy to find decent macarons in Surabaya, the best i've tried to far would be Harvest's (not that i try too many of them, like i said many times already-i don't have the biggest sweet tooth)

The new sensation : Cronut! Mt and Baby Boy had one each. It's pretty humongous and to think that Baby Boy actually finished more than half means he really liked it! And he kept on mentioning cronut as well now, so i guess he really did. It's crispy and crunchy on the outside with rich (but runny) fla inside. I find it way too sweet myself.

Hunny's usual annoying expression whenever i ask him to pose

Totally unrelated but don't you think my accessories are pretty appropriate? Especially the cupcake ring hahaha

2. Daily Sweet

Now this one... I actually didn't have a good first impression with them. Last October i tried to book a table for my birthday but they answered us in the snootiest, most arrogant way. Not only they told us they do not accept bookings on weekends (which is totally acceptable since some restaurants does have that policy), but they went and boast about how "It's always incredibly crowded here on weekends" and added "If you don't believe it you can come and check it for yourself". Arrogant *$^*!(@^$*(Y)!!!! In fact if you Google Daily Sweet, the foursquare would be on top and my comment's one of their very first comments, b**ching about their CS haha.

With that fact, we've managed to steer clear of the place for almost 5 months, then when CL said "Let's go to a new cafe!", we decided to give this place a chance (and check if it really was that crowded ===> deserted was more like it).

Everything was quite peachy at first, hunny brought his NX300 that he brings everywhere now and flipped it out as soon as we entered

We even snapped these dessert pictures freely, in front of their manager, waiter and waitresses

This is the cashier area, and clearly they had no problem with us taking pictures everywhere!

But then we decided to move to the second floor, because hunny said the decor's even cuter there and our main purpose there was to take pictures!

As soon as he snapped that picture of me, a snooty waitress approached him and chided him, telling him (in the most disrespectful tone) that he should stop taking pictures with the camera "Use your phone's camera, okay!!!".

Now, don't get me wrong. If from the start they already told us that they do not allow photography there i won't be (too) mad, but why would they let us take so many pictures on the first floor? Plus, we're paying customers (i know i seem to be using this word a lot, that's because i'm very frustrated on how paying customers are treated in some places!!! Like we're beggars or something!), shouldn't she use a more apologetic, friendlier tone? Even my usually non-plussed brother was super pissed and started barking at the rude waitress *LOL*.

As the food itself? Mostly are okay, some barely edible. Price wise, it was not expensive but with that kind of service we got-i wouldn't pay half of it.

CL's cake, i think it was so so because i didn't hear her saying it's super yummy or super yucky

Baby Boy's cream of mushroom soup, which probably is the best tasting food there

My drink, it was okay too

The pasta was actually not too bad either

This is the barely edible one. Beef Wellington that was super duper sweet! I've never tried beef wellington before, but i'm pretty sure it's not supposed to be that sweet! Hunny said Gordon Ramsay would definitely throw this in the bin, screaming *LOLOLOL*

Totally forgot to take a pic of my steak before starting devouring it! My steak was actually not bad, a bit tough maybe but not super bad either

In short, their food's rates somewhere in the middle. Only one out of everything we ordered was actually disgusting, so it was still acceptable. Price-wise it was okay too. Too bad they had to ruin our visit with sucky services (not only we were treated less than friendly by one of their staffs, the waiter actually forgot CL's order-a creme brulee that she actually really wanted! By the time we checked on why the creme brulee doesn't seem to make an appearance yet, they told us thee kitchen's closed already. WTF).

Needless to say we most probably wouldn't be visiting the place ever again. And i wouldn't recommend it either.

3. Gojumong

I don't know if i've mentioned this before, but we LOVE Korean BBQ! We love it so much that we often attempt to do it ourselves at home (multiple times already, actually). Our favorite local Korean restaurant would be Myoung Ga (always so yummy!) but this time round CL actually wanted to try out Gojumong.

The place looks like the typical Korean restaurant (they tend to all look similar to me)

Cute wall stickers, though!

Scary yellow photo of us because of the lighting hahaha

The food there was nice (but i much prefer Myoung Ga), the service excellent and professional (we're quite scary when it comes to consuming the lettuce you eat with the BBQ, the waitress kept on topping our bowls up promptly. We sometimes need to wait very long for the waiters/waitresses in Myoung Ga to top up the lettuce bowl) even though they seemed to be a little confused and flustered at times, but still totally acceptable. Price wise, it's quite expensive (like every Korean BBQ restaurants in Surabaya are!), especially if you compare the size of the meat portion they have with Myoung Ga's.