Featuring top chocolatiers, chocolate makers, manufactures and artisans all in one place, the event will showcase both local and imported chocolates from various countries in different varieties of flavors.

This weekend head over to Mid Valley Exhibition Center, and expect to meet at least 10,000 chocolate lovers, chocolate connoisseurs and other chocoholics from all walks of life.

There are also talks on the history of cocoa in Malaysia, chocolate making demonstrations, chocolate recipes and more. Visit chocolatefair.com.my for more information.

Apart from the food, one of the restaurant appeal is its environment. The decor are designed as if you just walked into an Italian homey family run restaurant. You are at a corner street restaurant in Italy. Not that I’ve been to Italy but that’s how I imagine it would be.

All Italiannies chain of restaurant has the same theme. Once you walked in you will be greeted with sepia-toned photographs decorating the walls, lacy white curtains, dark wooden furniture and checkered tablecloths. All that plus the music and lighting it offers a comfortable and relaxing environment to dine in.

Italiannies has always been our favorite place to have some good pasta. The restaurant is known for their rather generous portions. Their tag line, “So much, so good, so share” and written on their wall, ” The best way to enjoy Italiannies, bring friends and a big appetite.”

Usually right after you sit down and ordered your meals, you’re served with a plate of bread. It always feels warm and fresh from the oven. They poured some olive oil and balsamic vinegar for us to dip the bread with. It is a nice starter. We munch on the bread while waiting for our food.

A few weeks ago during the fasting month of Ramadan, we when to Italiannies, myself and Izwa. I only had the time to write about it today.

We ordered the Quattro Platter to start. It is a combination of deep-fried risotto balls, calamari, stuffed mushrooms and zucchini fritte served with marinara sauce and alfredo dressing for dipping. Although everything in this dish were deep fried non of it were oily at all. The risotto balls is simply marvelous. It’s crispy and yet it melts in your mouth with the taste of cheese bursting from the center. I’m not a fan of cheese but this works for me.

For the main entrees we ordered a the Penne Bolognese. A simple pasta dish which happens to be our favorite. Meat sauce served over penne pasta. There is nothing fancy here, a bolognese is a bolognese is a bolognese. Maybe we were not in an adventurers mood. We were breaking fast and wanted something simple.

Overall we didn’t get over our heads in ordering, even though we were fasting for the whole day. Two dish is enough, Italianies offers a generous portions.

Italianies is a great place to dine with a group of friends.

We are always looking for a good places to dine. So if you have any favorite, restaurant, stall, mamak, warung, cafe, bristo, do let us know!

MakanByte is also looking for contributers. If you have a passion for food – cooking or consuming or both – and a passion for bloggin – writing and food photography, contact us.

Stay tune… and Selamat Hari Raya.

So this time we decided to stop by and try out its desserts.

There are limited choice of ice cream on its ice cream menu. We ordered the Black Forest Coupe and Cherry Jubilee.

Black Forest Coupe is for chocolate lovers. Its a gigantic scoop of chocolate ice cream with pitted dark cherry, four cubes of chocolate brownies and two chocolate sticks. The Chocolate ice-cream has a bitter chocolate taste, a dark chocolate taste. Something a chocolate fan will enjoy.

The Cheery Jubilee on the other hand is also a gigantic scoop of ice cream garnished with pitted black cherry, whipped cream and chocolate shaved stick. When it comes to ice creme, I’m bias towards chocolate. I would say that the Cheery Jubilee tasted just ok. However according to someone who isn’t as bias as me it tasted awesome. Yes that was her exact words, ‘awesome’.

The cafe is the first shop on the Walk on Curve, it’s right in front of the Curve entrance. So on a sunny day you could sit here out door, which allowed you to smoke while still feel the cold breeze of air con coming from the Curve.

It’s a good place to sit and chill while watching people walk around. During the evening you’ll be entertained with with live music coming form the Asam Pedas restaurant.

California Cafe price however is some what premium.

There are three types of burger, first one seems like your normal Burger King burger, strips of beefacon, beef patty and cheese. They call this one ‘Gutsy’. Next is the same burger but with two beef patty stacked together. They call this one ‘Difiant’. Last one is also the same burger but this time with three beef patty stacked together. They call this ‘Fearless’.

Of cause this is a challenge a MakanByte writer like myself just could not ignore. I ordered the triple stacker. I expect to be scared shitless with the huge giant burger. What I got instead is not the intimidating. So there is an extra beef patty, not really a big deal.

I thought that I was going to be bloated stuffing myself with this Triple Stacker. Not really the case. I manage to finish it, and I could even finish the fries. Seriously, it’s not really a big deal.

The burger is not that bad actually. If you are hungry for some solid beef burger, you might want to try this. Don’t be scared of the Triple Stacker, that’s all I’m saying.

Good news is that we have been traveling, and on the way we found some great eating spots and enjoyed some great food. Expect to see more food blog post soon.

If you were wondering how one ships prawns or other seafood from Sabah, they are packed in a plastic bag of frozen ice. Just like a block of ice with prawns inside. It would last for hours before completely melt. This also means that it will take some time for it to defrost.

The small shrimps were cooked tempura style.

While the medium size were deep fried.

We also had some fries.

Those however, were just starters. Main course were the huge tiger prawns. Marinated with butter, salt, white pepper and black pepper. Make sure you get it all in.

The grill the Tiger prawns till it’s red.

I’m taking my time when eating it. Sucking the butter before peeling and finally biting on the juicy prawn meat. I took three of those big ones.

As you may notice our family are nuts about prawns. Myself, I’m nuts about prawns and seafoods. We prepared the prawns with simple dish, nothing fancy. Do you have a favorite prawn dishes?

MakanByte has big ambitions, it wants to be more then just a blog about restaurant reviews. There are tons of blog doing that. MakanByte wants to be a community for food lovers to share their culinary experience and be passionate about food. You know what they say, “You are what you eat.”

In order to make this work, MakanByte needs to expand its reaches to all conners of the web-o-sphere. We did and had make our tiny hang out place over at Facebook. Joins the MakanByte Facebook group and share a makan place or a food you like.

You could also login in via your Facebook account to post comments, you’ll get to have your Facebook avatar on the comments. This is done through Facebook Connect, a secure authentication Facebook web-fu.

For those with weird fetish of taking photographs of food and posting it on your Flickr account, well there is now a MakanByte Flickr Group that you could submit all your tasty food pictures.

So see you around.

Chun Buri Seafood and Tom Yam restaurant serves Thai dishes. Located at Kota Damansara, it’s a small restaurant. The all wood deco creates a feeling as if you are entering someone’s wooden kampung house.

The place does not look like it can fit a lot of people, unlike some other popular Malay Thai restaurant / warung that put up tables up to the streets, Chun Buri only has tables inside the outlet.

Normally I would order either Nasi Goreng Pataya or Nasi Goreng Paprik, this time however, we ordered white rice with some dishes. For those who can’t decide which dish goes with what, they have it in their menu several different sets. We ordered package one, a set of meal enough for 3-4 people.

We get a bowl of mix seafood Tom Yum soup. Just nice for my liking not to spicy and not to mild either. Enough prawns, squids and stuff.

Next is the Daging Masak Merah, slice meat with red sauce. It might look really spicy, but it really isn’t. It’s somewhat sweet actually. The meat are all thinly slice, and not too chewy. Just how I like it.

Together with the package, is the Kailan Ikan Masin. Kai-lan vegetable cooked with salted fish. Nothing special here, it’s always good to have some veggie in our diet.

Chun Buri signature dish, included with the package of cause is the Ikan Tiga Rasa. Fish fried till crispy, served with gravy that’s sour, hot and sweet. “Tiga Rasa” in english means three taste. Hence the three different taste in the gravy.

I like how the fish is cooked, probably fried till it’s crispy. The portion that were served is just enough for a party of 3 to 4 people.

Lastly with the package there is the Kerabu Manga. Mango served with some veggie. A type of mango salad.

Overall with it cost us about RM60++ including drinks. Fairly reasonable price.

Since it is Deepavali, we decided to have something Indian for dinner. What better place to dine other then Taste of India restaurant located at Aman Suria, in Petaling Jaya. Formerly known as Maroon Cafe, Taste of India is the same shop, run by the same people except maybe a different management.

When asked the waiter what’s with the name change, he says that the boss wants to be consistent throughout all the other branches. Looking at the menu I notice it says “Taste of India – London, Kuala Lumpur, Kumba Konam India, Paris”. Wow, this is not your ordinary mamak.

The open air environment (with roof) is good for just chilling out. There is a projector mounted and a wall screen. Great for hanging out with buddies and watch a football game or two. Just like in Mamaks but with fancier food and service.

They offer vegetarian, non-vegetarian, local and western food. The waiters here really know the menu and could recommend dishes. They are quite friendly and offered a good service.

Unlike your average mamak stalls that gives you cheep silverware with spoons that are easily bend, Taste of India gives you good solid heavy silverware.

In order not to stress our brain in choosing what to order, we decided to go with the sets. Each set comes with a drink and an ice-cream desert.

We ordered the Chicken Briyani, Mutton Briyani and the Tandoori Set for myself.

The Briyani is rich with herbs and spices. The taste of all the herbs and spices is somewhat overwhelming. Served with curry and a small bowl of Raita, a yogurt like substance made up of fresh cucumber and onions, a lot of onions.

Both the briyani had chicken or mutton buried underneath the rice. Nicely decorated. The Mutton Briyani set cost RM11.90 while the Chicken Briyani set cost RM 10.90.

I ordered for myself the Tandoori set. You get one plain Naan bread and a piece of Tandoori chicken.

A Naan is a round flatbread made of white flour, it bears a resemblance to pita. A Tandoori chicken is a chicken marinated and seasoned with tandoori masala and few other herbs and spices.

Both the Naan and Tandoori chicken are usually cooked in a high temperature clay oven also known as ‘Tandoor’.

Overall the Tandoori Naan set is just average, nothing special. However I do like its green mint sauce. The Tandoori set cast RM12.90.

We also order some extra side dish, recommended by the waiter, a Mutton ‘whatchamacallit’. Ok so I forgot its name, but it was really good. It’s not curry, it’s mutton with some thick gravy of sorts. Next time, I’ll just order a plain Briyani with this Mutton ‘whatchamacallit’.

We had our desserts, each with one scoop of ice-cream.

Overall it’s a great dining experience, good food, great service and a good place to chill. The prices however could be a little bit pricy, but you got what you paid for.