J&D Espresso

A smile here means I enjoyed myself!

Things I like - a good cuppa and a great, filling meal. Both of these conditions have been wonderfully fulfilled by this lovely coffee hub. Tucked away on an Oasis, in the relatively quiet area of Aman Suria, is the rather hip J&D Espresso cafe which I visited for a bite. 

For the romantics out there!

This is no mere corner-shop as it has extremely clever design in its cozy atmosphere. The ambient lighting gives the place a comfortable mood without being too harsh or too dim, in fact, it is just right. There are two alcoves for two people, perfect for intimate meals over a fresh brew! 

MONKEYS! (not inclusive of the people in the photo)

The interior design theme is monkeys, shown by the totally adorable yet profound "Speak no evil, Hear no evil, and See no evil" monkeys plastered on a cool cement wall. There are also adorable little portraits of monkeys littered around the cafe. 

I'd give them bonus points for giving brown sugar. 

Since this is a coffee-place, I should probably comment on the coffee itself. I decided to go with a flat white and believe me, it was really well brewed. There wasn't a terrible lingering taste (that ends up being the case for some coffeeshops) and the foam was really smooth and accompanied by some cute foam art (as pictured above).  If I were to compare J&D's coffee with some well-known franchises, this place has done it better! So, coffee freaks, GO HERE! 

You'd be Russian to eat this! 

Now, onto the meal, I ordered Vodka-Battered Fish and Chips. You heard that right! Vodka. Battered. Well, what is the difference between the usual beer-batter and vodka-batter? Well, I don't know the scientific differences but what I noticed was that the Vodka-batter is more fragrant, crunchier and a bit thicker than their beer-based counterparts. Furthermore, the fries, which are normally a chore to eat after you finish off the main fish, were actually pretty good. 

The breakfast fusion

My mother went for her favourite - Bacon Pancakes. The only time I heard of the concept of merging the two popular breakfast dishes together was from Adventure Time, a popular cartoon. Who knew that such an idea would actually work so well? The contrast of sweet and savoury is definitely a highlight of this all-day breakfast dish. The dish is a multilayered plethora of flavour as there is some savoury goodness from the pork bacon (This restaurant is non-halal) which is complemented by a thick coating of sweet maple syrup. The poached egg on top is definitely the cherry to such a perfect, sinful dish. It's not all bad, however, as there are some healthy points to this dish because there is also a bed of spinach under the poached egg and some mushrooms at the base. 

In conclusion, would I tell you to go there? Short answer: Yes. If you are into coffee and great breakfast dishes then yes, you should go. They also have many different dishes that looked really interesting on the menu and keep in mind that many of their dishes are made from scratch, which makes it taste more delicious. I would definitely go back there. Maybe we could go for a cuppa together! 

RATING: ★ ★ ★ ★ 

Signing Off,

SS Reviews

Pentatonix - The On My Way Home Tour

"P-T-X! P-T-X! P-T-X!" the 4,000-strong crowd screamed, accompanied with some improvised beatboxing as the five horsemen of a cappella, the quintuple kings (and queen), the masters of music, Pentatonix stepped on stage, silhouetted by bright lights. 

On the 30th of May, I had the fantastic opportunity to attend the Pentatonix "On My Way Home" tour at Stadium Negara, Kuala Lumpur and it was the most EPIC music event that I have ever attended. 

Pentatonix (PTX) comprises Scott Hoying, Mitch Grassi, Kirstie Maldonado, Avi Kaplan and Kevin Olusola, who are an American a cappella group hailing from Texas. They specialise in doing covers of popular music in the form of medleys in their own personal style. They also produce original content alongside their homages to masterpieces. Formed in 2011, they participated and won "The Sing-Off" by NBC but they were dropped by their record label. They did not falter as they decided to take their talents to the YouTube stage aaaaaaaand they now have more than 8 MILLION SUBSCRIBERS and are taking the Internet by storm! They were also signed up with Sony last year so congratulations to them! 



Now onto business. The group started with a mashup of many different pop songs to warm everyone up followed by Ariana Grande's Problem. The crowd was more lively than a cooked grenade as everyone was jumping in unison and screaming. Wildly gesticulating as the musical geniuses on stage acknowledged us, we were definitely the Malaysians who knew how to party as I saw from within the PTX Standing Zone.



Next came a Beyonce Medley that took us through the various years of Beyonce's career. The smooth transitioning between the songs exemplified their wide array of vocal techniques and tones. Everyone was rather excited when they started singing the "Crazy in Love" song (made famous by 50 Shades of Grey hehe).



This was followed by a cover of Lady Gaga's hit sensation - Telephone. They shared that this was the first song that was performed by the initial trio (Kristie, Mitch and Scott). When I looked further into this, I learned that this was the song which the trio used to try and score a chance to meet the Glee cast. Despite not winning, this had given them great publicity and helped shoot them into popularity.



As many Malaysians were Sam Smith fans, it was just perfect for PTX to perform their Sam Smith mashup cleverly coined "La La Latch". This crowd went wild as the group sang in perfect unison across multiple fields of vocal perfection.

Next was, "Love you long time" which sounded at first like some sort of joke about prostitutes but Pentatonix's rendition of the Jazmine Sullivan song definitely piqued my interest. Avi's overtones truly helped blow this cover to epic proportions.





The group's rendition of "Rather Be" made me rather surprised that there is not a single real music instrument except for their lovely voices! Next, there was a short story-telling about how they got to where they are now, I covered most of it earlier little by little but the summary is - THESE PEOPLE ARE PLAIN AWESOMENESS!





After that was Kevin Olusola's solo perfomance of "Julie-O" on his cello, showing everyone that he is not only a talented beatboxer but also a great cellist. Merging the classical tones of a cello and his modern beatboxing, he opened up a whole new world of musical possibilities. 

This solo was followed up by some foreign action with "Papaoutai" (Sans-Stirling) pumping everyone up before making everyone quiet down for an Opera Moment (which had Avi being an utter BA). 




This rather quiet moment was decimated by the performance of "Aha!" with really fast-paced mouth movements that seem inhuman at first, perhaps even more than divine!  This was followed by "Four Five Seconds" which involved a really well done duet with Avi and Kevin. 

Teamwork is definitely key as the group performs their rendition of "Breakfree" with all their voices going perfectly in sync. Keep in mind that this concert is all in one take, no redos, no mess-ups which brings my respect for PTX to a whole new level.





One of the most popular PTX song medleys "Evolution of Music" was performed soon after. These awesome, beautiful people took us through the best of multiple time periods, just closing your eyes would make you feel like you are on a time machine, experiencing music of various eras. They even made Justin Bieber's "Baby" sound amazing! 

After a lovely Avi solo "Standing By" that was graced by a multitude of iPhone and Android lights, we were treated to the extremely crowd inclusive performance of "On My Way Home". The crowd was split into multiple groups, creating a stadium-wide a cappella. 

And that was the night.... NOT! There were two encores! First was "That's Christmas To Me" where they put down their microphones and sang their hearts out with the crowd actually being properly silent for once. 





I thought they were done and I thought that they forgot one of their most popular mashups and thank goodness I was wrong. Pentatonix ended the night on a high note with their performance of their "Daft Punk" mashup. It feels so much better hearing the music in person than over the speakers of a laptop, at this point, I was on the verge of crying tears of joy! 

In summary, this was definitely a night to remember. It was a privilege to be at Pentatonix's first performance in Malaysia, I hope you guys enjoyed it and will come back for more! I would love to thank PTX for giving such a lovely performance and to BlackCat Live & The Wonderland+ for organising this event. I hope to see more from Pentatonix and I am definitely going to purchase their albums and you should totally do so too! 

Signing off,
SS Reviews

A great day! 

Welcome to Sean Says Reviews (SS Reviews)

Me

Welcome to my humble blog and this is where my new content will be. The content on this blog will be my own opinion and there will be no personas (unlike the SS youtube channel), it will be the right and raw me. 

What can you expect from this blog? Well, you can expect plenty of reviews of movies, books, food and other facets of entertainment both real and digital. I can't guarantee that you will like what I have to say but I can guarantee that it would be at least entertaining to your eyes. 

What about your youtube channel? Well, my youtube channel is not going anywhere. For now, I will be focusing more on gaming on that channel as I transfer my reviewing abilities here. I think that it is better to be a wordsmith to convince people to try out new things than be some kid with a webcam when it comes to food and the like. We all have to have some class. Haha.