All In a Days Work: Homemade Ice-Age

When we first purchased a second hand industrial-sized refigerator for our stores, little did we know it had its quirks of its own. This fella built on ice on a daily basis thanks to some poor engineering design (Made in Malaysia - actually Kuching >.<).

For those in the know, a refigerator provides cooling via its cooling rods which channel coolant throughout. Interestingly, for this particular unit, it had only one motor (or condenser), which basically limited it to a one shot on/or off and similar cooling for both the chiller and freezer sections. Naturally, we would have some problems such as the chiller being too cold at times and such. Many household refigerators douse the problem by simply fitting in a fan called a blower which would eliminate the problem of ice forming in the chiller section while the freezer cools down. This works by distributing the heat or more accurate cold evenly to avoid ice-forming on the cooling rods that pass by the chiller section. Another side effect, we experience a literal flood every night thanks to the forming and melting of the ice.

Well, thanks to some genius who wanted to save a couple hundred of bucks, theres no blower, and the result a super thick ice-wall or what the crew calls the Ice-Age that occurs once every month. Annoying as it may be, it actually does generate some inhouse fun every month especially when the guys go around the machine literally 'breaking the ice'.

And yes, we actually need an ice-pick (small one la...) to break through the 6" or-so wall that forms over the course of a month. Clearing out the chiller is one thing, followed by about an hour of ice fun, and rearrangement right after. Honestly, I believe the guys have somehow managed to convert this annoyance into a good practice of management to keep the chiller maintained after all.

Another one of our little arcs that run around the cafe every month - Life can be fun and entertaining no matter where it is!

Introducing: Premiums!

Its been a while that we had the idea of premium dishes cooking, which are basically bigger, nicer and 'more fulfilling' dishes, drinks or desserts for our guests who have more than the capacity to 'appreciate' it (In the terms of cash, of course :D). Premiums are where you pay for the ingenuity, we feel. Of course, in the end it is up to the guest to decide if it is worth that standard - please feel free to leave behind feedback on our menu.

It certainly took quite a while to come up with innovative and fresh ideas for dishes and mocktails. While ramping up the serving size is certainly an easy way to introduce a premium, what is truly needed is the originality and energy which would drive its 'core' - which would then be reflected in the product itself, something fresh and unfounded in the food industry.

Similar to chefs, but without the 'top' or qualifications to go with it, we believe that good food rests merely on the heart and soul of those preparing them. It does not matter whether one has experience (though experience would certainly speed up the learning process), but a cook with the desire to, well.. fill the stomachs of guests to bring out a huge smile on their faces would certainly do his/her homework well to ensure that given the time. Here, we are all about originality and taste with just about any ingredient one could easily get his hands on - something we all could do and identify with rather than to think of truffles (Which in my opinion is exquisite, but well - kind of on a different genre of food I guess).

Without further ado, we are glad to present to our guests some of our latest creations - some which are in our Premiums, while others are on the standard menu (actually created sometime back):

1. Mixed Sauce Noodles (Or originally known as Fried Sauce Noodles - a Taiwanese dish)

When undergoing training for FnB, we were introduced to this somewhat simple yet intricate dish where noodles are boiled and covered with minced meat (originally pork) with a hot and spicy sauce, mixed with a variety of fresh vegetables to go with it. Surprisingly, the dish was quite appetizing in fact. While we were scouting around the kitchen, we wondered how well such a dish would go with our Black Pepper sauce with minced meat - and there you go. We now offer the same Taiwanese-FuZed dish without pork(!) but with the choice of chicken, lamb or beef in a blend of spicy black pepper sauce. Certainly a unique twist to the more common Fried Sauce Noodles.

2. Paninis-FuZed Style (Premiums)

The panini is basically an Italian flatbread sandwich. Well, thats all there is to it. And whatever you put in between is pretty much up to you. While there is an original recipe and preparation to it, were not exactly following the original after all, and thats something we would like to have as our signature in preparing dishes. Our paninis are filled with whole chicken slices with our Jolly Roger's sauce and a light mix of fresh vegetables, which bring together a taste many would (probably) long for.

What really makes these guys interesting is of course, their preparation style and presentation which truly makes it a novelty when you see someone taking a bite from a strange 'bread' or 'bun' few usually munch on.

3. The Submarine (Coming Soon)

In some cases, the only thing we innovate would be size - and as many times as this has been done before, well, it still works when you dish out an extremely huge serving. Our submarine does dish out a little uniqueness as its filled with mushroom sauce rather than the common blend of chili, tomato and mayonnaise. Be on the lookout for this fella sometime in the future.

4. Sambal Fried Rice (Premium)

Nothing much beats a spicy sambal fried rice for its fans. Nevertheless, there are still ways we could work on it and make it even more interesting. Our Sambal Fried Rice comes with a touch of curry and spices, and also a mixture of more than 11 herbs and spices (Supposedly :D) added with a touch of fresh pineapples and accompanied with a lamb side dish to make it a wholesome spicy experience. The coleslaw goes extremely well with this combination too as it somehow provides a soothing touch to wane the spiciness a little when needed. To top it off, were making it big so the average guy would be quite satisfied with its price.

Be on the lookout for more of our original premium dishes now that this range has been officially launched.

Event: Soul Dance Anniversary Dinner

We were honored to have been selected as the hosting venue for Soul Dance Studio's 2nd Anniversary Dinner 2011 on 3rd April 2011. Led by Decole, Soul Dance has certainly created waves within the local dance scene and beyond. We would also like to congratulate them on bagging two recent wins, the most recent one at the Back to Plaza Astana Street Dance Competition just earlier today.

In conjunction with their anniversary, Myst is also proud to announce our latest affiliation with Soul Dance Studio as an official affiliate under our wings of performing arts. This marks our first affiliate member in this arena, and we hope to draw more participation from other groups in the future.

As an affiliate, Soul Dance Studio will gain the privilege of being a premium member and also a valuable partner in steering the Myst network in the future. We are still looking forward for more partners in hand to pull together an ideal. Drop us a message to find out more!

Photo courtesy of Michelle

Event: Sarawak Bloggers Anniversary Dinner

It was with great pleasure that Myst was chosen as the host for the 1st Sarawak Blogger's Anniversary on Saturday, 12 March 2011.  The Sarawak Bloggers have made a long way since their humble beginnings about one year ago. Take a look at their web portal here.

Everyone had their share of light refreshments, snacks, food, and a huge load of cake to top it off thanks to the sponsorship of generous bloggers. The event signified the 'grounding' of the Sarawak Bloggers being an online community, thus bringing bloggers together.

Being one of the affiliates for Myst, we are proud to have the Sarawak Bloggers working alongside in expanding and developing the network. We are looking forward to further affiliations and partnerships in the future to further drive our vision forward hand in hand.

Below was the group photo courtesy of Willie who took the shot for us:

Stay tune for further updates! Coming up next will be a short announcement of our upcoming affiliate to be part of our network! For a more personalized coverage for the event by our rep, click here.

Event: Gathering of The Dentists

We had the golden opportunity to cater for the annual general meeting for the 'Dentistry Ministry' for pretty much the whole of Sarawak on the 21, 22 and 23 February 2011. Serving a total of 130 pax, this is one of our first major external event since catering for Sri Datai's 60 pax Christmas lunch.

Being naturally short on resources due to our 'small business' nature, it was indeed quite a challenge to serve up a breakfast, lunch and tea consecutively for 130 pax with barely more than 5 kitchen crew, mostly which are inexperienced and drawn out from the 'fresh meat' squad.

Anyways, before running into the details, photos of the event (our apologies for the blurry shots as we do not have proper shooting equipment):

The good news: They loved the food! For any cook, one could not delight more in their guests liking and finishing their food. At every meal, nearly everything was finished despite our efforts in doubling the portions even for the second day.

A big thanks to all the crew who served and prepared the food during this time. We are proud to announce that there was no chef at the helm of the whole event, but rather a Computer Science graduate - I'm not sure, but I'm about as baffled as you are to how it all worked out :D

The kitchen crew got up as early as 4a.m. to begin ingredient preparations and each meal was allocated between 4-6 hours of preparation. With 5 crew, that equates to one crew serving 6.5 guests per hour. Not very heavy at first sight, but if we were to break it down, it equates to serving 1 guest every 10 minutes with all courses (usually 4-5 courses per meal) inclusive of preparation time and everything. Thus, our estimation was just on time on nearly all accounts, minus one meal where the organizers wanted their meal earlier - So the kitchen simply told them if they were to serve earlier than agreed upon, there would be less food - literally :D

The biggest surprise for the whole event was actually the lack of experience that most of the crew 'had'. All our kitchen assistants (or at least 75%) were completely new to our kitchen, and some had never even touched a 'kuali' in their lives. Thankfully, we didn't ask the fresh meat to go 'goreng nasi' LOL.

With the tiny kitchen churning out food for double its normal capacity, we naturally ended up utilizing most of the space in the cafe - converted into a mobile mass production centre for 3 days. Due to limited storage, we had to acquire most of the stock only the day before preparation. Thus you could probably catch an overloaded white Myvi full of vegetables, poultry, potatoes, fruits, and more running round the city at 5a.m. in the morning :P

All in all, it was great exposure and also a good benchmark to test our capacity for future events. Don't worry though, if your event requires food for 1000 pax, we would happily mobilise our kitchen to adapt to your needs (If that means occupying public space too haha).

With that, we hope to see you around at our next event! All thanks to the Ministry of Dentistry!

All In A Days Work: Quality Assurance

No matter how much we would like to be called a networking point or events business, Myst is still essentially an FnB operations that serves food, drinks, desserts and the like. As such our KPI's fall solely under one criterion:

Customer Satisfaction.

I'm not sure how people think. But then again, this guy is starting to look freaky.

One of our friends did advise us on referring to customers as guests - and it is something I really find interesting and applicable - simply because, by addressing our customers as guests, we automatically push up their statures at least by a little. Being in service line, it is only logical that we should treat our customers with utmost respect, thus they are guests. Little things in our patterns of thinking - but I realised that after spending some time addressing them as guests - I actually began to develop a little more respect for the people who dine in with us. And that is certainly a good thing for just about any field in actuality- because I believe the most important element of a business deal or partnership is satisfaction for both parties.

Well, we have other KPI's under the main criterion of course. Amongst them includes, quality of service, quality of food and beverages, quality of the environment and the like. Quality assurance in FnB is of course, ensuring quality of the dishes we serve, and drinks we make. Other aspects such as quality of service is more subjective - though there are base principles to refer to as well.

In ensuring that the quality of the kitchen is maintained, I myself (as the supervisor of the kitchen - I also develop the recipes for the menu) have to constantly conduct quality checks on the dishes coming out from the kitchen. In simple English, its called picking food (not with my fingers of course! Ahm) or in Hokkien (as it is always funnier this way) - 'nie chai'. Kids, don't try this at home - Or you might just lose your dinner :p

Leftovers: The bane of FnB

Then comes the bane of FnB, a taboo not to be uttered under the worst circumstances: Leftovers! And substantial amounts of it! I understand that everybody has different tastes, so there is a slight possibility that our excellent food and drinks did not quite match the guest's palate. On the other hand, the much more likely scenario (as our crew are well, bumbling !@#$ - Hey, I do respect them a lot - its just that they lack .... technical ..skills) is that some 'idiot' just screwed up the recipe or cooking procedure. At this point, I am informed by the server that the guest did not 'eat up'. Then there is only one thing left to do - Become a recycle bin lo..


Yes, yes.. I know the dangers of hand and mouth diseases. One of my crew even asked me if I could get AIDS by eating infected food ( -.-"). Well, lets just sat I guess I am willing to sacrifice my life for the future of Myst :P But what to do? I need to know if the food was up to standard bah.. Maybe we might have some sort of food testing technology in the future to determine the 'deliciousness' factor of a dish >.<. Disclaimer: When tasting leftovers, we still observe the golden rule: Do not do anything to to the food which would make you not want to eat it yourself. If were still willing to taste it - at the very least its from the untouched parts lah!

There was a time I was sharing this with a friend, and when I thought about it from the third person's perspective, we just bawled over on the floor laughing. Seriously - imagine the supervisor chowing down on just about every plate (and then downing it with a half-finished drink) than has more than a nibble left behind by a guest -.-

Ah.. well.. there is a always a price to pay for excellence. Hey, not every item left behind is bad! I actually realised how great our food was at times - so don't blame me for finishing good leftovers!

Sarawak Bloggers: Gathering of the Tribes

On the 15th Jan 2011, we had our first opportunity to meet up the Sarawak Bloggers and some of their members in person via the event called Gathering of The Tribes, somewhat of a Tribal and Tattoo convention held at the Borneo Convention Centre Kuching over the weekend.

Here is a summary of the event by our representative who managed to get an invitation for the event.

We hope that this would be the beginning of many more events, activities and programs with our partners and affiliates as we build our community around us! A big thanks to the Sarawak Bloggers for providing us the opportunity to be there!