I am a selfish person and I don’t really like to spend money to buy a coffee and enjoy the hotspot internet at a nicely cafe. But my mindset changed lately when I spent my afternoon at the Muntri Mews Cafe on Wednesday with a little bowl of Chinese desserts and using the free hotspot Internet.
It’s fun to spend time at home when there’s air con and no need to spend any money but I feel that after some times, we will started to slack and rot at home, then life gets boring and dull. It’s actually pretty good that you bring your computer out and spend your usual online activity, online business out there at a nice and cozy cafe, with some light meal for bites.
I was thinking of going to Jing Si Books & Cafe but I couldn’t find any parking around the busy financial district area of Penang. Then I Googled and found about MoonTree 47 but it was closed and I ended up at a cafe of a flashpacker hotel, Muntre Mews. Quite a cozy place for some hideout. Still in search for some nice heritage cafes with nice coffee to chill out during the afternoon of my holidays. Any recommendation?
By the way, I ordered myself a bowl of Cheng Th’ng (RM6.00+), which in fact is similar to the local’s Si Koe Th’ng and I have no idea why they named it that way. A bowl of desserts and Internet was just perfect for an afternoon chill. The Cheng Th’ng consist of longan (dragon eyes), coconut jelly and little small sea coconut bath in a sweet desserts soup and topped with a few cubes of ice. It might not worth the price as you can get similar thing with more ingredient at a roadside store, but given a nice environment and music, it’s a good eat and there’s no bad about it.
I am always in search for good deal and great promotion on the Internet for food discounts and meal voucher. With Groupon group deals website growing strongly, meal deal is easier to be found than ever.
However, during my recent purchase of a Japanese food deal, I wasn’t really glad with the experience I had at the restaurant. It is not the wrong of the voucher site, but it’s the food that I don’t really happy with.
I was actually pretty excited with the meal and the deal as it was RM33.90 deal which consist of 13 items for two and it’s discounted at 57& of it’s normal price of RM86.90. The deal was pretty reasonable and worthwhile with so many item to eat and somemore it’s a meal for two.
Shinjuku Japanese Restaurant is located on Jalan Chow Thye. It has a nice welcoming space but the signboard of the shop names wasn’t clear to me as it has another name as Xiang Wei which promote Thai food. I was wondering, is it a Japanese food restaurant? Or a Thai food restaurant, but in fact they sell both Thai food and Japanese food. This combination started to make me doubt about their food quality and taste.
With no surprise, I wasn’t really happy with the sushi starter which isn’t fresh especially the shrimp sushi and crab stick sushi which is so hard when I put it into my mouth. It isn’t mouthwatering and it feels like the ingredient have been kept in the fridge for some times. I was hoping for salmon sushi or perhaps unagi, but they were no where to be seen. It’s all the low price sushi. One thing is it took that more than 15 minutes to serve the first dish.
Despite the bad sushi, I still have to stay to eat till the end as there were more than 10 items. The next dish, the Chawan Mushi, luckily did try to pull me back to a good comment of the place. What I like about this is this smoothness of the chawan mushi, it can be compare with local Taofu Fa, but I believe this is smoother. Unfortunately, there wasn’t any meat in it which usually does. Instead of tasting saltyness of the egg, it tasted sweet due to the Japanese sweet sauce that is poured a little bit on the surface of the Chawan Mushi. Overall, this is something better.
Next up was a Japanese Toufu with very small piece of unagi, mushroom and sweet sauce. It tasted different fromt he Chinese Taofu, but they looked the same. The skin of the toufu gives a soft feel and the inner toufu was smooth. I wasn’t ware of the unagi when I look at it until I put them in my mouth. The little brown-black thingy on the toufu was in fact super mini unagi. I wonder why they put such a small piece of unagi which makes it not interesting at all. The warm sweet sauce warm up the toufu and makes the dish tasted not bad too, but not good. It’s just hanging in the middle.
3 slices of abalone slice made it way to our table and into our mouth. Unfortunately, the abalone slice is unlike the one that came out from the can, or the one that is cut fresh from a cooked abalone. It’s, just so unfresh that it doesn’t consist the chewy experience of eating abalone. I was not happy with it and it didn’t spend so much time in my mouth, it just went right into my stomach and skipping my taste bud for a custom check.
It’s getting weird and suspicious with the sweet sauce and the cook at the Japanese restaurant as most of the dishes consist of a great amount of the sweet sauces. A little bit of it makes it good but many of it makes it tasted weird and overly-sweet. It’s the third dish – Teriyaki Chicken on Stick, that has so much sweet sauce in it which eventually ruin the dish and mindset for the food. The sweet tooth in me couldn’t stand the sweetness anymore and wanted a stop. Japanese food to me is always about wasabi and raw-ness, but with so much of sweet, it’s getting un-Japanese to me.
In the middle of the serving food, it comes a small little amount of Japanese Sake alcohol. I am not an alcoholic person, but I wasn’t mind trying it as I have no idea how’s a Japanese Sake tasted like. It’s deep in hot boiled water which makes the liquor warm. Upon entering my mouth, the liquor taste was there BUT it was diluted so much that it’s not like alcohol anymore. This is just like an decorative item among the 13 items.
The last dish was a Udon which I do not know the name of it and I didn’t even bother to know about the name due to the dissatisfaction of the food. I wasn’t excited as before only, I was just like – wait and eat and go. The Udon consisted a boiled egg, vegetable and teriyaki chicken in it. The broth (soup) tasted sweet and the only edible to me was the chicken teriyaki which was pretty tender. I dislike the broth of the udon.
After a few unhappy experience with the meal brought from groups deal website, I started to doubt about these promotion meal.
Shinjuku Restaurant
36C Jalan Chow Thye,
10500 Penang.
Tel: +604-2287999, +6016-4921592
Business Hours: Daily 6pm-10pm
View Shiok Or Not : Food Map in a larger map
Macallum Street Ruyi Cafe Tomyam Mee – In Penang, I have been going to Ruyi Cafe at Macallum Street to eat Tomyam Mee quite often. It’s now one of my favourite Tomyam Mee eat out place in George Town.
I made a short video on my recent visit. Actually this is just a random post, but I want to share out the short video clip. =) Enjoy. If you have any nice tomyam mee place, do introduce to me. =)
Ok, Chatime is a brand for Taiwanese bubble tea. The Original Milk Bubble Tea is awesome, the taste of the milk tea is strong and the bubble is, err, bubble. That’s all. People are crazying about it, Foursquare check in at Chatime, post photo of Chatime on Facebook and tell people about them having Chatime. Do you think it’s nice? I think it’s nice, but it’s expensive, RM5.50 for the Original Milk Bubble Tea, yet I don’t think it’s the best yet.
I believe there’s still huge variety of bubble tea out there, it’s just that the brand that makes people go crazy about it. The recent outlet at Sunway Pyramid makes people queue up long and long. I wonder why there’s no long queue at Pavillion’s outlet or the two outlet in Penang (1st Avenue and Queensbay Mall). I think the queue is due to the inefficiency of the staff. =D
And there will be one opening in the basement of Mid Valley Megamall and The Gardens.
Chatime rocks, but I want RM2.50 pasar malam bubble tea more. =D Happy Chatime-ing.
One more thing, I tried two Chatime in Hong Kong before, the bubble jelly of two stores tasted different.
