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
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Strawberry Cheese Cake At Delicious Cafe – The opening of Delicious Cafe (and restaurant) at Straits Quay, Penang have been creating a trend for the young and old to talk about it and dine out at that place. The reason is probably the variety of food, desserts and of course a nice and cozy pink-purplish interiors.
Delicious Cafe origins from 1 Utama Shopping Centre in Damansara Utama, Klang Valley and the opening in Straits Quay is the first outlet in Penang and outside Klang Valley. I have not really dine out at there, just have been hearing many friends talk about the place, despite it’s a mid-end pricing restaurant.
On one night, I visited the place to eat some desert. It was crowded with people at about 9.30pm and it’s a little bit noisy. I didn’t want to sit outdoor as it was hot and humid. No choice that I have to bare the noisyness and eat my dessert.
The unfortunate event was my girlfriend ordered the Classic Chocolate Cake with Vanilla Ice Cream at the counter but the waitress told us it’s not available after 5 minutes because it’s all been booked. That’s fine, and we changed to Strawberry Cheese Cake (RM15), and we waited 10 minutes for that. The cake was not that awesome when compare to Secret Recipe, some like it, but it’s not being friendly with my sweet tooth. It looks very pretty though.
We spent some times chatting and surfing the net with the free wifi then we went back. While going out of the door, we took a glance at the desserts cake counter, and shockingly found out that there’s still so many Classic Chocolate Cake. Damn. The waitress told us that they refilled it, they didn’t tell us that they would refill the thing at first this made me have a first bad impression about the service.
What do you think? I might give a second visit to see how it goes. =)
Delicious Cafe
3C-G-3 & 3A, Ground Floor,
Straits Quay.
Operation Hours:
10am – 12am (weekdays)
9am – 12am (weekends and public holidays)
Tel: 04-8998555
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Midlands Park Shopping Centre or more to known as 1-Stop is a place in Pulau Tikus which was a glory during 199x. However, the crowds get lesser and lesser and there’s not much retail shop except it’s famous for DVDs and computer accessories. People visit there just to eat McDonald’s, KFC or perhaps a short walk by the people who are residing in the Berjaya George Town Hotel just next to it.
My recent visit changed my view on Midlands Park Shopping Centre and found that there’s actually quite a number of F&B outlets serving office workers mostly and the locals.
Well, I am glad to be invited by Chin Wai, the owner of Tainan Restaurant in Midlands Park Centre for a little food testing and sharing session. I am a fan of Taiwanese food especially for those beef noodle, and fried chicken chop and of course bubble tea and when I got the invitation, I was so excited and surprised because I didn’t know there’s actually a Taiwanese restaurant at 1 Stop Midlands Park.
According to Chin Wai, this restaurant has over 10 years of history and features a classic and homey look which he said will be renovate and redesign the place to a more modern look. Even though the place looks classic and homey, there’s still frequent customers who visit the place quite often as some said it gives a sense of home.
So let’s get into some food shall we? =) He served us bubble tea nicely for each of us. It may not be the best bubble tea compare to Chatime, Gong Cha or whatever out there, but still it’s a good bubble tea at a Taiwanese restaurant.
Their food menu normally comes with a soup, beverage and dessert. Here what you see above is Golden Drumstick Rice (RM7.50). A crispy chicken drumstick with rice and minced pork topping and a little vegetable.
If you are a fan of chicken wings not the drumstick, they got the Golden Chicken Wing Rice (RM7) too, actually it comes with rice just but we didn’t want that many rice that day. It’s cheaper than the drumstick by RM0.50 and to me I like the chicken wing more than the drumstick, it’s even crispier and tastier.
Taiwan is always famous for crispy deep fried food. What you are seeing above is the Pork Chop (RM7 with rice) and it’s crispyness makes it tasted good and keep wanting more.
If you fancy something different with a little bit mayonnaise topping and crispyness, the Crispy Nestum Chicken Ball (RM8) is good. The Nestum added a little bit of cereal oats taste, making it feel more than chicken and it’s feel a little bit like chicken nugget, but in an oriental way.
Taiwan is famous for beef noodle. If you go to Taiwan, beef noodle can be seen almost at anywhere. At Tainan Restaurant, they do serve Beef Noodle too. What’s special is the soup which actually more creamy than normal Taiwanese beef noodle. The beef taste is strong and overall it’s OK-good.
I am a fan of Taiwanese sausage because of the tenderness and sweetness in the sausage. It tasted special and they have it too at RM8.50 which comes with rice.
Lastly, check out their Prawn Roll (RM7.50) which stuffed little shrimp in it and have a crispy skin outside. It looks like lobak but actually it’s shrimp. Comes with rice too!
So, here you go, a little intro of a mini Taiwanese restaurant at Midlands Park 1 Stop and you now have another place for lunch and dinner. Cheer~
Tainan Restaurant
(1 Stop) Midlands Park Centre
488-1-07 Burma Road
10350 Oenang
Tel: 016-4909795
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Today’s noon was raining heavily everywhere in Penang. Was thinking to eat at Sin Kheng Aun Hainanese Food but it was difficult to look for a parking, then changed our mind to TekSeng Restaurant but it’s not open today and finally we went to Kopitan Restaurant for lunch with mom and dad.
I found it not bad last time, so it’s a OK-GOOD lunch place. Luckily we found a parking right outside the restaurant and it was full of people inside. Surprisingly, the serving time for beverage and rice meal was fast. But it take rather slow for the toast.
The rice dish was fast in serving is probably because it’s easy to prepare as the chicken is chicken chop, just poured with different type of sauces. I ordered myself a plate of Mushroom Chicken Chop Rice (RM8.90) which I couldn’t find any mushroom on it. It’s the sauce on the chicken that tasted mushroom. Somehow, I think this is s0-so only, nothing much special, I more prefer the Kam Heong’s.
Mom likes the toast at there. She always praised that the bread use for the toast and how good and soft it is. This time, she ordered a Sausage and Cheese Toast (RM5.90) which I could say, it’s good! I like the softness of the bread, the little sausage slice on top of the bread, the cheese melts in the mouth and the sweetness of sugar on the bread. This is good.
Kopitan Restaurant
4A/B Logan Heritage,
Beach Street,
10200 George Town,
Penang.
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