Harvest In Cafe

This little restaurant at the corner of Irrawadi Road and Chow Thye Road is really popular at lunch time; it was already half-filled when I arrived at 11:45.

I ordered some garlic bread to start while I waited for my friends to arrive.  To my disappointment the slices of baguette they served were cold and stale, and not "golden brown and crunchy" as described in the menu.

I saw Papper Salt Squids on the menu and ask a waitress if they were freshly made.  Unfortunately I was told they were not.  Seems to me they would have a hard time keeping them "crispy and crunchy" so I decided to give them a miss.

The lack of any soft furnishing on the walls make the place reverberate like a school canteen when the place filled up at around 12:30. I measured an average of 93 decibels from the centre of the restaurant.

The first dish to arrive was the Black Pepper Lamb Chop (RM12.90).

The portion was quite large for the price.  You get two large lamb chops, along with some mashed potato, some lettuce and some tomato. The lamb was well-marinated and the sauce was flavourful without the black pepper being over-powering.



Next up was the Honey Oat Chicken (RM10.90).

The deep-fried oat coating has a nice crunch to it, but I found that the honey drizzled over it had made it a little too sweet for my taste.


The Barbeque Chicken (RM7.90) came next.

This is a well-grilled piece of chicken with a generous amount of barbeque sauce poured over it.  The flavour of the sauce compliments the flavour of the chicken very well indeed.

The popularity of this place during lunchtime means that if you arrive around 12:30pm you may have to wait for a table.  Service is surprisingly quick, as our meals were served within 15 minutes, even with a full house.  Coupled with the modest prices, this place definitely deserves its popularity.  Worth going back.

10 Irrawaddy Road
10050 Penang

04-2261718

GPS Coordinates: 5.425676, 100.321520

<
View Larger Map

The Cape @ Gurney Plaza

This restaurant is located on the 7th floor of Gurney Plaza.  It is in the old building, across the atrium from the Golden Screen Cinema multiplex. Their specialty is steamed rice in wooden tubs with a wide selection of toppings.

The first to arrive was the Steamed Rice in Wooden Barrel with Mixed Roasted Meats.  The toppings comprised roast pork, barbeque pork, roast chicken and roast duck, with a sprig of pak choy and a shitake mushroom, in a light soy-based sauce.  They also added some wolfberries (aka goji berries or boxthorn berries, or kee chee in Hokkien).  They are those red things you can see on top.  It turned out that they add wolfberries to almost every dish they serve, and a few of the drinks as well.  These guys must get a good deal buying the stuff in bulk, like, by the ton...

This dish was a little bland to my palate.  The roast chicken we were served was breast meat which was a little on the tough side.  The duck breast was only slightly better, but since it's not my favourite cut of meat on poultry, I may be a bit biased.

Next came the Steamed Rice in Wooden Barrel with Spare Ribs in Black Pepper Sauce.  These were deep-fried pieces of well-marinated spare ribs drenched in a generous amount of black pepper sauce.

This went down a treat!  The marinade has penetrated deep into the meat which gives it a spicy, smoky flavour.  This may be a little spicy for younger children, mind.  I'll definitely order this dish on my next visit!

I must admit the next dish looked much better in the photo on the menu, but it is understandable since the menu photo has all the ingredients piled on top, whereas in the real-life item the ingredients are cut into smaller pieces and well-distributed within the noodles.

The noodles had just the right texture and from the aroma you can tell the noodles were furiously toss-fried over one of those insanely powerful burners you find in professional Chinese kitchens.  Note the lack of wolfberries; this turned out to be the only dish where they don't make an appearance.

We ordered a set of 4 Xiao Long Bao since they were on the menu. And yes the wolfberries are back!

I regret to say that these were disappointing.  The skin on these dumplings were too thick and tough.  The filling was also nowhere near the flavoursome morsels you can find at Dragon-i. In my opinion they should stop selling this dish and get some lessons in how to make proper Xiao Long Bao. It's just not on to get people's hopes up with these abominations.

Next up is the Steamed Rice in Bamboo with Assorted Seafood.

-

The assorted seafood include crabsticks, prawns, faux abalone and a wafer-thin slice of grouper (I think).  The rice is soaked in a fish broth and the dish on the whole is passable, but nothing to write home about.

Stir-fried Hong Kong Choi Sum is next.

The vegetable, which wasn't very fresh to begin with, was overcooked to death. Nuff sed.

After 3 disappointing dishes, along came the Deep Fried Calamari Rings with Salt and Pepper.

This dish is surprisingly good.  If you do order this dish, eat it quickly before it loses its crunch.

All in all I would go back to this restaurant, of only to order the Black Pepper Spare Ribs and Seafood Noodles, and maybe to try some of the other dishes on the menu.

Bon appetit!


GPS Coordinates: 5.437382, 100.309686

Google Map Link


View Larger Map