dim sum @ Corner Club

Friday was a public holiday and so i decided to spend some time with family by taking them to have dim sum breakfast. Of course, at the same time, i was craving for dim sum since the last time i had it was like half a year ago. We decided to go to Corner Club Restaurant, located along Gurney Drive. My mom frequents this place with her dancing friends after their dancing routine.

 

our tea for the morning-chrysanthemum

 strictly prawns only

 "siu-mai"-a must for every dim sum feast

crabstick wrapped with fishball

my all time favorite-steam fishball

"ji ma zou"-lotus paste with groundnut pastry

Hong Kong style "chee cheong fan"

mom's must have during dim sum-century egg porridge

I too personally love to go there as unlike other dim sum places, this restaurant is air-conditioned and the price you pay for the dim sum is not a lot more as compared to the others. And, most important of all, the food and service is good!

Corner Club restaurant also opens for lunch and dinner. Currently, they have set lunch with 3 dishes starting from RM29.90++. I have yet to try out their lunch promo though.

Besides that, it has ample parking space and if you dine there, you pay only RM1 for the parking which you have to claim back from the cashier in the restaurant after having paid RM3 when you first enter the parking lot.


Where at?
5S Gurney Drive, 10250 Penang.
04-228 2888/227 5764

Twilight~~

Today marks the first movie review from Beary Informative, thanks to Bennett!!

According to Bennett, "The Age of Vampires has arrived. None more dominant than the Twilight series . For those of you who’ve never read the books , fret not because the movie is equally satisfying. For casual movie-goers, it might seem like a lame sappy love story, but dig deeper and you’ll discover the uniqueness of the characters and the realism of it all thanks to the excellent cast. The chemistry between the leads; Bella and Edward is surreal.  Watch out too for the sequel “New Moon” out later this month .  (Grade: B+)"

Nevertheless, i personally perfer action-packed or comedy romance genre of movies. So, twilight isn't really my cup of coffee!

Northam Beach Cafe, Penang

Long for a coffee-shop like place to dine with beautiful scenery? Well, then you should go to the Northam Beach Cafe situated along Jalan Sultan Ahmad Shah, or just the opposite of Northam Hotel, Penang.

This is by far the biggest non-airconditioned cafe i've been to. It has lots of food varieties from the local hawkers cuisine to western to Korean and even Portuguese, Phillipine's, France's and etc. So, if you think want to savour all the cuisine, you should go with a big group of diners! And lucky for me, I got a group of friends to go with me  and so here is what we ordered!

yong tau foo in plain soup with vermicelli

yong tau foo in tom yam soup with vermicelli

chicken pie

 

minced-chicken meat crepe

crepe with chocolate sauce and ice cream

wan ton noodles with minced-chicken meat and mushroom

koay-teow soup

chicken chop

grilled fish

 

Basically, all the food tasted good except for the a-little-more pricey price as compared to other normal "kopi-tiams". Well, perhaps there is a price for beautiful sceneries and ambience surroundings. Not to forget, you never need to worry about car park problems as there are plenty at Northam Beach Cafe!

Food & Tea, Gurney Plaza

The previously housed "Hang Ten" shop lot on the second floor of Gurney Plaza has now been turned into another new food outlet. This one is a chained outlet known as "Food & Tea". They have many other outlets in KL.

 Nice exterior and interiors decoration with revolving orange cushion seats.

 And, guess what, their menu is orange in colour too!

In conjunction with their opening on the 9th of November 2009, they have an on-going promotion which runs for the next 2 weeks, i.e get a claypot HK "bee tai bak" at only RM0.99!
This is especially a very worth deal for the workers there.

So, my colleagues and i decided to give it a try. Each of us ordered the claypot "bee tai bak".

 

claypot HK "bee tai bak"

from left: apple and red dates drink, pear and white fungus drink, iced yin yong, lotus seed and white fungus dessert

 sweet sour crab meat with mantou

smoked ham focaccia

All the food that we ordered tasted fine. Nevertheless, they should really polish up their service skills. Despite having paid 10% service charge, we are really not satisfied with service. Many dishes shown in menu were not in stock. They also took quite a long time to get the food done. No benefits-of-doubt should be given as this is not a new business, they have got so many other outlets elsewhere and should therefore have the experience needed.

Not to forget, they also have a variety of dim sum and other delicacies.
And, for those of you reading this, bear in mind that the claypot HK "bee tai bak"(RM0.99) promotion lasts only for the next 2 weeks. Happy eating!!

Coffee Island, Gurney Drive

As we all know, coffee has always been a great addict to most people. More new coffee places are opened to cater for these needs. These coffee places have even adapted to evolutionary ideas of not just selling coffee but also meals from western to malay to chinese and of course drinks of different kinds and not just coffee.
Perhaps if you drive along Gurney Drive, you would have noticed this place called "Coffee Island". This is a 24 hours outlet. At Coffee Island, you are provided facilities such as free wifi, computers pre-loaded with multi-player online games, playing cards and of course food!
There are the indoor and outdoor sittings for your preference.

from left: soypucinno, cappucino, hazel chocolate

fresh orange juice

toast bread with kaya and butter

fried mee

fried glass vermicelli

"Pearl Roll"- wanton skin wrap with minced meat

Of all the orders we made above, the fried glass vermicelli earns highest votes for being the best meal of the night! Pearl roll was a replacement given to us as they have added an extra of RM5 into our bill and had no other ways of compensation but to let us order another meal of any price. And we strongly recommend not to order as the taste was really very plain despite its look.

Besides that, all the drinks were alright.

JCO donuts~~

The KL-lians frequent JCO donuts like how teenagers go crazy for celebraties. I could still remember the queue I went through in Pavilion, KL for my first JCO donut.
And...finally, they opened a branch here in Queensbay, Penang. Besides donut, they also sell drinks-and i should compliment them for a variety of drinks they have on their menu!

as you can see,2 "chocolate freeze" and 1 "iced lemon tea" together with 3 original donuts complement of the drinks

top from left: "JCrown Almond", "JCrown Donatella" and "Al Capone"

Food and drinks taste wonderful!! BUT...the service i'm sorry to say sucks to hell...The waitresses never smile, never say sorry when you are asked to wait, never say thank you for your payment and took such a long time to respond to my order!

More to come, can you believe that they even ran out of whipped cream??!! In fact, the waitress in charged of the drinks asked a customer if he wanted whipped cream and so his answer was yes. Unfortunately for him, he was told by the should i say lazy-or-irresponsible waitress that the whipped cream had finished. She was lucky the customer didn't complain but unlucky that i saw the situation and here i am blogging and commenting on this bad service. They even left most of the tables uncleaned even though i've told them to do so twice. And, nope, the tables were left uncleaned all the way until we finished our donuts and drinks, which was like 90 minutes later!!

Food is good but service is bad so i don't think i'm going back there. Big Apples donuts are actually just as good and you still get complementary donuts with every purchase of drinks.

Sorry JCO, Beary Informative is not going to recommend her readers to experience such horrible service because bad service turns Beary Informative off.

p/s: see here for more details

Daorae in Penang

As my birthday is just around the corner, my old pals gave me a birthday treat yesterday at the Daorae Korean BBQ Restaurant.

This restaurant is located right in front of the Bukit Jambul big roundabout in the i-avenue shoplots. It consists of 2 storeys, the lower one with tables and chairs and the upper with only tables. So you get to do the Japanese style seat. We also managed to get a place upstairs. It was a very cozy ambience when I first stepped into Doarae. The supervisors are Koreans while most of the waiters are of other nationality (Myanmar i supposed). But i have to say, the service is superb!

As usual, if you frequent Korean restaurants, they usually start all their meals with appetizers. At Daorae, we have 8 appetizers plus 1 vegetable soup to start off with.

every table is given a jar of their wheat tea-very refreshing and smells like "Horlicks"

your own set ofcutlery

yummy huh??

 So here's what we ordered for the night...

2 bbq meat we had-both chicken and the meat is really tender!

top-"kimchi jeon", a savoury spicy Korean style pancake (warning: very big portion, we couldn't finish and the Korean boss was kind enough to tapao for us)

bottom-1 of my never-to-be-missed Korean dishes, "jap chae", in simple terms, fried glass noodle

top left-Korean style of "cawan mushi"

top right-appetizer soup with vegetables (love it!)

bottom-"soon-dubu-jjigae", soft tofu with seafood simmered in spicy sauce (also comes with a choice of chicken or beef)

As you can see, the prices are reasonable too as compared to other Korean restaurants.

In a nutshell, the food here taste good! I would love to go back again for other choices of food and this time perhaps more bold to try more conventional Korean food.

In the mean time, happy eating!!

Where at?

15-2-G/1/2, Bayan Point,
Medan Kampung Relau,
11900 Bayan Lepas, Penang
04-6402616

 

Katy Perry's "One of the Boys" album review

Remember the rhythmic song "you're hot and you're cold~~you're wrong when it's right~~" sang by Katy Perry? Well, this song is actually taken from 1 of her albums entitled "One of the Boys".
Katy, age 25, is a very talented singer with a powerful voice.

According to Bennett, "Rarely has there been an artist who bursts into the music scene with an album full of fresh and catchy songs. Yes folks I’m talking bout none other than Katy Perry  who’s spawn the controversial hit “I Kissed A Girl” and the massive “Hot & Cold”. The latter being played to death on radio stations everywhere. Nearly the whole album was written/co-written by her  and she certainly gives us her honest  piece of mind. Every track is a potential hit and it’s the perfect album after a bad break-up or just to let loose."

Chok Dee Thai

I met up with an old pal yesterday. Having meet for the first time in 1.5 years, I let her decide where we should dine in. She was craving for Thai food and so we googled some nice Thai food in Penang and found Chok Dee Thai restaurant.

The interior of Chok Dee Thai restaurant gives a very cozy and welcoming feeling.

                  

The ease-on-eyes menu

Since this is our first visit, my friend and I have decided to order the basic dish found in every Thai restaurant- the tomyam soup (RM20). However, the person who took our order was a non-Malaysian (couldn't figure out what nationality she was) and instead of giving us tomyam chicken which was what we wanted, she gave us tomyam seafood. And we only realised that after finishing almost half pot of the tomyam as we found more and more squids in the pot! The tomyam can also be cooked according to the preferred level of spiciness.

 

Among the other dishes we also ordered were 'kerabu mango- RM10', 'omellete onion-RM9', 'fish fried with long beans-RM12'.

 Kerabu mango tasted like the usual ones

 

 

Omelette onion: Very big portion, recommendable for 3-4 persons

Fish fried with long beans: Fish meat is minced and then fried with long beans. So you can't find big pieces of fish meat. Also very unusual but perhaps the fish was a little salty.

As for dessert, we ordered 't t krop-RM4' and special of the day; 'pumpkin kaya-RM5'.

 T-t krop: A sweet coconut-based dessert with jelly-wrapped water chesnut and jackfruit

Pumpkin+kaya: the most unique meal of the day and yes, you eat the pumpkin skin as well. Tastes wonderfully nice!

All in all, Chok Dee Thai is a recommendable place for Thai food. Would love to go there again to try out some other dishes. Besides that, Chok Dee Thai has a long stretch of car park just outside of the restaurant.

Where at?

231-D, Jalan Burma, 10350 Penang.
04-2291492