Gourmet Garden

For Ivy’s Kitchen, an arrangement was made for some of us food bloggers to sample their spread of a-lar-carte dishes and combo meals. The a-la-carte sampling was held on a Friday night and the combo meals were arranged for on Sunday’s lunch. It was good because we could just waltz in after Sunday Service. The Sunday lunch sampling was mainly to introduce the various sets and combinations that Ivy’s Kitchen can dish out daily. Other than sampling the meals, we were also given the opportunity to put-up some personal feedbacks on the food and also give some thoughts on the possibility to utilise some of our know-how to attract and improve in certain areas ranging from food quality and business management.

As usual we try to make it slightly earlier to capture some kitchen action, thus the following shots were possible.

The value sets or combo meals are specially created to cater to those who need to grab a quick bite that is value for their money. The combo meals are priced from RM 7.50 to RM 9.00 per set and what one would get is a rice set, a glass of freshly squeeze fruit juice and dessert, and for noodle sets they are accompanied with ‘thong shui’ and jelly dessert. You can say that their combo meals cater to both rice drums(fun tong) and noodle freaks.

If one does not prefer to get stuffed and just to fill the tank emperor, you could opt for the a-la-carte noodles and porridge offerings.

Combo A: Chicken Rendang

At RM9.00 per set, one would be served with a piece of tender creamy rich aromatic chicken cut, a  bowl of white rice(not nasi lemak because it would be to rich with all that coconut milk), half an egg, deep fried anchovies and peanuts, papadum and achar or pickles vegetables.

Rendang is a dish which originated from an ethnic group of Indonesia, Minangkabau. In many cases the rendang is mentioned as curry, but authentically the rendang is anything but curry. Rendang is prepared through a slow cooking process of the meat of choice in coconut milk and spices until almost all the liquid is evaporated and the aroma and taste of the spices and creamy richness of the coconut milk are absorb by the meat. And through this slow cooking process it allows the meat to become tender, even beef.

Combo B: Beef Rendang

The combo of beef rendang and rice shares the same side dishes as in combo A but is cheaper by RM0.50, at RM8.50 per set. Both chicken and beef rendang shared the same characteristics, creamy, rich, and aromatic, but the beef rendang was slightly spicier hot. Although the rendang dish calls for a slow cooked tender chunk of meat, the beef rendang today had some chewy chunks. One of the reasons for this is that the chewy chunks had less or no fatty contents. But yet is not enough of a reason to shun from this dish.

Combo C: Nasi Lemak

At RM7.50 per set, one could expect a coconut rich fragrant bowl of rice accompany with a halved hard boiled egg, ‘sambal’ anchovies that is prominent with the colour of turmeric and sweet, deep fried chicken wing minus the drum- met, deep fried sardine, crisp anchovies and peanuts and fish cracker. Alternatively, one could substitute the chicken wing and sardine with a bigger fish like the deep fried stuffed cincaru or hard tail mackerel for RM9.00. Personally, I would like to have bigger piece of chicken to fill my tank while still maintaining the price at RM7.50. What are people looking for now is something which tasty, economical and yet able to fill them up.

This stuffed hard tail mackerel in its raw form.  The stuffing consists various type of herbs and spices, and the predominant taste that one will get to experience from this fish is the sourness of tamarind, the fragrant of Kaffir lime leafs and the heat from the chilli paste. This stuffed hard tail mackerel is sold at RM3.80 per fish.

Combo D: Fish Fillet Noodles in clear soup

This set is for the noodle freaks and light tasting food fans, and it is only  RM9.00 for a bowl of noodle topped with generous amounts of deep fried dory fish fillet and chicken meat balls, accompanied with thong shui and dessert. One could choose from your noodle of choice from instant noodles to rice vermicelli(bee hoon), glass noodles(tang hoon) to plain old rice porridge. The soup is clear and sweet with a noticebale taste  of sesame seed oil as a condiment.  When requesting for the rice porridge version, do expect a more hard hitting sweet taste of ‘tung choy’ (type of Chinese preserved vegetable with sweet and salty taste) in soup. This because by substituting the noodle with cooked rice, the light clear soup would have its taste overwhelmed by the rice, thus the usage of ‘tung choy’ is call for. If you are a person who can’t taste anything lite, it is would not be a good choice to choose combo D.

Other than the combo meals that are mentioned here, one could also try out their lite snacks and other a-lar-carte dishes.

Average rating for this place:

3.1/5 for value (slightly above averagely priced for combo meals as comapred to economy rice, but with fresh juice and dessert it should break-even nicely)
3.7/5 for taste & texture (taste of home cook meals, but there is still room to excel)
3.8/5 for service
3.9/5 for cleanliness
3/5 for atmosphere (not much of decoration. evening got lots of mosquito due to the neighbours plants but they are looking into environmental friendly ways to get rid of this minor problem)

Location:

Add : 58 Jalan Chow Thye, 10250 Penang. (Next to Isaribi Tei and near by Jemputree)

Tel : 013-433 7878 (Mr. Tan), 016-433 7130 (Ms. Ivy)

Business Hours : Daily 9:00am-9:00pm from Monday to Sunday. Saturday 12:00pm-9:00pm.

Popularity: 18% [?]