Gourmet Garden

aaaaahhhh………Still remember Ivy’s Kitchen Combo Meal posted a month ago?

I feel a bit bad towards to Mr.Tan & Ivy for owing the a-lar cart dinner post for such a long time.

Ok now, Ivy’s Kitchen also have available dishes on a-lar-cart order for dinner time besides the lunch combos that cater to the OLs and OMs in the near by office blocks.

At Night they serve Chinese and Nyonya dishes, and the followings are my verdict for some of the dishes served for the invited review dinner do:

The Big Banner hanging in front of the restaurant is eye catching. Jason has given Mr. Tan some ideas to make the restataurant’s brand name more visible to attract those who drive on Jalan Chow Thye. One of them was to place a extended vertical banner similar to that used by Japanese restaurants to show-off its name because the current banner is slightly out of sight by car drivers.

Sweet and Sour Flower Crab (market price)

The sauce combination is thick and very flavorful, and i can taste the distinctive sweet crab meat flavor from the first mouthful.

The flower crab flesh was indeed very meaty & fresh, it is a testament to the quality ingredients that they used here. To be frank, is my first encounter with such a meaty flower crab. Usually flower crab ain’t that meaty. The dish is a good mate for a bowl of fragrant white rice.

It was good, but there was a slightly sweet after taste. Light handed on the sugar is necessary.

Rating for the dish: 3.9/5

Gulai Tumis Chinese Silver Pomfret (market price)

Gulai Tumis usually would be Malaysian’s favourite, when talk and think about the dish one would start begin to experience a  saliva tsunami in the mouth. Hahaha…

What is so special about the Gulai? It is all about the spiciness of the chili paste, sourly taste of tamarind, pungent smell of lemongrass, light perfumery bungah kantan (tourh ginger) to make it became a mouth watering dish.

Above all ingredients, Ivy’s Kitchen version has additional Green Chilies and tomatoes. The Silver Promfret was fresh, but the fish was slightly over cooked because there some late arrivals due to the traffic situation.  I personally would prefer the silver pomfret put into the steaming tray rather into the gulai tumis if the fish still extremely fresh.  :)

Rating for the dish: 3.7/5

Assam Prawns (RM20 for 10 prawns)

Look at that divine caramelised colour!

There are 2 types of assam prawn, either with thick gravy or dried.  And here they served dried and crispy assam prawn with wonderful flavors .

I would say this nyonya assam prawn was very authentic to me. Although here in Malaysia there are tones of restaurant serving the same dish, but rarely you would get the same “good” nyonya assam prawn.

But don’t be sad, you can now taste the very nicely marinated and pan fried to perfection assam prawn in Ivy’s kitchen. The tamarind flavour is not overpowering; sweet and sour on the right balance. Thumbs Up!

Rating for the dish: 4/5

Fried Bean curd with Leeks

This was a simple homey dish with wok hei. It was slightly dried, a little more gravy and leeks should be better.

Again, it was slightly over sweeten.

Rating for the dish: 3.6/5

Tofu with Seaweed Soup

Seaweed soup with distinctive and clear flavours! This is the freshest seaweed flavour and aroma that I never taste before. No wonder Japanese like it so much. But again it was slightly over sweeten with the seasoning.

The soup come together with sliced carrots, fish balls, cabbages, minced chicken balls and prawns, and of course generous amounts of  the fragrant seaweed

Rating for the dish: 3.8/5

Fried Snow Pea Shoots with Bean Sprouts

The combination of snow pea shoots and bean sprout stir fried was not popular not until the recent years. I and jason still remember we had our curry fish head in Alor Star and we discovered this combination of stir frying of snow pea shoots and bean sprouts for the first time back in 2006 or 2007. Something interesting, as the friendly curry fish head chef cum owner told us, bean sprout gives the sweetness and evenly match the bitterness and rough texture of the snow pea shoots.

Anyway, the easiest dish is the hardest to master, more skill is needed. This dish in Ivy’s has that homey taste with wok hei.  But the bean sprouts were slightly overcooked, thus, the loss of that crunchy feeling. But the fragrant garlic bits compensated for that..

Rating for the dish: 3.7/5

Fruits Platter

After all the dishes, big plate of fruits was sent to our table, with chunks of sweet mango, papaya and longan.

Note: ivy’s kitchen is serves pork free dishes.

Average rating for this place:

2.9/5 for value (slightly over priced for seafood, but it was on market forces)
3.8/5 for taste & texture (taste of home cook meals, but there is still room to excel especially on the handling of certain ingredients and the seasoning)
3.8/5 for service
4.0/5 for cleanliness
3.0/5 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.

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Popularity: 7% [?]

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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: 8% [?]

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