Penang

An easy to drink cold brew here - mild, not too acidic, good for a hot day in Penang. If you’re having it in the cafe, they serve it with honey and milk for you to adjust to your preference. They’ve also got cold brew chai latte!

Baked croissants with Macallum house spread. The scrambled eggs here were fluffy, and grilled mushrooms were good and well seasoned. Naturally the croissants turned a bit soggy after awhile, but generally pretty decent for a light breakfast considering its price to cafes back home.

They have plenty of pasta choices for their lunch/dinner menu. For something lighter, the zucchini pasta with grilled white fish is a pretty good choice. As with the coffee spaghetti, the pasta itself was also cooked to perfection.

The dish that piqued our interest was this. Wasn’t mindblowing (I mean we’ve already married coffee and pork ribs), but worth a try - you do get a light hint of coffee in the creamy sauce, served with chorizo. Toss it well with the al dente pasta. I’d recommend sharing as it might get a bit jelak.

If you’re early enough, go for the Connoisseur’s Breakfast which features the usual suspects of a typical breakfast platter but all the components were done well!

Pork sausage, bacon, guacamole spread on a crisp toast, juicy portobello that were seasoned just right, and 2 perfectly runny poached eggs, with refreshing greens that had a bit of tang to it.

If you’re up for sharing, the Caramel Pancakes (RM16) would be a good start or sweet end, not too dense; served with caramelised bananas and speculoos, drizzled with caramel; a crunchy slice of green apple for texture and well you can’t go too wrong with that.

Cafe/ restaurant/ roastery/ academy all rolled in one, the space was a great place to chill and kill time on the last day of our trip! Spacious, high ceiling + natural lighting for easy phototaking 😂, good food and coffee!

With piquant Assam pedas sauce, very fresh and firm flesh. The use of mint leaves and pineapples gave it a refreshing and tangy note to the hot and sour sauce, but wasn’t too spicy. Loved it!

Part of the set we got - light and clean, comfortingly good but could be slightly more sour. Not much meat in it too but the vegetables were super soft.

A must try here! Their signature, which was super tender, rich and flavorful; sweet-sour and a tinge of nuttiness - couldn’t stop reaching for the gravy!

The platter, which consisted otah - a tad too mushy for my liking but flavours were good; hae bee hiam - a damn good complement with our rice; sweet-sour-slightly spicy acar and lobak (which is like our ngohhiang not lorbak 😂). Pretty good but I prefer the addition of crunchy water chestnut for texture.

A bit of poor planning led to an early dinner here as we didn’t make any reservations (recommended as the place isn’t huge and is quite popular).

This was one of the best meal we had in Penang which left all of us satisfied. Their set meal for 4 pax (RM120) offers Assam fish, joo hoo char (very soft, tasty chapchye, to be wrapped with lettuce accompanied by very potent sambal); their signature Kapitan Curry Chicken, choice of soup (we went for the kiam cai ark- salted vegetable duck soup) and choice of dessert between green bean soup and pulut hitam - the latter was absolutely delish, wonderfully creamy, fragrant and bit of savory addition with the coconut milk.

Also added on a platter (RM52) consisting of Otah, hae bee hiam, acar and lobak.

Final bill, including drinks, came up to RM211 for 6 pax, which wasn’t too bad for this homely, delicious meal that seemed pretty authentic!

Definitely will be back to try the rest of the menu if I’m ever in Penang again.