Humble Beginnings- Cakes from heaven

There is a new cake in town and I got to try it out last Friday and boy was it superbly good. As I quote from the pamphlet I got

Humble Beginnings' Creations are essentially Mille Crepes. A Mille Crepe is a French Cake with "mille" meaning "a thousand". In our creations, there are 20 layers of crepes with a delightful combination of fresh cream and vanilla custard between each layer. The topmost layer is caramelized to give it a nice smoky sugary flavour. Everything is hand-made and hand-layered; a true labour of love

There are no shop outlets selling this cake as they only do delivery and online orders. Currently only Penang and Johor has this Humble Beginnings franchised in town. There are two cake sizes to order from, Regular (about 18 cm- 0.9kg) cost RM 55 and Large (about 22 cm-1.3kg) cost RM 75. Even though the prices are a bit on the pricey side, but I feel it is worth your money. It is a must try if you are reading in. Do give them a call now or log on online to make your orders.

Tel: 012-4858035
Online: www.humblebeginnings.com.my

There are plenty of flavours to choose from and their best selling cake is the French Vanilla Creation which I ordered. Superbly good. It was very creamy, rich and cold. Do note that the cakes need to be refrigerated if not the cream would melt and make the whole cake soft. It is a chilled cake type.

Some of the Flavors
Cheesy Cheese
Coffee Bliss
Mango Cheese
Peanut Butter Blueberry
Royal Milk tea
Strawberry Heaven
peach Passion
Swiss Chocolate Velvet

It is a must try, two thumbs up for this cake. Indulge and enjoy a piece of heaven today (quote from Humble Beginnings)

This is the Large size of the French Vanilla Creation (best selling)

See the layers

Ecco Cafe, Chulia Street

Finally I have tried this place. Ecco Cafe located at 402, Chulia Street just nearby to Blue Diamond has been a place which a friend had once told me about which I never had the chance to try out. Then after reading a post from a blogger what2see, I really HAD to try out this place. And since it was that time of month where my cravings go wild, I dragged my parents out for lunch one Saturday.

The cafe is in an old shop house which you find along Chulia Street. Place is quite small and simple with no fancy decorations. Kinda gives you a nice backpackers feeling when you eat here. They even play nice soothing oldie songs for you to get your mind off from all the traffic noises outside. Come here and you will know what i am saying here. Place is opened daily for brunch, lunch and dinner except Sundays (11.30am to 2.30pm & 6pm to 10.30 pm).


What made me try out this place is the pastas which everyone had been talking about. And since a friend of mine told me it was good, I had to take his word for it. PS: came here for the second time in a week but this time I dragged Ed along.

Menu variety here is quite impressive with a lot of choices for you to choose from. And by reading through each dish, it made me feel that the chef here really knows what he is cooking. So as we carefully selected what to order, I got my eye set for this pasta dish called Truz-cajun spiced chicken, bananas in a creme sauce. Sounds really unique rite? At first I thought how would bananas taste in a cream pasta? As weird as it sounds the pasta turned out to be really good. Double thumbs up for this. Pasta was really creamy and rich. Oh i am already starting to crave this.

Truz Pasta

Next pasta dish was the Pesto Pasta-pesto sauce made from basil, garlic & olive oil. It was so so for me as it did not have enough garlic or taste to it. Had more of the olive oil taste. But if you are the type who likes this pasta version, you'd sure love it.

Pesto Pasta

Then we also tried a tomato base pasta called Salvatore-salami, olives, mushrooms, onion, basil, tomato sauce. It had a very generous helping of salami slices and olives in it. Taste wise it was good. Very strong tomato taste with a hint of sourness. Next time I'd be sure to try their Bolognaise Pasta.

Salvatore Pasta

And the last pasta dish was under the chefs specials, Lemon-Infused Chicken-chicken fillet, lemon slices, capers, mushroom, herbs, in a cream sauce served with a side of pasta. Well after ordering it then I realized it was more of a chicken dish then a pasta dish. But I still liked it. Chicken fillet was really "lemon infused"which really does suit the name of the dish. It had thinly sliced lemon skin in the sauce. Awesome!

Lemon-Infused Chicken

Apart from Pasta they also have Pizzas which I got to see the chef tossing the pizza base up in the air. It was cool. Pizza base here is thin, so when it is served it is nice and crispy on the edges. I got to try two types of Pizza. First was the Ecco Pizza-Tomato, capsicum, aubergine, onion and basil. Although the fillings were simple, the pizza tasted good. Thumbs up. The second pizza I had was called Hawaiian- Turkey ham, olives, capsicum, onion & pineapple. It was good also.

Ecco Pizza

Hawaiian Pizza

Now comes the dessert. They only have one type of dessert available which is the creme brulee. So since me and my mum were on a creme brulee search, we ordered to try it out. Creme brulee came in coffee flavor and boy was it superb! It was so good that we had to order another one. It is a must try!

Creme Brulee

For drinks we tried out the lassi drinks. We ordered a pineapple lassi and black currant lassi. They use Sunquick cordials for the flavor but it was very refreshing. Drink is served blended style as they blend the drink and ice cubes together.

Pineapple and black currant lassi

I am so glad that I finally tried out this place. This sure going to be in my list when I crave for pasta again. You should really try out this place.

Nyonya Cafe New World Park

Nyonya Cafe, which serves authentic nyonya cuisine can be found in the New World Park. Since it opened, we had never tried out this place and today was our first visit.

How was the food? It was good. Really enjoyed our lunch here. The owner was so friendly that he kept coming to us to ask how each dish was. He even made us try his crispy noodle and kiam chai Ark for free. Not forgetting he even made my grandma comment on his food. It was hilarious.

So this is what we had.

Crispy Noodle was wonderfull

Perut Ikan not my type of dish but everyone else said it was good.

This was my favourite called Chien Bak. It is "sam chan" pork stir fried in sweet soy sauce. Tasted so good that we had to order another plate. Thumbs up for this.

Kerabu Bok Nee, strong in taste and spicy too.


Acar hawak, it had pickled vegetables such as cucumber, carrots, cabbage etc all mixed up.

Curry Kapitan. It was good too and loved the fried onions around it.

Choon Piah or I call it huge fried popiah. It goes well with the special sauce.

Huan Chu Heok masak Lemak. Leaves here are sweet potato leaves. One of everyones favourite dish even though it was on the spicy side for us.

Kiam Chai Ark which the owner gave us a bowl free to test it out and give comments. Here's what we gave by comparing my Ahmas' soup to Nyonya Cafe's, "used too much garlic, should cut down" , "not sour enough", "too strong herb taste". But all in all, it was good in their own way. Different style of cooking. Still a thumbs up for this soup. But this soup is only available during weekends.

Bo Bo Cha Cha served hot but Ed liked it cold so we requested some ice cubes. He loved it.

Pengat, somewhat similar taste to the bobo chacha but only thing it had bananas.

Chendol, with a very unique presentation. Have to be careful though when trying to stir it as you would not want to it spilling out from the bowl.

Korea Palace BBQ Restaurant

Came here last weekend. It is our second time eating Korean BBQ food. Korea Palace is located along Jalan Tanjung Tokong. Restaurant was rather big and spacious inside which could accommodate a lot of people. They even have private rooms for those who would like to have a private party.

Since we were not familiar with what to order, we decided to let the waiter recommend to us. So this is what we had. Total bill cost was RM 187

Beef Ribs
Pork
Chicken Teriyaki
Somelike egg pancake
Rice with vegetables on a hot stone

Each table had its own BBQ area and they use charcoal to BBQ the food. First the guy would come with a long thong and place the burning charcoal in the pit. Then it is covered by the grill and an umbrella like cover is placed in the middle. The umbrella is used to capture the smoke and fire which the sucker (middle portion) will actually suck in the smoke and fire. It was pretty cool to see this.

First dish that we started to BBQ was the beef ribs. But before I forget we were served with 7 small side dishes which you can ask for refills as many as you like. If I can still remember, sweet bean curd, kimchi, potato & egg in a sweet sauce, pork fat, leek and chillies, and two more I cannot remember. We were also served a huge plate of green leaves which were lettuce, white cabbage and sesame leave (tat's what the waiter told us)

So back to the beef ribs, it was the first meat which the waiter started barbecuing for us. Yea you actually get them to BBQ for you on your table while you carry on eating other things. Don't have to worry about the oil splashes or overcooking your meat. Anyways the beef was really good. Tender and juicy. Wonderfully marinated. After the beef ribs it was the pork followed by the chicken teriyaki. Pork was good but the chicken teriyaki was way salty for us.

Beef ribs raw

Beef Ribs on the grill

Pork and chicken raw

Chicken Teriyaki on the grill

One interesting thing I liked was wrapping the meats in this sesame leave. The waiter told us it was sesame leaves so I hope he is correct. Anyways, it was lovely. The leave had a special aroma taste to it which made it all wonderful. Took so much of the leave that the next morning it all came out floating in the toilet bowl...hahhahaha

Besides the meat we also ordered this egg like pancake. It had vegetables in it and some sliced up mushrooms. But we did not quite enjoy it as it was rather tasteless after having all those tasty meats in our mouth.

We also had this rice dish in a hot stone bowl. It had a lot of ingredients in it which you mix it all up while the rice is still pipping hot. It tasted pretty good.

It has been 2 weeks since we visited this place and I have been craving ever since that night to come back here again to eat. So you can see how much we both enjoyed the food here. Perhaps this weekend we may drop by here again.

Strada Restaurant

This is a newly opened restaurant which can be found just opposite Tan Mark Bookstore in Pulau Tikus. Strada is owned by a married couple who stayed in Vancouver for many years before deciding to come back to Penang to open this restaurant. The wife, a former chef from Four Seasons Restaurant in Canada, heads the cooking here.

There are quite a lot of variety of food found in the menu. Let me try and name a few interesting ones which caught my attention

Seafood Risotto RM 29.50
Almond Crusted Cod Fish served with special yogurt bechamel
Grilled Duck Breast with pumpkin mousse line sauce RM 27.50
Chicken Roll with special stuffing RM 22.50
Ratatouille Pizza RM 15.50
Creme Brulee RM 9.50
Brownie with Orange Sorbet RM 10

Their signature dessert here which they emphasized to us is the New York Cheese Cake, Chocolate Brownie and the Creme Brulee.

Came here during lunch time so this is what me and my parents tried.

Caesar Salad
Would not call this a Caesar salad but more of a Thousand Island salad. It did not have that Caesar salad taste to it.

French Onion Soup
Expected something better. Soup tasted rather blend. Big disappointment.

Seafood Risotto
It was my first time ever trying a Risotto. So cannot say much if it is categorized as good in the Risotto league. But I certainly enjoyed it. It was very creamy indeed and sticky. There were huge prawns, mussels and salmon in the rice. Very tasty for me. But you cannot eat a lot as you get filled up halfway through.

Seafood Quesadilla
It was stuffed with seafood such as salmon, prawns and mussles in a special sauce. But found it missing the Mexican kick...needed a stronger taste to it. Something was missing...don't know what exactly.

Steak with mushroom sauce
This was pretty good. Steak was nice and tender and cooked just the right way, medium rare.

Chocolate Mouse
This was good. Had a rich chocolate taste. Portions rather small though.

Creme Brulee
We seem to be in a creme brulee hunt here in Penang trying to find a place that sells good creme brulee matching with Italiannis standard. So far have not found any yet. So if you do have any good suggestions do write to me in my comment section at the end of this post.

The creme brulee here had more of an egg taste. Seems it did not have enough cream in it. The texture of it was rather hard and not smooth...it does not melt in your mouth type. So I would rate this 6/10. But it is certainly much bigger than Sire Museums portion.

Chocolate Molten cake
This was quite good. Had a rich chocolate taste. Served warm. So when you dig in, the middle is filled with melted chocolate fudge.

Before I forget, they also have affordable set meals for lunch and dinner. Quite a lot of choices to choose from. So I would certainly consider to come back here again to try out other dishes and of course aim for their chocolate desserts.