Pearl Palace Restaurant is residing humbly at Setia Pearl Island Country Club. Considering the location of this restaurant, I don’t think that anyone would have walk-in into this restaurant for lunch or dinner purpose. But I personally feel that it’s a nice place for a function such as wedding, reunion dinner, friends gathering and etc.

The exterior deco of Setia Pearl Island Country Club.

The stairs which leads to the Pearl Palace Restaurant is located at the right side of the country club.

The entrance of the restaurant.

Abalone and scallops anyone? ?

Upon entering the restaurant, an array of beautifully decorated chairs and tables caught my attention. Those are meant for wedding dinner.

At the very end of the restaurant, its’ decorated with big pieces of glass window which allows customers to enjoy the breathtaking night scenery of Bayan Lepas area.

Mid Autumn Festival is near. Looking for a place to have a reunion dinner with your family or loves one?

Young Heart Restaurant offers 2 set meal packages (4 pax package & 2 pax package) in conjunction to the Mid Autumn Festival / Mooncake Festival. Thanks to Ms. Kee, the proprietor of Young Heart owner &  Jason, a few of us got to enjoy both of this set meals prior to its launching.

Young Heart serves dishes which are prepared, cooked with care and healthy eating is the main key that is being emphasized here.

Mid Autumn Reunion Package (4 pax) – RM 123 nett consist of below dishes:

1. Soup of the Day

2. Reunion Dumpling Platter (5 Flavours – 10 pcs)

3. Stir Fried Chayote Leaves with Shredded Chicken

4. 3 + 1 Cup Chicken

5. Orange Pork Chop

6. Cod Fish Ala Twin

7. Deep Fried Young Heart Bean Curd

8. Golden Osmanthus Pumpkin Pudding

** each person will be provided with a serving of either rice or handmade noodle

For soup of the day, we had Green Papaya with Spare Ribs Soup. The soup is cooked with charcoal. I like this soup as it’s full of home cooked flavour. The soup is sweet thanks to the generous ingredients used.

Steamed dumplings (jiao zhi) are Young Heart Restaurant specialty. Just by choosing the reunion package for 4, we are able to taste 5 flavours of dumplings. Isn’t that awesome?

Starting from right, there is Scallop, Prawn & Pork Dumpling, Pork & Spinach Dumpling, Pork & Cabbage Dumpling, Pork, Pumpkin & Chinese Celery Dumpling and Fish & Water Chestnut Dumpling.

I personally like Scallop, Prawn & Pork Dumpling, Pumpkin & Chinese Celery Dumpling and Fish & Water Chestnut Dumpling. The scallop dumpling is full of flavour and sweetness.

I like the water chestnut in the fish dumpling as it added crunchy texture and sweetness to the dumplings.

Stir Fried Chayote Leaves with Shredded Chicken was replaced by Stir Fried Kai Lan on that particular day due to there’s no stock of Chayote Leaves available.

The kai lan is stir fried to perfect timing to retain the crunchiness.

The 3 + 1 Cup Chicken is the modified version from the normal 3 cup chicken. This version is with light flavour and less oily which means healthier eating. No basil leaves are used here.

3 +1 actually refer to soy sauce, rice wine, sesame oil + chili.

Oh! This is one of my favourite dish of the night. The Orange Pork Chop is tender and very flavourable; not too sour and not too sweet, just nice. Plus it’s very appetizing too, thanks to the orange.

Cod fish Ala Twin simply means there’s a fried and a steam cod fish served together in a plate. Young heart able to maintain the quality of the fish served since my last visit.

The cod fish is fresh with succulent and smooth meat. Both steam and fried version tasted equaly good.

Deep Fried Young Heart Bean Curd – the taste and quality maintained as my previous visit. Crispy on the outer layer, soft and fragrant in the inner part.

For the reunion package, each person is to be served with a choice of white rice or hand made noodle. I would strongly suggest that you try out the hand made noodle.

Although the handmade noodle it’s served plain with just a hint of soy sauce and sesame oil, but it’s GOOD! The texture of the handmade noodle is springy with a hint of sweetness. All of us agree that this plain noodle is good!

Haven Delights is a newly opened restaurant located at Times Square which served Japanese, Korean, Hong Kong and Shanghai cuisines. 
In Part I, some review on the restaurant interior and desserts had been posted. I truly enjoyed the ice creams and the chef’s special finger food served in Haven Delights. Let’s move on to main dishes.

We were first served with Hotzzz Abalone which is available in the buffet menu. The abalone slices were topped with homemade spicy paste and eel sauce.

Unagi Tofu - Grilled unagi with silky tofu in sweet sauce and bonito flakes garnishes. I am a unagi fans, do I need to say more?

Chicken Ban Ban (RM10)- It’s a fusion Japanese fried chicken with egg in chef’s special mayo sauce. The meat was pretty well marinated.

There’s a hint of wasabi flavour in the mayo sauce. Luckily it’s a mild one, as I don’t take wasabi.

Red Dragon Prawn with Jammy Sauce (RM20)- Fried prawns and white dragon fruit in jammy sauce. The sauce tasted very fruity and appetizing.

Motoyaki Scallop (RM14)- Grilled scallop with homemade spicy mayo sauce. The mayo sauce was creamy and quite spicy too. I feel that the spicy mayo sauce kinda overpower the sweetness of the scallop instead of enhancing it. This may suit people who like heavy taste.

Anyway, I’m lucky as I got the opportunity to try out some dishes from this restaurant thanks to Criz who invited me to this session. Of course, I would like to extend my gratitude to Mr. Ng Boon Tong the chairman and MD of the restaurant for organising this food session for us. 

For this post, I would like to talk about the restaurant and the desserts. As for the main dishes, I’ll write it in a part II post to avoid slow loading of the post.

The interior of the restaurant. 

Another angle of the interior of the restaurant. 

This is a surprise dish by the executive chef  - Tempura Cheese Maki. This dish is not available in the menu, guess it can be ordered upon special request. 

It’s a fried maki topped with Mozarella Cheese. The topping tasted creamy and fragrant. It’s an unagi roll with added crabstick. This dish is my favourite of the night. Can I have one more piece? :p

Kuru Goma Ice Cream (RM8) is black sesame seed ice cream with crushed peanuts. The ice cream tasted very fragrant thanks to the crushed peanuts. 

The fragrant of the peanuts seem like overpowered the black sesame flavour. But I still find this ice cream taste good. 

Let’s start with a very special drink, Caffe Romano (RM14). It’s an orange coffee with added vodka and a scoop of ice cream on top. Just like the A&W Rootbeer float. Hard to imagine how that’d taste like rite? Coffee + orange + vodka + ice cream?

At first, I dare not try out this drink as I heard the word ‘vodka’. I don’t like alcoholic drinks for 2 reasons. One would be the bitter taste of it and throat stinging feel when the liquor flow down my throat. Another would be, I would have rashes over my body when I have alcoholic drinks.

But I just can’t resist the nicely presented drink seated right in front of my eyes. Before I had my first sip, I got a warning from Tam Ciak that I should mix the drink well first. Else I’d have a shock of sipping just the vodka layer like he experienced few minutes ago.

Ok. Enough of grandmother story. Let’s talk about how it taste like. There’s a mild coffee and orange taste. The vanilla ice cream added creamy texture to the drink. The vodka taste is acceptable to me as I think the vanilla ice cream and the orange flavor neutralized the alcohol.

It’s quite a special drink which it’s worth a try.

Here comes my favourite dessert of the day; Strawberry Panna Cotta (RM8.90). The presentation is simple and nice but it’s not those which will attract you to dig a spoon into it immediately. BUT don’t get cheated by it’s look.

Strawberry Panna Cotta looks like pudding, but it’s actually made of gelatin and milk. The texture is smooth, soft almost like those chilled cheese cake where it’ll melt slowly on your tongue. There is traces of milk fragrant in it.

Try to have the panna cotta with the strawberry slices, and you’ll experience sweetness and sourness at the same time. The sourness somehow added a ‘kick’ to the dessert. I just can’t resist myself from this dessert. I just kept on scooping my spoon into it.

The Tiramisu (RM12.90) is my favorite too. I like it since my first visit to Bravo. The Savoiardi which is fully absorbed with coffee and liquor just melted in my mouth. It’s very fragrant with coffee aroma. The amount of cream is just nice.

I just can’t get bored eating it.

Tequila Key Lime Pie (RM8.90) looks like cheese cake to me. But it definitely don’t taste like cheese cake. The center part of the dessert has strong sour and sweet flavour. How does sour and sweet taste come together? Contradict am I?

When I had a mouthful of the pie, the first taste that attacked my tongue was sweet followed by sour. Another few mouthfuls, I only tasted sourness and a hint of bitterness. Must be due to the tequila.

Even though the presence of strong sourness in the pie, but it’s just make me want to have more of it. It’s addictive.

The texture of the pie is quite thick and creamy. It’ll melt in your mouth and the sourness, sweetness and bitterness will attack your tongue.

Last but not least, Chocolate Mousses (RM8.90). The mousses is thick, creamy and rich in chocolate flavour. The chocolate fudge on top of the mousses added strong chocolate taste to the dessert.

I feel that this dessert is strictly for chocolate fan only as the chocolate taste might be too thick and the cream might make you feel ‘geli’ when you consume more.

As I lurve chocolate so much, of course I lurve this dessert too!

Please keep in mind that not all desserts will be available daily as the owner will only prepare like 2 – 3 types of desserts daily to maintain the freshness. Therefore, it’s recommended to call upfront to check out what’s the dessert of the day.

Being a dessert queen, I just love the desserts served. I would definitely go back for more.

Business hour: 11.30am – 3.00pm, 6.00pm – 10.00pm (Closed on Sunday)
Tel: 04-641 0499

Click here for map.

Now, I get the chance to savour more and new dishes thanks to PenangTuaPui for organizing the food tasting session. Of course not forgetting the restaurant owner, Mr. Lim for preparing the meal for us.

This restaurant is considered quite a new restaurant in Bayan Lepas area. Bravo Italiana aged less than 2 years old. It’s located at I-Avenue.

The interior of the restaurant is very cosy with dim yellow lighting and soft music playing at the background.

Mixed Bean Soup (RM6) was one of the first few dishes served. Few types of beans and pasta were cooked together with this soup. The portion was quite big. If I were to finish a bowl all by myself, I don’t think my stomach will have room for other dishes. As apart from the big portion, beans and pasta are quite filling too.

Bruschetta (RM8.80) was served together with the soup. The toasted bread were topped with some fresh tomatoes in cubes and a layer of cheese. The bread is best to be eaten while it’s still hot. As we took sometime to shoot some photos of the dishes, the bread tend to be slightly hard due to it had been exposed to air for quite sometime.

Personally I don’t really like the fresh tomato taste as all the while I do not savour fresh tomato.

Spaghetti Carbonara (RM24) was the only pasta served that session. Mushroom, beef salami, egg yoke, parmesan cheese, cream and white wine blended so well with the spaghetti. The sauce was very thick and creamy but it was mixed well with the spaghetti. Hence every single spaghetti is well coated with the creamy sauce.

Again, the serving portion is very generous. Don’t think I am able to finish it by my own, plus I don’t fancy spaghetti with white sauce.

Chinese New Year (CNY) is just 2 weeks away. Many restaurants have already start promoting their CNY dishes which are specially created for this festival.

Young Heart Restaurant too had created some CNY special dishes and I have the opportunity to try them out thanks to CK who invited me to this dinner.

Steamed dumplings (jiao zhi) and pan fried dumplings (guo tie) are their speciality.

We were first served with 3 types vege rolls which are Egg Vege Roll, Unagi Vege Roll and Prawn Vege Roll. This vege rolls are pretty similar to the one I’ve tasted at Ms. Saigon. A thin layer of Vietnamese rice paper are used to wrapped the vege and ingredients used.

Being a die hard fan of unagi, I tasted the unagi vege roll. The vegetable is very fresh and somehow it overtake the unagi taste. The unagi does not have strong sweet sauce taste like what we get in Japanese restaurant.

There are 3 types of sauces to go with the vege rolls. There are Chinese Style Sauce, Siam Style Sauce and Japanese Style Sauce (clockwise from top).

Next up was Hot & Sour Soup. This soup is quite appetizing. The soup base is slightly thick, similar to shark fin soup base. Preserved vegetable, tofu and come black fungus (wood ear fungus) can be found in this soup.

Golden Scallop Dumpling is one of the dishes in the CNY menu. The dumpling skin is made of a mixture of flour and carrot. Therefore, it turned out more yellowish than usual. The dumpling filling which consists of scallop, prawn and pork taste good.

The sauce to go with the dumpling. There are shredded ginger in vinegar, fried shallots and chili.

Snake Squash with Pork – Don’t get mislead by the dish name ya. There isn’t any snake involve in this dish, else I’ll be 10 feet away.

Snake squash is one kind of gourds. The snake squash taste sweet and it goes well with the pork. The pork is well marinated and smooth.

This is one of the dish that I like a lot during the night. Cheese & Chicken Guo Tie tasted very good. The amount of cheese is just adequate that it added fragrant to the guo tie but at the same time it won’t left you feeling ‘jelak’ after eating it.

Fried Bean Curd – the tofu texture is soft. The tofu tasted fragrant as the tofu is blended with other ingredients such as anchovies, carrot and chinese celery.

Stir Fried Mix Vege & Mushroom. The dish is simple and plain but it’s suitable for those who do not like strong taste. The sweetness of the vegetable and mushroom is the selling point of this dish. The mushroom is very fresh, juicy and sweet.

Prosperous Year in Malaysia is actually the name of the next dish which can be simplified as fried chicken. This is another dish which I like a lot too. The batter consist of lemongrass which added fragrant to the dish. This is my first time to eat fried chicken which have the lemongrass smell and it’s quite special to me.

Fried Prawn & Garlic was served next. The batter is very crispy with a hint of garlicky smell which is still acceptable for me. If you were to eat the prawn on its own, it’s a bit too salty. But the taste will be just right when you eat it together with a bowl of white rice.

Sponge Gourd with Pork – This dishes has a strong taste of dong gui (Angelica Sinensis or female ginseng). The pork goes well with the sponge gourd which had absorbed just the right amount of gravy. So no worry that the sponge gourd will taste plain.

This is another of my favourite dish too – Steam Cod & Bean Curd. The cod fish is very smooth and soft that it just melt right in my mouth. Simple method and simple ingredients were used to cook the fish to maintain the original taste of the cod fish.

We were served with 3 types of noodles that night. The noodles are handmade by the chef. One of it was vegetarian noodle; Black Jelly Mushroom Fried Noodle. Lots of black fungus, cabbage, carrots and mushroom in this noodle. This noodle tasted plain and sweet. Again, it’s suitable for those who do not like heavy taste food.

Shredded Pork Noodle – There are lots of minced meat and spring onion to go with the noodle.

Ground Pork in Spicy Bean Sauce Noodle – The sauce tasted like ‘ma po‘ tofu to me. This is strictly for those who can bear the spiciness as is tasted very spicy to me.

Chamomile and Chrysantenum tea was served to us. Chamomile is believe to have calming and soothing effect.

Young Heart Restaurant got its name from the plant which have a heart shape leaf. The plant is called the Sweetheart Hoya.

There are lots of bamboo & greens deco inside this restaurant. It gives me a very comfortable feeling.

A separated room which is very suitable for friends gathering.

Thanks to Ms. Ann Kee for providing a wonderful dinner to us.

Business hour: 12pm – 10pm (Closed on Monday)
Contact: 04 – 228 8084
Hp: 016 – 410 8089

Map for those who are not familiar:

View here for larger map

Sid from BBO shared his blogging idea with us. It was very informative listening to him sharing on some blogging experiences and his thought.

We were first served with a few cold dishes. One of it was Chilled Chicken Marinated with ‘Hua Diao’ Wine. The chicken was steam to perfect timing which produce tender and smooth meat. The chicken was then chilled and served with hua diao wine. The small amount of wolf berries added some sweetness to the chicken.

Next up was Jelly Fish with Sesame Oil. This dish tasted quite mild where only sesame oil fragrant is present. The jelly fish is crunchy where you’ll like to chew on it more.

The Shanghainese Smoked Fish tasted a bit hard. And the sauce is slightly too sweet to my liking.

Their signature dish Shanghainese Steamed Meat Dumpling (xiao lung bao) never disappoint me every time I visit this restaurant. A good amount of soup is conceal underneath the dumpling skin. This dumpling is to be eaten with shredded ginger in vinegar.

The Sauteed Shrimp in Sichuan Style was served in a garlicky sweet and sour sauce. I am not a big fan of prawn.

Deep Fried Crispy Duck was served with popiah skin, cucumber and spring onions. The way to eat this dish is to wrap the duck, cucumber and spring onion with a popiah skin together with some sauce. The piece of duck I ate was quite dry. I think it’s because I took the breast part.

Shanghainese Braised Pork Belly with Beancurd Leaves is the one dish that I resisted to put into my mouth due to the thick layer of fats attached to the meat. The meat and the gravy taste a bit sweet. I tried a small piece of the non-fat meat, and this is why I can tell how it taste like.

This dish was to be eaten with Deep Fried Man Tau. Dipped the man tau into the braised pork belly sauce and savour the soft man tau.

Braised Mushroom with Mixed Vegetable was served to neutralise the fatty pork. The chinese cabbage is soft and coated with scallop gravy.

Next up was another signature dish of this restaurant which is la mian. Fried La Mian with Black Pepper Chicken was served. The noodle is fried to the right timing which leave the texture to be quite QQ with a strong black pepper taste.

After the main dishes, it’s dessert time! We were served with 2 types of desserts. The first was Souffle Egg White Ball with Red Bean Paste and Banana. The red bean filling is over generous for me as I feel that it’s too sweet although I’m a sweet tooth person.

The 2nd dessert was mango dessert. A few types of fruits (dragon fruit, watermelon, honeydew and pamelo) were served with some mango puree and sago. I love this dessert as the mango puree was sweet and cooling.

Big Boys Oven bought us some desserts made by them too. It’s simply wonderful to be able to taste their macarons and california (if I remember the name correctly).

I’ve been drooling and wondering how the macarons would taste like when I read them blogged about making macarons. Now, I can taste it out myself. So happy!

They baked us 2 types of flavour which were hazelnut and almond. The macarons taste a bit too sweet for me, but according to Sunny that’s the optimum amount of sugar to be blended in. I like the hazelnut flavour macarons as it has a strong hazelnut aroma. I am a great fan of hazelnut.

As for the California, the cake is soft and in between there are some salty butter.

Overall it’s a satisfying dinner with Big Boys Oven and other bloggers.

Some random shots to share:

** The picture illustrated could be different if you were to dine at Dragon-i on the same dishes as this were designed to suit a group of 10 people dining.

Back to the food review. Miss Saigon Vietnamese Cuisine is located next to Old Town Kopitiam at E-gate. Upon arrival, we were served with pandan taste water.

The Street Food Corner menu is categorized in a few categories and it’s distinguish by colours in the menu. There are summer rolls, exotic side, salad, rice noodles and vietnamese sandwiches.

I will pick and review a few of the food served but not all of them due to I did not get to taste some of them.

First they served us with all types of summer rolls available in their menu which are Traditional Northern and Southern Rolls, Farmer’s Egg Rolls, Fresh Vegetable Rolls, Southern fish Rolls, Classic Hor Fun Rolls (Chicken / Beef).

Farmer’s Egg Rolls - vegetables wrapped in thinly fried egg. It was served with some sauce which tasted sweet and sour to me. Nothing special bout this dish though.

Traditional Northern Rolls – A very thin layer of rice paper were used to wrapped vege and sliced prawn. Taste wise – taste just like salad without any mayo.
Crisp Fried Hanoi Rolls – This one taste good where the mushroom added fragrant into this dish. Some minced meat, mushroom, egg and vegetables are wrapped in rice paper then deep fried. Although it’s fried, but it’s not too oily. Pardon me for the blurred picture.

Wok-fried Flower Chicken – This is a special dish where Pergularia flowers are used to stir fried with chicken breast. The Pergularia flower taste mild and sweet. But overall this dish tasted more at the salty side to my tastebud.
For beef lovers, there’s a Beef version for this dish.

Ms. Saigon served a wide variety of salad from mango salad, papaya salad, Ms. Saigon Salad, glass noodle salad to jellyfish salad. Most of their salad taste more to sourly side which is appetizing.

Sour Green Mango Salad – Except mangoes, grounded peanuts, sesame, onion and prawns are used to garnished the salad. The prawn used is very fresh and not over cooked.

Jellyfish Salad – The jellyfish is very crunchy. Taste is similar to other type of salad.

Traditional Southern Chicken BUN – Laksa noodle served with chicken, mint leaves, bean sprout, lettuce and cucumber strips in clear broth which taste a bit like our laksa taste. It tasted sour but not spicy.
A beef version is available too.>
Frog Curry with Garlic Spiced Baguette – The curry is too thick to my liking. According to my bf, the garlic spiced baguette is very garlicky. Suitable for those who love garlic. I am a big NO NO to garlic. But the baguette tasted slightly burnt.
Vietnamese Street Baguette (Chicken / Beef) – According to the owner, the speciality for this sandwich is the spread. There are some tomatoes, cucumber, lettuce, ham and sausage in this sandwich. The spread tasted slightly weird to me. I prefer mine with thousand island spread still.

Grilled chicken T-shaped wings – I like this chicken wings. The shape looks more like a mini drumstick to me. It’s nicely grilled with a hint of lemongrass fragrant in it. The meat is tender and juicy.
Traditional Vietnamese Chicken PHO – taste like a Malay version of koay teow teng to me. This dish was served with some yau char koay (which taste pretty hard), some lettuce and bean sprout. The presentation of the vegetables is very unique. You were supposed to add in some of the lettuce and bean sprout into the noddles before you eat it.
This is also available in beef version.

The prawns and lettuce used are fresh. As the ingredients use for most dishes are normal, I feel that food prices are slightly over priced.
Overall I feel that the food served were not agreeable with my tastebud. Maybe Vietnamese cuisine is not my cup of tea?
Anyway, thanks to Ms. Saigon for organizing this food review as I get to taste so many Vietnamese food at the same time.