In conjunction with Christmas,  The Brasserie at Traders Hotel offers Festive Semi Buffet Lunch for the whole month of December.

The Brasserie is located at level 2 of Traders Hotel.

Here are some shots of the restaurant’s interior look:

The cold cuts section offers chicken ham, smoked duck breast, smoked chicken breast, etc. Smoked duck breast is my favourite.

Assorted sushi with condiments.

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!

Last Saturday, we drove to KL to watch the Manchester United Asia Tour. I am definitely not a football fan, but my bf is. We stopped by Ipoh for dim sum. We are spoilt by choices, 3 major dim sum restaurants are located at the same area which are Foh San, Yoke Fook Moon and Ming Court.

Hmm… which one to choose? I went to Foh San just before it moved to the new grand restaurant. My family and I actually feel that the dim sum don’t taste as good as before, but still the restaurant is swarming with people. Although the new Foh San restaurant looks so grand, but we finally picked Yoke Fook Moon.

Dining at Yoke Fook Moon brings back some of my childhood memory where I aged around 10 years old. My uncle (oh… I stayed with my aunt and uncle when I was small), would dragged us up at 6am and drove us to Ipoh Yoke Fook Moon for dim sum. Me with my eyes half closed would be ‘forced’ into the car. LOL

Yoke Fook Moon Restaurant outlook doesn’t stand out if compare to Foh San, but the dim sum won’t disappoint you for sure

Fried fish ball, this is my favourite dim sum. Which ever dim sum restaurant I go, I must order this. I can hardly get this type of fish ball with the QQ texture in Penang dim sum restaurant. The fish ball is home made with a  QQ (chewy) texture.

A very little amount of vegetable  is added into the fish ball.

Char Siew Pau, one of my bf’s favourite. The pau dough is soft and fluffly.

The char siew filling is rich with thick char siew gravy. Full of char siew fragrant. A steaming hot pau to warm a cold stomach early in the morning. It just feel so good.

Hong Kong style chee cheung fun (ccf). Maybe because I’m too busy shooting and when I tasted this ccf, it tasted kinda cold.

Herbal jelly in a dim sum restaurant? LOL, people are getting so creative nowadays. The herbal jelly tasted too sweet to us. The honey taste is too strong and there isn’t any herbal taste.

The prawn dumpling (har kau) is so big! A few fresh prawns are wrapped underneath the thin transparent har kau skin. Not bits of prawns but the whole prawn. The only drawback is the prawn filling is slightly dry, we would like it to be slightly juicy.

Looking at this har kau picture, make me want to have a bite of it. Do you have the same feeling?

A pot of chinese tea is a must to go with the dim sum to ‘wash’ out the oil and fats from the meat and deep fried stuffs.

Anyway, my passion for good food and photography still remain . Does anyone realise that Food Loft in Gurney Plaza had closed down and a new restaurant Ko Fu Loft has taken over the vacant lot? Thanks to Criz, I got the opportunity to try out a wide variety of food from Ko Fu Loft. 

There isn’t any big different in terms of the interior decoration comparing both Ko Fu Loft and Food Loft. The decoration that attracted me most is the “wall” where you can find the name of the restaurant. It is made up of a lots of small steamer baskets which are used to steam dim sum like har kau, siew mai, pau and etc. 

Those small steamer baskets are arranged nicely to form a wall as the background of the restaurant’s name. A pretty creative idea for a dim sum based restaurant. 

Har Kau (Fresh Prawn Dumpling) and Siew Mai (Pork Dumpling) are the king and queen of dim sum. It’s very rarely that we would leave any dim sum restaurant without ordering them. 

Rm 5.50 for 4 pieces of har kau. Overall the filling is juicy and prawn used was medium in size. I”m not a big fan of har kau as I don’t fancy prawn. :p I’m gonna be the minority % of people who will leave any restaurant without ordering any har kau

Siew Mai (Pork Dumpling) - RM5.50 . It’s not common to find mushroom in siew mai which I’ve discovered the tastiness of it during my Hong Kong trip where my photography skill sucks then. I personally feel that Penang dim sum is not comparable to Hong Kong’s. 

Minced Squid with Crab Claw (RM 6.90) - Thick gravy accompanying the crab claw. I can’t feel any springy texture, the thing that I’ll always look for in this kind of dish. 

Trying my very very best to capture the steam from this dish, but seems like my misson failed huh

Signature Steamed Custard Creamy Bun – RM 5.50. The creamy custard is oozing out from the pau when it’s still hot, I didn’t manage to capture a picture on that. The custard filling is overwhelmed with salty egg yolk flavour which also contribute to the coarse texture of the filling. This is just my personal opinion. My personal liking is smooth custard filling.

Both of my friends responded very fast and said, ‘Ok, let’s go to Opera!’.

Opera is located just 2 shops away from Smoky Jack which do provide set lunch too. What a small world it is as I bumped into Lingzie when I lunch there

I like the ambience of the restaurant. We feel cosy and peaceful.

A statue holding a candle is placed on the table which I suppose it’ll be lit up by dinner time. Candle light dinner anyone?

The lunch business hour would be from 12pm – 3pm and only applicable for Monday to Saturday. Therefore, set lunch only available form Mon – Sat. As for Sunday, business will only starts at 6pm.

For the set lunch which cost RM18, it varies from Monday to Saturday. For each day, there will be 2 choices of main course available to be chosen from. Appetizer, drink and dessert are included in the set lunch.

As for Saturday set lunch menu, choices of main course are Asian Grilled Chicken served with oriental potatoes and Fish Fillet in mango chutney and hot bean sauce served with steam rice.

The appetizer was Vietnamese Summer Roll. Rice paper was used to wrap the lettuce, cucumber and carrot. The summer roll tasted pretty plain on its own, therefore a chili sauce blended with peanuts is served together with it. The summer roll is similar to the one I had at Ms. Saigon Vietnamese Cuisine, just that more types of summer rolls are available at Ms. Saigon.

I personally feel that the cucumber and carrot slices were too thick that it’s pretty hard to bite on it. Overall I feel that the summer roll was pretty dry, lack of water content from the vege used.

The ice lemon tea do worth mentioning! It’s thick not like those we normally get which is so diluted and too sweet. Thumbs up for it! It’s been ages since the last time I tasted a good cup of ice lemon tea.

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Fried Rice with Minced Beef was fragrant with adequate wok hei. There were some bits of beef which was tender. The rice was not too soft and not too hard.

I ordered something light that day due to we were having late lunch. The Conpoy & Crab Meat Congee was very smooth just the way I like my porridge. The smooth porridge texture is similar to the one I had at Hong Kong. There was a generous amount of scallop and crab meat. The porridge has a mild and sweet taste contribution from the scallop and crab meat.

We ordered one finger food – Crispy Chicken Wing and Sausage. It tasted like belacan fried chicken. This dish is pretty pricey as only one piece of chicken wing and a sausage were served.

I like the milk tea here. It tasted good and had a thick tea flavour.

Mm… done talking about food. Now let me tell you my unforgettable experience here. The environment of this restaurant is pretty cosy. To satisfy my readers, I walked around to snap the pictures of the restaurant environment and decorations.

All of a sudden, one of the restaurant staff approached me and asked me why do I keep on snapping pictures of the restaurant. They thought I am one of their competitors who’s trying to copy their menu and restaurant deco. After I told them I am not, they thought that I am a reporter from some magazine. Hahaha…

I need to explain to them that I am neither of them.

I were actually trying to be as low profile as I can be. But I think it’s my dslr that caught their attention.

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

This is the outside of the restaurant. There are setting of tables and chairs which are meant for dining, but we chose to sit inside as it’s in the afternoon where the weather is hot.

The ambient of the inside gives a very comfortable feeling. I believe it’s due to the yellow down light and the decor. There are some souvenirs sold by this restaurant.

Souvenirs…

Just a while after we were seated, we were served with these: 2 cups of tea OR 2 bowl of soups? It looks very much like the cup we used for chinese tea. But it’s soup inside it. Isn’t it too early to serve soup? The soup is cold when our food arrived. Anyway, the soup which is FOC doesn’t taste good. Taste too artificially sweet to me.

We ordered Mayonnaise Chicken, Chicken Omelette and Claypot Ginger Beef.

The Mayonnaise chicken doesn’t disappoint us as it taste good. Each piece of chicken is coated with mayonnaise and the meat is so tender. There are some chill powder in the mayonnaise sauce. It doesn’t make the chicken taste spicy but added fragrant into it.

Next is Chicken Omelette. This dish looks very home style where fried eggs were topped with a gravy of minced chicken with onions. The gravy tasted more to sweet side.

How can I not ordered a claypot dish when I am in the Claypot Restaurant. The Claypot Ginger Beef came in a small claypot. The beef is tender and not chewy. The gravy is just mediocre. Maybe I am expecting some exotic flavour in this dish.

I opt for plain noodle to serve with all those dishes. The plain noodle as the name spelled, is plain and bland which is suitable to pair it with dished. A hint of soy sauce taste in the noodle and it is QQ. It’s an alternate choice from rice. I am not a fan of rice anyway.

The address of the restaurant:
48 Jalan Sungai Kelian, Tanjung Bunga, 11200 Penang, Malaysia.

Opening Hours: 12.00noon – 3.00pm, 6.00pm – 10.30pm (Closed on Monday)

We ordered tomato fried rice with satay and Claypot Vegetable Curry with rice. As for drinks / dessert we ordered Honey Dew Sago Ice and Mo Mo Cha Cha. You can opt for the dessert to be served later.

Here comes the tomato fried rice with satay. The fried rice is pretty good, just that slightly wet. Tomatoes, some herbs, spices and salted egg pieces can be found in the fried rice. 3 pcs of satay are served together. The satay taste good. There’s a hint of lemongrass flavour in the satay. Suppose they used it to marinate the satay huh. The satay portion is quite big.

I like their satay very much. They serve chicken and lamb satay. There is a satay set which you can order. Range from RM8.90 – RM11.90 for a regular satay set of chicken or lamb or both. You can opt for the large set too.

I’ve ordered Claypot Vegetable Curry. This dish is not recommended at all. I’ve visited this shop a few times before I started blogging. Overall, the dishes are tasty except for this one. The curry is too thick but without any curry taste at all. Long bean, four season bean, cabbage, mushroom and tofu were used in this dish.

Mo Mo Cha Cha. I’ve tasted this before, in my memory the taste is good. But this time, the vanilla essence smell is slightly too strong. I wonder why they use essence?? But lots of ingredients can be found in this. The thing that I like most is the sago like thing which they made into a flower shape. It’s chewy.

Honey Dew Sago Ice. Honey dew is blended then mix with coconut juice served with sago and honey dew. Not to sweet . Nice. Normally there are around 3- 4 honey dew balls in it.

The environment is nice. Very peaceful feeling with some soft music playing. The decoration is quite classic

Business Hours:

Monday – Friday: 11am – 2pm, 6pm – 9.30pm

Sat, Sun & Public Holiday: 12 pm – 9.30pm

More pictures: