Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Dinhokee (鼎好记) @ Terengganu Road, Penang.

*** This eatery has since closed down.***

With all these buffet steamboat outlets mushrooming in Penang these days, we Penangites have more choices to choose from when it comes to buffet steamboat, whether the concerns are on the prices, quality, services, parking, ambiance, food choices etc. My recent visit to this steamboat outlet was during New Year Eve, the place was very crowded and finding parking can be a little troublesome. One can have their cars parked opposite the place, in a housing area or just beside the road. There are a couple of parking spaces right in front of the place but obviously they are not sufficient. Anyway, you can choose to have the steamboat pot with barbecue plate on top or just ordinary steamboat pot (soup version only). If you are going for the soup version only (no barbecue for you), then you can choose to sit in the comfortable air-conditioned room. You can always grab your ingredients and ask the staff to barbecue or pan fry for you, they do have this service. As for price, I supposed the prices are pretty okay, after all, its an "All You Can Eat Buffet".


A very elegant set up, they are using the electronic stove which is much safer compared to the traditional gas or charcoal stove, good for those with children. Extra fruit juices are available to quench your thirst, but they are not included in the buffet sadly, you will have to pay a little more for them. Soup-wise, choose between the ordinary chicken stock (clear soup version) or tom yum.


Well, we were there pretty late that night, a lot of the food were finished and were not refilled in a fast pace, so there was a small table for the appetizers (fresh greens, fruits etc), another table for the sauces, fried rice, fried chicken, Herbal Eggs, some dim sum namely Siew Mai (Chinese Dumplings), a table for fried stuff such as fried fish balls, Thailand Pandan Chicken, fried fish cakes etc....you will find some vegetables inside the fridge too. 



The usual ingredients that you will get for steamboat. Something unique here was all the seafood were being marinated first, such as yellow curry powder, black pepper sauce etc. They do have some little shrimps too, they were very fresh and best for barbecue. As for meat, they serve chicken, pork and beef. 


They were very good in marinating their meat, particularly their beef. Thinly sliced and just perfect for some "Shabu-shabu" action, dip into the soup for a couple of seconds and your meat will be perfectly cooked. It worked perfectly with their home made sourish garlic chili sauce too. Their chicken and pork were not too shabby, but, the beef still prevails in my opinion.


As mentioned earlier ago, these were their deep fried finger food. Most of them were okay, the chicken turned out to be very disappointing. One of the bigger sized fried chicken I had was not cooked thoroughly, a result from attempting to maintain the smooth and juicy texture I supposed. They could have chopped the chicken evenly or to pay extra caution to the cooking time to overcome this problem. 


Marinated meat, be it pork, chicken, beef, marinated seafood such as cuttlefish, squids, small shrimps etc can be barbecued. I adore their effort to place all the ingredients separately (unlike some other steamboat outlets) and garnished with some chopped cabbage. Simply pass all the ingredients that you have chosen to the barbecue counter outside and tell them your table number, they will fry for you and will deliver to your table later on.


As for desserts, they have ice kacang (shaved ice dessert) and ice cream. A small ice shaving machine will be there and you have to operate it by your own. The ice will be coarsely shaved thanks to the machine and the texture was very horrible, more like biting ice cubes. On the other hand, I would recommend my readers to go for the Nestle ice cream instead. There were 4 flavors available, peppermint, yam, sweet corn and strawberry. Simple yet satisfying.


Ratings:
Taste: 7/10 (1-3 bad, 4-7 average, 8-10 good)
Price: 7/10 (1-3 expensive, 4-7 average, 8-10 cheap)
Parking: 6/10 (1-3 bad, 4-7 average, 8-10 good)
Service: 7.5/10 (1-3 bad, 4-7 average, 8-10 good)
Service Charge: No
Government Tax: No

Additional Information:
Address: 29-A, Jalan Terengganu, 10460, Georgetown, Penang.
Price: Adults (Rm21.90 during weekdays, Rm23.90 during weekends), Senior Citizens (Rm14.90 during weekdays, Rm16.90 during weekends), Children (Rm11.90), Children (5 Year Old or below will be FREE)
Business Hour: 6pm to 12am, Daily.
Jalan Terengganu, Georgetown, 10460 George Town, Penang

8 comments:

  1. Thanks for your sharing..One thing i want to ask is: all meats are marinated? No fish? Will the soup become too salty when we dump different kinds of marinated meats/seafoods into soup? Or they only meant for BBQ? Outdoor BBQ and steamboat pot is like BBQ Plaza (Thailand steamboat) or the normal one with BBQ plate surround the steamboat pot?

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  2. Hi Chiu Yin, a very good question, based on my observations, not all the meats are marinated but they do seemed to have sprinkled some chili powder on top, u can always monitor the level of saltiness from time to time right ? Yes, they do have fish, more like dorry fillet. As for outdoor, there were some tables using the 1 like BBQ plaza and some ordinary pots, so i guess u can request for anytime u wan by telling the staff, hope i answer ur question. =)

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  3. haha, thanks for your reply, I find I'm too long winded =P
    But 1 thing i want to say is I'm really admired your writing style and the photos presentation, all foods looks tempting..
    Take care in your vacation ya =)

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  4. Thanks for your compliments Chiu Yin, thanks to readers like you that motivated me to keep doing all these =)

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  5. so finally u buy the coupon as well, right? haha...
    if need BBQ + steamboat need upon request,right?

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  6. yea, i bought the vouchers jazz, but i was not using the vouchers as it was by coincidence, haha, was not able to make the bookings, so yea, the vouchers still stuck here LOL

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  7. we went on 20 Feb and was disappointed with their service as we went there at 7 pm and there was about 30 prawns left in the fridge. As there were 8 of us, we took all the prawns. After 15-20 mins, we told the serving staff that there were no more prawns, however, they did not replenish the prawns until we left the venue around 9.30 pm. For the price they charged, it is not value for money compare to the steamboat at Macalister Road as they do not have much food items compared to the one @ Macalister Road. We definitely will not go again, first time and last time for us

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  8. Hi Viv, thanks for your feed back, lets hope the management can see your comment :)

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