Friday, August 26, 2011

Yuan Izakaya Restaurant @ New World Park, Burmah Road, Penang.

Are you a big fan of Japanese food ? or charcoal barbecue ? or even the ordinary steamboat ? You can try all of these once and for all at Yuan Izakaya Restaurant. Situated in the strategic location of Penang, New World Park is a well known place for wonderful food and also for its convenience in parking. Yuan Izakaya offers a wide range of steamboat and barbecue ingredients such as abalone slices, bacon, salmon, baby octopus, mackerel, thinly sliced beef, pork, beef, chicken and even lamb ! Aside from that, it offers tempura, sashimi and sushi rolls too.  The ambiance in the restaurant was very good, the place is also air-conditioned and the staff was also very friendly too. They do offer set lunch (bento) and some other ala carte dishes, but my main focus for this post will be on their buffet steamboat.

The place was a bit tricky since the restaurant is situated on 1st floor of New World Park, right on top of the Nyonya Restaurant and directly opposite to Guardian Pharmacy. Take the stairs beside the Nyonya Restaurant up to get into the restaurant.

As for drinks, there were quite a lot of choices for you to choose from, aside from those fruit juice, there were some uncommonly seen drinks too such as soya bean milk, latte, cappuccino or even English tea. I personally adore the soya bean milk as the drink was quite thick and the flavor was quite strong which I find it unique and suit to my preference. I just do not like those watery kind of soya milk.

Just look at the selection of the dipping sauce. Among those, I find it weird to have miso paste, pork lard sesame oil (mixture of pork lard and sesame oil) and french dressing here since there was not any salad offered to us.

Some french loaf and an oven....there was some mixture of butter, garlic and parsley too. What does that means ? It means that you can cook your very own garlic bread !! But who makes garlic bread anyway since there are something more interesting waiting for us....

Some cakes, bread and fruits being displayed.....but sadly, no one touches them.....

Some sushi rolls being provided near the sauce corner too, however, you can still make your own order at your own place, its not necessary for you to pick from here....the fillings were cucumber, lettuce and some fried prawns (tempura), topped with some mayonnaise. California hand rolls were available too.

Tempura set, was quite disappointing as the batter coated on the prawns was quite thick and they failed to maintain the crunchiness of the prawns. The dipping sauce does not possess the taste and flavor that it meant to have too.

If you wish to have sashimi, you will need to pay extra for it. The price will be listed down bottom under the additional information column. The sashimi was very fresh indeed. You can totally tell that from the color of those sashimi. However, I would prefer that they slice the sashimi in a bigger portion since size does matter when it comes to sashimi, it sort of affects the texture. Nonetheless, still lovely.

There will be two holes erecting on each of their tables. One of them will be used for the barbecue where they will place a pot that contains some burning charcoal for you to grill your food. For the steamboat part, you can select your own soup base from their list. Spicy Kimchi soup was chosen by us tonight.

You will be given some raw pork lard instead of butter. You might request for butter if you a health concern person or you are trying to put off some weight. Simply try to melt the fats off before you start to grill the food.

The meat will be pre-marinated before they served it to you. For instance, you get to choose from the list, satay beef, Korean style marinated pork, the usual lamb (without being marinated).

The usual steamboat ingredients. From the top, abalone slices, fresh prawns, squid balls, dorry fish fillet, enoki mushrooms, chicken leg mushrooms, shitake mushrooms, oyster mushrooms and squid dumplings. They were very fresh and I must praise on their mushrooms. As from what you can see, the mushrooms were very clean from the color (pearl white), mushrooms can be easily oxidized and turned brown if its being exposed too long. This shows that their extraordinary efforts in handling them.

We were given a mackerel to grill, the size was just gigantic. At first I thought that it will be better if they could give us a smaller fish to grill since its easier to make it crispy but I was wrong. The mackerel was very delicious instead. They were very careful in handling the fish as in they exclude the bitter part of the fish which is the stomach area. The fish was very fresh and the aroma will starts to come out once the fish is half done. Highly recommended !!!

Baby octopus, I was not quite sure with what they have marinated the baby octopus with, but from the color, it seemed like something similar to paprika or at least some spices that are red in color. Anyway, the baby octopus was very crunchy and fresh, simply grill it (not too long), and there you go, baby octopus with the perfect texture and juiciness.

An overview of how the two segments being placed.

Move on to the dessert corner, there was this fridge being placed right in front of the entrance where you can find some puddings in it. Other than that, there will be some ice cream provided too near the beverage corner (6 flavors were available).

I was very impressed with their extraordinary services provided to us. Unlike my previous visit to Ding Steamboat in Straits Quay they did not change the barbecue rack for us nor they added any charcoal for us when the fire almost faded. In Yuan Izakaya, they kept replacing the barbecue rack and adding new charcoal for us to maintain the temperature which makes us easier to grill our food. At least it satisfies us and let us think that the money we paid for were actually worth for it.



Ratings:
Price: 8/10
Taste: 8.5/10
Service: 9/10
Parking: 8/10
Government Tax: Yes (6%)
Service Charge: Yes (10%)

Additional Information:
Price for buffet: Dinner Rm 45++ (for weekends and public holidays); Lunch Rm 31++ (BBQ & steamboat), Rm 19.80++ (steamboat only); student price Rm38++(only valid on Thursday except public holidays); 50% discounts on senior citizen (for dinner only, daily). Please do note that they have this rule where you must finish your meal within 2 hours and penalty will be given on wastage of food (I am not sure how strict they going to enforce this rule).
Address: Lot No. 102-E-2&3 (First Floor) New World Park, Jalan Burmah, 10050 Georgetown, Penang.
Phone Number: 604- 229 9720
Business Hours: 11am - 2.30pm (lunch); 5.30pm - 10.30pm (dinner)

6 comments:

  1. ur photo pixel too small and u stretch it big causing it's look blur a bit....

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  2. hi jazz, something went wrong with my blogspot, LOL, i used to compress that size, sorted it out, should be fine by now...thx for ur suggestion btw =)

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  3. hmm, just went back from there, i mean new world park...thx for sharing...:)

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  4. Hmm.. Nice presentation, i'm heading there tonight. Thanx for the info ya~

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  5. hi there, thanks, do provide me some comments/feedbacks ya....

    ReplyDelete