Normally, most of the company will have a 'year end' dinner celebration together with colleagues
while toasting for health, luck and prosperity for the upcoming Chinese New Year.
So we colleagues were organized it but BenDan suggested that we both to have our own 'year end' dinner this year.
I kind of like this idea as he seldom came out with this suggestion.
After browsing through some food blogs, we decided to have our 'year end' dinner at The Hillside Cafe Bar & Restaurant.
The restaurant is located at Tanjung Bungah where this area is always crowded with expats.
After a whole night, we observed that most of their customers are expats instead of locals; we were one of the local that night!
The interior decor is minimalist, most of the furniture are made from woods, and look at the Great Britain sofa!
If not mistaken, the restaurant is manage by young expats couple,
yet they put in quite a lot of decor with local elements, for the Chinese New Year occasion I think.
The restaurant is divided into al-fresco area (smoking area) and indoor area,
of the hot and humid night we went, definitely we took the indoor area.
There isn't a door in between, so you can still get the breeze from outside, and the annoying mosquitoes.
The menus.
Main dishes are in one menus, drinks and desserts are in another.
From the menu, in addition to British or western common meals, you can also find Chinese dishes available in the menu;
and they put them under 'From The Wok' column.
Despite of the common western meals available in restaurant, most of the expats prefer to have Chinese dishes here.
Feel bored while waiting to be served?
There are a number of pop quiz cards available on each table.
Instead of playing your gadget and ignore your partner of the night, it's pretty good for you and your partner
to learn something new throughout the night.
Iced Peach Tea . Iced Lemon Tea
Didn't plan to have wine that night, so we just ordered some simple drinks, and I totally forgot how much it cost us.
Apologies if I failed to put the price here for your reference.
I like the way they put the drinks in the mini glass bottle with stopper instead of the normal glass.
These drinks can be easily made by diluting the concentrated syrup
but they never do this as I can still get the sour and bitter taste of lemon from my drinks.
The normal syrup will only give you the sweet taste.
Grilled Salmon and Mashed Potato | RM35
BenDan ordered this for me as he know I always have a thing with salmon, either raw or cooked.
It's a freshly grilled salmon fillet that topped with lemon butter dressing
and served with greens (broccoli!) and mashed potato.
In my opinion, the lemon butter dressing is a little bit watery, and the mashed potato doesn't served in warm.
I prefer eating warm mashed potato with main dishes, cold mashed potato can be served as small dishes aka banchan.
As for the salmon, it's pretty good, crispy on the outside and you still get some raw salmon on the inside.
They season the salmon fillet with salt and pepper,
you know it when you get a bite together with the salmon skin, the seasoning portion is well control,
so not too salty, and up to our liking!
Cafe Pork Burger | RM16 (added bacon | RM1 and cheese | RM2)
The burger is served on the round wooden cutting board with greens, French fries and sauces.
The burger portion looks rather small compare to the one we saw from blog.
One thing I like about the French fries is they made them from the potatoes, you can get mouthful potato taste on every bite!
The pork burger here is not so greasy, which is a good thing
but the pork patty in between is not so juicy, kind of dry in our opinion.
Yet, the bacon is well cooked, the taste goes well with the pork patty and make the burger taste better.
Aromatic Crispy Duck | RM28
It's like Peking Duck Wrapping but they present it differently, a little western style.
We thought it is an appetizer before our main dishes, who knows it is also one of the main dish that served with rice!
Drop the rice, this dish comes with shredded duck, cucumber, spring onion, hoison dipping sauce and pancakes.
The pancake mentioned is the wrapper, thin like a paper;
we used that to wrap all the ingredients in one and eat with this method, the traditional way.
It's better to eat this dish while it's still hot, else the crispy duck and pancakes will be harden after expose too long in air.
A very good dish I would say, will come back here for this definitely!
The happy faces after the meal.
Luckily the portion for grilled salmon and the pork burger is small, so that we can finished all 3 dishes that night.
Oh yeah, they do served weekday set lunch that only cost you RM20 with drinks included.
Not really sure what is the main dish, you may visit The Hillside Cafe Bar & Restaurant for more information.
The Hillside Cafe Bar & Restaurant
Location: 3, Jalan Sungai Kelian, 11200, Tanjung Bungah, Penang.
Business Hours: 8am - 10pm (Daily), closed on Monday
Contact Number: 04-899 8071
