Suffolk House

In celebration of my belated birthday (*Blink*Blink*), I manage to "persuade" my hubby to go to Suffolk House for dinner last Saturday. We left William with my mom so that we can enjoy the romantic evening together ;)

Since Suffolk House is one of Penang heritage building (reportedly built by Sir Francis Light), there's plenty of signboard guiding you on how to go these from Masjid Negeri onward. But be careful though if you are going at night, it is quite dark and secluded, plus the road is abit windy. It was our first time going there, and my hubby is abit worried that we went to the wrong place. In front of the mansion there's a guardhouse. I felt abit insecure as to whether we're at the correct place as the security guard was looking at us when we walked close by. With all the signboard showing the closing time for tour of the mansion made it even worse. But since the guard never stop us, we just walk right in. The walkway is made from small pebbles, so it is abit difficult to walk for me as I was wearing high-heels.

It was a relief to see the restaurant as we entered the building. The lighting was slightly dimmed, making it look very classically romantic with European style decoration. I like the way they concealed the airconds in the room with wooden boxes and cleverly disguise it as side table for lamps to rest on. The restaurant only serve dinner sets where you just need to choose the main course. From the menu, you'll see a long listing of food upto 2 pages but there are only 5 types of main courses to choose from. So the rest of the food is made up of appetizers, soup and desert. The price ranges from RM90 to RM130, depending on the type of main course that you choose.

Ok, let me recount back what I had eaten there.

1. Freshly baked bread with butter. My hubby suspected that they bake the bread themselves. I'm not very sure but it does look and taste special, and especially hot and fresh.

2. Sun-dried tomato rolled pastry. It is superbly small that they serve it with only a ceramic spoon and you just pop the whole thing into your mouth.

3. Fish pie. Very very juicy and tasty.

4. Watercress and lotus root salad. I'm a bit skeptical since watercress is bitter when taken raw but the salad dressing really compliments the whole thing. I just love it.

5. Garlic soup and bread. Now you don't see any spoon on the table, so how are we going to taste the soup? If you notice carefully, the soup is served in a narrow cup. So you just pick it up and drink it as if you were drinking tea! How unique! The soup is abit too sweet for my liking but my hubby loved it.

6. Tomato sorbet with plum powder. Excuse my photo as I only took it after I've eaten it halfway. Just double up the portion from what you see here. The taste is refreshingly cool.

7. Finally the main course. My hubby ordered grilled cod fish and I ordered sausage wrapped with chicken thigh that comes with mushroom sauce and almond flakes. My hubby comment it right out that it looks very nice and regretted not ordering it when he saw the chicken. The waitress that served us can't help but laugh when he said that. Both of us are extremely full even before finishing the main course.

8. Coffee or tea. Both of us opt for tea.

9. Then the desert. Instead of one, we are served with 3 types of desert. There were hazelnut cake, ice-cream with somekind of pastry (I'm not sure what it's called but it is very good. My hubby called it modified cornflakes :P) and creme brulee. I really loved the top crispy layer of the creme brulee but the hazelnut cake is abit let down.

The staff is very attentive, service is very fast and the food is nice. We hardly need to wait for the food to come as we finishes each course. It just took us about an hour to complete the whole course, but we were extremely full from all these foods. I'm already considered as one of the big eater among my friends but then I had to pass almost half of my main course to my hubby to finish it up. You really need to make sure your stomach is big enough to fill in all these if you're not the kind of person who likes to waste any food.