Tai Ho Jiak 台好甲, a Taiwanese style restaurant has caused a minor stir in social media when it landed in Raja Uda Penang. Many have given the restaurant positive reviews and it somehow instigated my desire to check it out.
Instead of going to the outlet in Raja Uda, we went to check out their first outlet in Sungai Petani waterfront. We are surprised they have their first outlet established in Sungai Petani actually.
Tai Ho Jiak offers some casual Taiwanese food and snack such as set rice of braised pork, sesame chicken, chicken chop, pork chop and many others. On top of that, they also serve one person steamboat pot at the base price of RM 19.80, which I believe is a great deal as not many restaurants or cafes will cater for 1 person steamboat.
Three Cup Chicken 特色三杯鸡 |
Noodle with Soup Dumpling |
Rather than going fancy on our food selections, we decided to go conservative and choose the casual Taiwan dishes. I had a Three Cup Chicken 特色三杯鸡 (RM 21.80) set, and the set is worth the pennies spent as it comes with a generous quantity of chicken, a bowl of rice topped with some braised pork, pickled cucumber and soup.
The chicken taste is quite inspiring. It is complicated, flavourful yet appetizing at the same time, probably thanks to the concoction of rice wine, sesame oil and soy sauce being used to marinate the chicken. However, I am a tad surprised and confused at the same time as the chicken somehow possess a mild hot and burning sensation. Could it be the chef has put more pepper as it is supposed to be or introduced some chillies? Nevertheless, overall it was pleasant.
The other dish we had - Noodle (RM 16.80) is quite straightforward. You can choose to have the base to be dry noodle, or pork bone, herbal, spicy aroma or kimichi soup based. The price is the same across different soup base you choose.
Then you can select one ingredients to go with the soup from the selection of signature popcorn chicken, chicken chop, fried wantan, soup dumpling, pork ball, pork slice or beef slice. I had a pork bone noodle with soup dumpling which is a pretty decent choice. The noodle is not something I would crave for, but it is comforting and can consider to be friendly to everyone's taste buds.
No one should miss out Taiwanese chicken chop whenever coming to a Taiwanese eatery right? Therefore, we ordered this Chicken Chop 蓬甲鸡排 (RM 13.80). Well, I could not recall how is the taste of chicken chop from Peng Jia Night Market but this one from Tai Ho Jiak is considered pretty good. It has crisp and salty chicken skin and succulent chicken meat, though a bit reduced of the saltiness would be great.
Nevertheless, of course the one in Taiwan night market tasted better!
We thought the Specialty Coffee (RM 10.80) here would turn out great but it is a concotion that we did not know how to appreciate. On the other hand, the Red Dates (RM 6.80) is nice. In the menu it says imported, so we assume it is imported directly from Taiwan?
Overall, Tai Ho Jiak is a good option for one to enjoy some good Taiwanese food with affordable price.
台好甲 Tai Ho jiak
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