Today’s post actually should be about the outing with Criz, Allen and myself. However, I still have to skip that post for now and place this as a higher priority as there is a new place that I am going to introduce to you all before Penang Tua Pui and CK Lam did.
The location that I am introducing is just below Krystal Point Corp Park, for those who are not sure where the location is, you may find it from the Wikimapia GPS link:
http://www.wikimapia.org/#lat=5.3310353&lon=100.2981377&z=18&l=0&m=a&v=2
The name of the cafe is called Island Red Cafe. I find the concept is very similar to OLD TOWN CAFE. Infact the facade of the cafe is also very like Old Town’s. The food served here is HALAL and people that work at Crystal Point will entitle for 10% discount if show their name card.
The entrance of Island Red Cafe is a design of semi classical, a mixture of old and contemporary syle.
Inside the cafe, there is a living area which allows customers to sit on the sofa and have a cuppa which is more comfortable than sitting on the dining corner. There is also a LCD TV which plays music videos of all kinds.
The cafe also provides Internet service and also computers for patrons to use free of charge.
The slogan of Island Red Cafe is “Your Celebrity Cafe”. I am not sure why they name it celebrity cafe? Anyway, other than me I haven’t see any celebrity there 😆
They have “special drinks” with lovely names like Fall in Love and 2nd Heaven which makes them different from Old Town Cafe. However, I haven’t had the change to order those as I am still recovering from a bad cough. 😥
The cafe is full with people although it is Monday. I was told that it is unusual to be full except today.
The cheese cakes are sold at promotional price of RM5.60 per slice. It is considered reasonable compared to other cafe’s.
The drinks that we ordered – Hot Lemon Tea, RM2.60 and Hot Island Milk Tea, RM2.00.
The snack that I’ve ordered, Seafood Tofu, RM5.40 for small portion as shown below. Actually I find it a bit expensive. I am not sure how the tofu is made, maybe I should check with the owner on my next visit
The first meal, “Island Red Tom Yam Soup” with rice at RM7.90. The soup includes fish ball, fish cake and also fish fillets. The fish fillets taste fresh, and the texture of fish ball and fish cake taste QQ. No doubt the fish ball, cake and fillet taste nice, the tom yam soup is a bit too salty. Slightly less Perfecto.
The next meal is the springy noodle “Nissin Noodle with Seafood & Egg” for RM6.90 which the price is considered slightly above average. This is also the difference between Island Red Cafe and Old Town Cafe. Noodles at Old Town comes with fake prawns in which the prawns have already been “modified”. Whereas Island Red Cafe provides real prawns although the prawns are not that fresh.
Overall, Island Red Cafe is OK with some improvements still needed. Some of the foods are great but not all. The service here is excellent as we ordered wrong items but he still offered to change to our desired item.
Editor’s Review (5 Stars Rank):
| Taste |  |
| Price | |
| Food Presentation | |
| Service |  |
| Overall |  |
Maybe they were trying to get coverage from our magazine! 🙂
Looks like the normal cafe kind of food…sounds like you didn’t enjoy the food there:p
Steven is fast lor… coming out with this review, you really beat me and PTP to this place. Looks like a nice place for a gathering and drinks. Thanks for sharing this with all the readers.
Hope you will recover from your bad cough soon…only then can enjoy cold drinks…haha
Christy, indead. Is seems like another OLD TOWN CAFE to me.
Michael, you can charge them on using your domain name.
It was so funny when I saw the title of your post! You know why right? Hahahaha. You not scared the mad dog will come over and bark again after he did it in new kid’s blog?
Anyway, this Island Red Cafe is really hot now! I never try, so I cannot say anything about the food. By the way, I can cook the Nissin Noodle with Ham, Sausage and Egg! Wakakaka.
Stevey,
Island Red Cafe(IRC) started from Kuala Lumpur, and they are not run like Old Town. Their business model is a bit complicated. The unit is own by IRC, but the capital is pooled from numerous people who are interested in investing into their company. Something like that!
The food served is almost a copy cat of Old Town, but with some twist to them. I have been there twice. The food is not as good as Old Town’s, and the food at old town are ain’t delicious either. Their coffee and milk tea are definitely no match to Old Twon’s. Toast is also not comparable to Old Town, its either not enough butter and kaya or are unevenly spread.
My advice is, visit at your own Risk!
maybe when we’re there was a bit early, not many crowds, thus the food and service was satisfactory.
It seemed like there are so many restaurants and cafes popping up in Penang. I hope they can maintain the Penang taste and won’t end up too commercialized as most of those in KL.
http://crizfood.blogspot.com/
Allen, I didn’t that NKOTB facing this mad dog barking issue until Criz sent me the email 1.
Jason, I do agree that the food is still need to be improve.
NKOTB, their service is good actually but again standard of food is the main attraction point to a restaurant.
Criz let’s hope so, or else you can come out with ur own Criz Restaurant to beat them all. Muahahaha
The tofu can be bought at supermarket. RM5.40 is slightly expensive.
Hi Steven, its my 1st time writing comments here. I’ve been to this cafe during their start up as i m working at Krystal Point. I agreed that its a nice place for gathering but food & service wise…bad experience. I order a koay teow soup (as i was sick that time) but the oil floating above the soup was about 1cm thick!!! I ended up getting sore throat. Further more, the waiters/tress seemed to be so unfriendly yet the food was served slow. Not going for 2nd time unless i have been told of improvement.
I agreed that it’s a good meeting place for chit-chatting but perhaps got to forgive a bit on its food quality.
CK Lam (10) –
I had mentioned about Island Red Cafe on PTP Blog (= Supertanker Belacan Rice 28/08/08 5:37pm) and also told Eleen (a food blogger) when she asked the location of the Chai Leng Park Yam Rice – 14/09/08, after following your link to her for the BM yam rice map.
The above dates in August and Sept were definitely earlier than Steven’s discovery of Island Red Cafe.
Michael (12) –
Talking about coverage, they have done one on Corporate Journey Magazine No. 38. In fact, the cafe does not need any magazine publicity because they are functioning on the Push and Pull systems of marketing.
The company’s business strategy is based on the concept of small shareholder franchise. Everyone can be a shareholder with a small capital; echoing the battlecry – Everyone can do Franchise!
The modus operandi is totally different from O-Town, albeit the menu items are very much similar; so are all modern eating outlets.
On the tastes, allow me to share a story:
Chef Yan of the famed TV program, “Wok With Yan” came to Malaysia for a presentation many years ago.
Malaysians in general were shocked by his standards of cookings. Horrible! was the comment whereas the Canadians said, “Bravo, Excellent!”
Yan stated that Malaysians preferred sweet foods whereas Canadians loved salts.
In cooking, the Chefs for restaurants are not the same as home chefs or housewives.
They do not know the customers and their individual special preferences. So, they have to set a standard of wobbling on the middle lines until the time the usual customers custom the joint.
House chefs know their family members well, hence food more palatable for the family concerned.
actually i haven’t been to island red cafe before this,today is my 1st time visit the island red cafe website. this is because i heard from my friend that island red cafe is very good place.and myself very interesting in cafe business. anyway,island red cafe is absolutely nice place even i haven’t been there before but i will.
Assalamualaikum & salam sejahtera….
Kepada sesiapa yang ingin menjadi ahli dalam Island Red Cafe (IRC)…. bolehlah menghubungi saya di talian 012-7193 991 atau e-mail reezam991@hotmail.com bagi mendapatkan keterangan lanjut….
Terima kasih.
hi there, i’m from subang jaya. i’ve been to the shamelin perkasa outlet and i have found out that the establishment is quite cosy and the pricing is very affordable. i like the concept of the cafe. and i myself is in the hospitality business wolud like to give a thumbs up for the cafe. but there are a few setbacks that i would like to highlight,
1. the food presentation is good but there are room for improvements on the palate, it should be more tasty in a sence that malaysian like the food to be arromatic.
2.the location, it should be ‘ the hub ‘ means that the location should be ideal. easy access to people and more people more revenue. should be in the places like subang jaya ss15, everybody are looking nfor a place to hang out. in shah alam, seksyen 9 or 2. those are the places where students are flocking to find places to go, even in seksyen 7.
hope my comments on the taste and the location would be a help to improve. and with the new marketing plan i had already become a member. thank you for the management for doing a wonderful job.
I thought Island suppose to serve All Halal food but I get to know that some of the Anchor Hypermarket (Tesco, Carrfour) classified NISSIN RAMEN NON HALAL..Confuse…
I’m coming from alor setar, kedah. There is an Island Red Coffee here recently and i heard regarding the multi-level marketing. So I joined it under my friend’s name and paid RM360 for the membership (RM60) and e-vouchers for food (RM300). So far, i have been there for two times. but i had spend roughly RM160 for food. There is nothing wrong with the concept, but in terms of method of paying, when I didnt paid with cash, I realized that it’s quite hard for me to budget my expenses bcoz everything will be deducted from my account. And i really don’t like the envinronment, it’s crowded and i felt very uncomfortable. The food is not tasty as i thought, and it’s not cheap too. The service provided are out of our expectation as there is shortage of manpowers. and i found out that the people went there, not merely to have meal but they actually trying to make sales there. it’s very disturbing and i totally disagree that it is a good place for gathering, chit chatting or even just to drink coffee!!!!~~~~~~~~~~~~
Haha. Funny, it’s 11.10pm now, and I haven’t get the food I ordered since 9.54pm. I ordered orange apple, pineapple lemon, fried fishball, seafood tofu, tomyam and one single kaya toast. I got my orange apple after 15 minutes, but until 10.22pm my bf still got nothing . My bf get mad, and asking them at least to serve us the drink first. And it was so surprised that they never even informed us that actually pineapple lemon had finished, and asked us to change order. After that, i got my toast. But after that, what we are doing was just waiting and watching around until 11.00pm. Finally, I cancelled my order and left Island Red Cafe, Alor Setar with anger and frustration, with hunger and tired. So did my neighbour table, they kept complaining the service provided was so bad, wasting customer’s time, and some of them even worst, have to wait almost two hours only can get everything they had ordered. I really regret that I become one of their members. The service provided is really below my expectation. And believe me, there are someone leaving the cafe without paying!!!!
Hi Irine, thanks for your effort on writing this long comment to let us know how bad the situation is at this restaurant. Frankly speaking, I haven’t been there after my second bad experience. refer: http://www.stevengoh.com/events/ending-2008-with-unutilised-free-voucher-island-red-cafe/
I feel that they need to buck up their service else they will be getting from bad to worst.
I really wish I no need to step into that cafe again, but I have no choice, at least until I spend all the money in my account first. That’s the problem, when our money has been tied up, even tough we’re not happy, we still have to go and dine-in there. Huh~~~~~~
Are you sure the cheese cake only RM5.60? We had two just now and it costs us RM15.00, means RM7.50 per piece, shocked me again! Even expensive than Secret Recipe…..Oh my god!!!
Accapan oso join this Island RED Cafe. Celebrities getting involve. hehe
tq…i just wanto to comment about irc @ pandan indah..somehow the label marked Halal but it’s seem the chef was not a muslim, the clean & “suci” still can be questinable & also the kitchen still like mamak restaurant standard. All nepal & bangla did not serious in working…always play around with each other…Like others said i also tied up with the voucher as a member, but the privallege beyond my expatation. For me the member card just easier way to made a payment only & no other privallage. Untill now, i did not interested to get prospect to be my partner because i cannot gurantee which irc outlet can be recommended as a good place to lepak..Tq
Anyone from Sri Petaling or Ampang area interested to find out the easier way to make money in Island Red Cafe, please call me an appointment at 012-338 9703, thanks.