New World Park, Penang – Rou Gu Cha King aka Bak Kut Teh King

New World Park is located between the junction of Burmah Road and Swatow lane. In 1970’s to 80’s this place damn famous, it was an amusement park on that time. After that this place had been abandon there for a long long time. Hawkers located on Swatow lane are famous, especially their Ice kacang, Popiah, Laksa, Pasembur and many others. One or two years back, Robert Kwok’s group had decided to redevelop this place. They wanted to make New World Park to become one of the tourist attractions in Penang. Inside this place you can find food, shopping, clubbing, bistro, cyber café and many others. Most of the hawkers from Swatow lane had move into the food court of New World Park. You can get lots of local delicacies here.

1^st Aug is the grand opening for the main park, so I had decided to go there to search for some good food. When I reach there, I was sort of disappointed because not all the shops are open. Only 4 to 5 shops opened on that day and most of the shops are still under renovation. Just because there are only a few shops over there, we had notice a shop name Rou Gu Cha King which means King of Bak Kut Teh. The first thing that came into my mind was this shop is good. WHY? Because in Penang, a food heaven and they still dare to claim themselves as King of Bak Kut Teh, this means that they are really something. Furthermore they had an outlet in Shanghai.

We decided to dine in this shop. After enter the shop, we realize that almost all the tables were occupied. The waiter showed us to table, after sitting for 5 minutes, I started to feel uncomfortable because of the hot environment although the shop was equipped with Air-Con but still hot. We complain to the waiter and he told us that their curtain blower for the door is still not ready. By looking at the menu, they have really lots of selection for Bak Kut Teh, they have original, dry, red wine flavored, spicy, BKT Mee, BKT porridge and many others. We were attracted by the menu but we were told not all the things are available yet when we wanted to order spicy BKT. So in the end we ordered Original BKT, Dry BKT and BKT Mee

For 1 person of Bak Kut Teh set meal which includes BKT, rice, bean sprout, Yau Char Kuai and tea is RM 10.90. To me the price is moderate I won’t complain it to be too expensive. When the set was served, the portion is really really small. The BKT was served in a mini size clay-pot with only a few pieces of meat and other ingredients. The soup taste weird because it was a bit on sour site and doesn’t really have the fragrant of Chinese herbs at all.

The service here was really poor as to me all the waiter are fresh and doesn’t have any experience before. As I mention, our set meal included a tea. A few waiters walking by our table keep asking what drink do we wanted to order, we told him we ordered set and include a tea. After a few minutes later another waiter walks by and asked the same question again. We totally were asked for four times and waited 15 minutes just for the tea. The original BKT was served quite fast, but the dry one took around 40 minutes. I am not sure what they are doing in the kitchen. If they don’t improve on their service, soon they will lose their customer. The Dry BKT doesn’t taste any special, is just like Kung Poh, dark soya sauce with dried chilies. The BKT Mee that we ordered was also the same, taste like Kung Poh and no fragrant of BKT or Chinese here.

Overall we were quite disappointed with the service and the food that we received from this shop. Is the first day opening of the shop so that I didn’t blame much, but I do really hope that can improve on their food and also service. I am not sure I will be there again or not …… Maybe when BKT King comes to Penang, I will bring him there as BKT king can go and screw the chef….. hehe

Makan King's ratings = 4 out of 10

Cheers,
-Wasabi King-