Interesting sounding breakfast dishes, but some ingredients are outright lies and you will unapologetically receive worse substitutions
@Chulia Restaurant & Bar is less than five minutes away from Love Lane but with none of the crowds, especially during breakfast time. It offers the same western-style brunch food, if that’s what you’re craving, but couldn’t stand the queues in the tourist hotspot.
Ambience & Amenities
@Chulia is a long, narrow cafe with lots of seating options. There are cushy couches, low tables, bar seating, and even a small back patio. The patio is literally an enclosed space with no view and space for about three tables. The televisions near the couches were showing Mr Bean at this time, but sports are certainly what will be playing on the screens during the evenings.
The bathroom is ugly and industrial-like: a grey room with exposed pipes and a really noisy air conditioner sharing the space. There are three stalls: one urinal, one sitting toilet, and one handicapped stall with a sink inside, with paper stocked in the toilet stalls. There’s just one communal sink – soap is provided, but there are only bar napkins to dry off with. Despite it being clean in here, there was a bad smell… weirdly, like someone’s bad breath! Probably a by-product of their cleaning fluid or the air conditioner.
Menu
Their breakfast menu is small with just seven items. The options sound interesting, but the dishes will not be as advertised.
We were also given their drink menu, which was mostly alcohol. If it’s a “hair of the dog” kind of morning, note that the restaurant will not serve you any alcohol until about 11am. It’s not on the menu, but there is free filtered water that comes in a one-litre bottle out of the fridge.
Annoyingly, there was no coffee available on this day, not even simple black americanos. The fact that they weren’t even able to mix water with ground coffee means one of two things: they were out of grounds, or their coffee comes out of a pod machine that was on the fritz temporarily.
Food
The Smoked Salmon Scrambled Egg on a Wholemeal Bagel (RM14) was an utter sham. It wasn’t a bagel, it was the top of a sesame hamburger bun! What the actual fuck? Isn’t that more problematic than giving me a bagel? What do they do with the bottom halves of these burger buns? Looking back at the menu picture for this, they couldn’t even scrounge up a bagel for the photo and slapped the salmon on top of what looks like a giant Belvita biscuit. There was nothing memorable about this meh dish.
The Eggs Benedict (RM18) was nicely cooked, with a dark runny yolk encased in an outer shell that held its shape. However, we were conned on the carbs again. This was advertised as being served on English muffins… which is how you’re supposed to do an eggs benny… but what we got instead were two dry slices of wholewheat bread under the eggs. This restaurant really needs to have a chat with their bread supplier. To round out the plate, there was iceberg lettuce and red cabbage “salad” with no dressing.
Saturday Worthy?
Considering how vast their drink selection is, @Chulia is more suited as a place for tipples. Their breakfast food feels like they’re trying to use up the bread that didn’t sell last night as sandwiches and burgers. I can see why others would rather ride out the crowds elsewhere than eat here.
Price for 2 Pax: RM32.00
Smoked Salmon Scrambled Egg: RM14.00
Eggs Benedict: RM18.00
@Chulia Restaurant & Bar
352-354 Chulia St, George Town, 10200, Penang
Daily: 8am – 11pm
Alcohol Served: Yes
