New look…

This hotel has been around for a long, long time. When I was a lot younger, we used to hang around the coffee house – then called Bamboo House. Later they changed its name to Cafe Palmelia…

…and Bamboo House was the music lounge with a Filipino band upstairs.

Well, they’ve given the whole place a facelift. Now the lobby looks much nicer…

…and the cafe, since renamed Bamboo House, certainly looks a whole lot classier…

…and bigger than before…

We used to dine there very often when my daughter was younger. The food was very nice and the Sunday night buffet was very affordable at around RM25.00 per head. Unfortunately, it got more expensive and the quality of the food dropped – probably because they had a new chef in the house. Thus, we stopped going there…and I would only be eating in the hotel restaurant whenever I was attending some courses, workshops, seminars or meetings where they would have some kind of special package deal, inclusive of meals.

Actually, my daughter and I wanted to go to the Chinese restaurant opposite that afternoon for its special Hainanese chicken rice – famous since those days when I was just a kid and its Sibu Foochow sio bee (meat dumplings) but the place was full so we had to go some place else…and since this one is still sparkling new, we decided to give it a try.

I had the claypot chicken rice (RM12.50) that the waitress recommended…

…which was o.k. I’ve had better elsewhere but it wasn’t too bad and there was so much that I just could not finish the whole lot. I think it would do nicely if two persons shared one order of that.

Melissa had the so-called Piccadilly fish and chips which certainly looked impressive…

…but she did not think it was great. For a whooping RM24.50, I would expect fresh mushrooms instead of those canned ones. It certainly looks like it has not changed since this 2007 review, just the price…but a RM2.00 hike after so many years should be quite reasonable, I would think.

I love the cute little saucers they used for the sauces…

…and that’s just about all the nice things I can say about this place.

There were a few people at one table when we arrived and they left soon after, so we were on our own – the whole place to ourselves until much later when a small group of people from some function upstairs came in for their buffet lunch. They, of course, would have the room guests dropping by in the morning for the complimentary breakfast but I really wonder what their business is like in the evenings.

For things to pick up a little perhaps, I reckon they would need a new chef or a change in menu and revise the prices if they are not going to upgrade the quality of the food. All things considered, I would still stick to my little Garden where the food is cheaper and a whole lot nicer.