Midland Court

Update: This business has ceased its operations.

Midland Court Restaurant (美兰阁海鲜酒家) is the host of the first gathering of "PG Food Hunter A Team", a popular Penang foodie group on Facebook. Garnering over 16,000 members (and still counting) in mere 3 months, this group is making headlines in the newspapers lately.

This event is made possible with the generous sponsorship of several prominent members, restaurants, food manufacturers and other businesses, as well as the volunteers who spent countless hours to organize this event. A 500-strong army of food enthusiasts turned up for this dinner event, as well as several members of the press.

Some of the sponsored items are put up as lucky draw prizes. This includes restaurant vouchers, pottery, T-shirts etc. The top prize is a pair of silver earrings worth RM1,800.00.

In fact, nobody goes home empty-handed. Each attendee is given a bag of goodies such as cookies, coffee, oatmeal, soy sauce, pickled vegetable etc courtesy from the sponsors. Even the price of beer is slashed thanks to Carlsberg.

Not to mention complementary Chinese sausages (腊肠) and cream puffs made possible by the generosity of the sponsors.

The dinner tonight is a 7-course Chinese dinner. The usual price is RM650.00 for each table of 10. But with help from the sponsors, attendees only need to pay RM50.00 for each seat (30% discount).

The first dish is the Midland Court Five Combination (五福喜临门). This assortment of appetizers include shrimp, scallops, fish cake, jellyfish, and braised pork with yam. The taste is decent but lacks the wow factor.

Next up is the Assorted Seafood Soup (海味鱼唇羹). Overall, the stew is quite rich and savory, although I prefer it to be less salty. I am quite liberal with vinegar when consuming this dish.

What follows is an exquisite delicacy: Midland Signature Roasted Suckling Pig (炭烧广式沙皮猪). The piglet is cut flat and roasted with charcoal to give it a crispy texture. The main gratification comes from the crispy skin. There is not much lean meat available, and what's left is too salty for me anyway.

The Steamed Grouper With Soya Sauce (清蒸生石斑) is reasonably well flavored. However the flesh of this grouper is not refined enough, therefore the texture is not as smooth as expected.

Moving to the greens, the Cabbage Braised With Dried Oyster & Black Fungus (冬菇蚝豉发菜扣津白) is a vegetarian dish of oysters, mushrooms, black moss (发菜), bean curd, broccoli, and cabbage. Apart from the oysters and mushrooms, this dish is rather dull and unappealing.

As for the BBQ Pork With Wan Tan Mee (叉烧捞生面), the noodle is quite springy but it lacks of taste except from the salty soy sauce. Some barbecued pork is included, but I feel that the meat is rather dry and stale. In fact, I think this dish should be replaced with something more familiar like lotus leaf rice (荷叶饭) or just simple fried rice.

And finally for dessert, Red Bean Paste With Dried Longan (圆肉红豆沙) is served. The red bean is reasonably nice, but as the last dish, few people have room in the stomach for this anymore.

I think there is much room for improvement on the part of Midland Court, in particular the food taste and choice of ingredients.

After the dinner, guests are given the opportunity to leave an autograph on the way out. The entire event is a success as evident in the overwhelming participation.