43 Cafe @ Sungai Dua, Penang

Tucked within a neighborhood, 43 cafe is a semi-converted residential lot to a cafe and a hidden gem found in Sungai Dua, Penang. The dining area is located at the garden which surrounded by well trimmed Ixora flowers clinging to the fence, allowing the patrons to enjoy food in such a tranquil site. In fact, 43 cafe had been such a low profile cafe, which commenced its operation since 2012 at such an unnoticed venue (a residential area), yet manage to squeeze through the economic turbulence. All these are the efforts of the chef, whom insisted on making every bit of the food by himself.

The cafe has a Western style skewed menu, offering a range of meat based dishes. We were recommended to their dry-aged pork belly and dry-aged pork steak. The major differences between these two were their fatty contents, with pork belly had a significant percentage of fat meat.

Thus, we opted for their Dry-Aged Pork Steak (RM 28), simply for the sake of health reason though we would love to relish this raging part of the pork. The dry aging process made the pork steak possessing the desirable tenderness and succulency. Interestingly, the chef here formulate and produce their very own accompanying sauce using oregano, herbs and onions, making it a very unique taste that no where else you could get. All the sauces were prepared on the spot upon ordering and was served hot.

Two sides - salads and potatoes were served and both were drizzled with their very own sauce and distinctive taste, though we still find the sauces made for the pork steak irresistible and drenched the sides with it.

The Pork Bacon Blanket (RM 17.50) was such a luxury dish as 6 pieces of bacon were sandwiched in between the burger buns, altogether with onions, lettuce, cherry tomatoes and lemon mayonnaise sauce. We enjoyed the overall dishes but we were more used to evoking and vivid smoked taste of bacon, while the bacon here might taste more on a healthy side.

While you may thought western dishes are the selling points of 43 cafe, their homemade ice creams (or ice screams they named it) are really their forte. They produce their very own no-branded ice creams but it could easily matched those reputable ice creams, which justified its premium price tags. Soft, smooth, milky and without presence of ice crystals at all, no people would reject to savor such a decent dessert for the day.

The ice creams here are categorized into two versions - non alcohol (RM 9.90 per scoop) and alcohol (RM 9.90) versions. The chef recommended us to try their Affogato since we like to drink coffee.

Interestingly, the chef managed to persuade us to make a difference to the Affogato by adding salt or chili flakes to every scoop of it to bring out the difference in chemistry. Indeed, it enhanced and modified the taste with the different level of salt or chili flakes added. To maximize the enjoyment of the Affogato, stir the ice cream with the espresso and sip them spoon by spoon. Do not hurry to finish everything at once nor try to finish the ice cream first, because every scoop of it tasted differently due to temperature, degree of balancing between the espresso and ice cream, and etc.

I thought we would still hungry as the portion was just average but surprisingly we were too full to commit for another dish. We will leave the surprise to next time then.