Aji Noren — Restaurant in George Town

Place is super crowded so make sure to make a reservation before going.

Food was delicious! It is probably our favourite place for omurice in Penang for now. Menu is really extensive so there are a lot of choices to choose from and definitely will have something to fit everyone.

Taste of food is not very salty with just enough seasoning, except for the cheese sauce which was the saltiest dish we had among our orders.

We had the Bento A set, omurice, ham katsu with cheese sauce, gyoza and grape juice.

Let's begin with our favourite dish. The omurice. The fried rice had just enough tangy-ness from ketchup, and had lots of carrots, onions and chicken pieces inside it. The demi glacé sauce didn't really have much flavour that I could distinguish, but it provide just enough moisture to complement the omurice. The egg is definitely the star of this dish, and every mouthful of fried rice accompanied.panied with some egg on top just elevates the whole dish. The egg is just so fragrant (like it was fried in really really hot pan until it had the fragrance and flavour of a deep fried egg) but was still runny. One word, perfect 👌.

The bento set consists of unagi, tamagoyaki, korokke, ebi tempura and sashimi as its dishes, accompanied with white rice, miso soup, salad and fruit. Unagi was perfectly fluffy and fatty, which just melts in your mouth. Sashimi slices were unexpectedly super thick that I went "wah, so thick leh", everytime my boyfriend had a slice of it.

Ham katsu was probably our least favourite dish among all, not because it is not delicious. It is just the ham and cheese sauce were both very salty individually, and will be better accompanied with rice.

The gyoza was not my favourite as well as the filling is predominantly vegetables (cabbage and chives I think) and barely had any meat flavour and texture. That being said, it was the juiciest gyoza I've ever had in Penang. It is just that I prefer a meat filling over one that tastes of vegetable only.

Prices are reasonable as well, and portion sizes are definitely not something to worry about. You will definitely leave Aji Noren feeling stuffed.

Definitely worth going there to...

Not the typical Japanese restaurant you see outside. This place serves local delicacies such as stir fry pork liver to mapo tofu to Sang Mee(crispy fried noodle with sauce) I was in for a great shock of my life but it was late(9pm) and I wanted to eat Unagi with rice so badly. We ordered Unagi, and my spouse ordered what they recommended which is their so called special beef stew. Beef was very tender that's for sure but nothing at all Japanese about it. Certainly not the best dish I have eaten. Something that even your father in law who has never been to the kitchen can whip up that dish. Just make sure you slow cooked them. Guess what, for an exorbitant Rm52 ringgit.. you only get a small tiny bowl of beef(ala carte) No rice, nothing.

Whereas my unagi set, comes with a eenie minnie tiny bowl of rice., some really pale looking shredded cabbage they called salad, 2 small slice of watermelon, seaweed soup. The Unagi came right out from the sea and went straight to the BBQ pit as it is. No debone, scale 100% intact. I couldn't find pleasure in eating the unagi because I'm not sure I'm really eating one because there was sooo much bones. The unagi skin I have to forego because the scale was so hard and covered the whole skin. In the end, that tiny piece of unagi, I had to just not eat the whole thing.. because of the scale and bones.. too damn difficult to eat. If they were very fine. You might still be able to just swallow them with your rice. As for the stew.. we had to order extra bowl of plain rice to eat with it.

1 set of unagi (Rm 48+) plus 1 beef stew 52 plus 1 rice, the bill came up to Rm 115+ and both adults are only half full. I swear I could have gone to any Japanese shop, paid for 115, eat...

I felt overwhelmed when I saw the waiter handed over several thick menus during this first visit. The menu is not only diverse, but also the food pictures are arranged in a dazzling way. Not only that, the food pictures on their menu are still photocopied, in very low quality and small size. They have been in business for 20 years or longer and have not considered upgrading the menu design. The restaurant is dimly lit and it is difficult to see what are the foods displayed in the menu. Besides that, there is no English explanation about the food only the Japanese translated name. It is not friendly at all to people who don’t often eat Japanese food because of not understanding what are those dish. There is no waiter to help recommend their dishes.

The food tastes are good and is served quickly, but it's not as exaggeratedly delicious as described on social media platforms. The price is above average.

Another point is that when we arrived at the restaurant, we were told that the indoor seats were full and only the outdoor seats at the back were left. Shortly after we sat down, we saw the waitress telling two tables sitting at the outdoor seats who came shortly after I arrived that they could be switching seats to the indoor which were available after the previous customers have left. The waitress chose to tell them instead of me. If there are customers in the indoor who are ready to finish their meal upon my visit, the waitress has ask me if I am willing to wait for their seats, which is acceptable. The problem is that the waitress chose to let the customers who arrive after me switch into the indoor seats, which is really frustrating and I felt...