Gravybaby (Chulia) — Restaurant in George Town

First impressions:

Upon visiting the premises, ambience and environment was there. Unfortunately the waiters are not alert on the front end. Nobody was at the door to receive and seat us. Waited for a good few moments and no one came still, even though I had asked the bartender from the outside if anyone was coming to serve us at the door. Knowingly that a customers presence had been acknowledged by the waiters, no one even take the initiative to serve us. Mind you the place wasn’t a full house at the time. Seems like anyone can just walk in whenever the like without being checked if they were within the allowed body temperature nor having their Covid-19 Vaccine shots done. It makes it look as if the foreign security personnel guarding the entrance of the malls here in Malaysia are more concerned on the aspect of health and well-being from the COVID-19 pandemic that has yet to pass than us locals, or at least in Penang where I’m from.

Table serving:

There wasn’t any sense of urgency and promptness. Everyone took their own sweet time as if they were the customers instead. A very pitiful experience. We finally sat at at a dual joint table by the plants on the ground floor that weren’t cleaned up. Had to personally ask the waiter to clean it up in which he just swept the crumbs left and right unto the floor and our laps too. For such an established place, it didn’t really seem like we were at one. Feels like we’re at a “mamak” instead, but a "mamak" would probably be better than this. Maybe it’s just that single cleaner that needs a retraining. Signalled the waiter as we were ready too took some time for them to come and get our orders.

The good:

Not that everything I have to say here is bad, good thing is that the food ordered are churned out a good few minutes right after our order was submitted. The menu provided sure gave a good impression especially with their wide range of choices on both food and beverage! We ordered a chicken burger, penne pesto with the penne replaced by spaghetti, onion rings and a peanut butter milkshake. Textures of these foods are fine. Just that my chicken burger was a bit dry personally. The pesto spaghetti was fine too, no complaints about that. Same goes for the onion rings and the peanut butter milkshake. Presentation is there, but overall a bit bland for me, there is space for improvement. But for the price of these dishes at an average of 30-40MYR, the only complaints that I have were that the show runners are lacking in providing great or decent service. Other than that, it would’ve been perfect for a first time diner here at Gravybaby of...

This is my third time here in Gravy Baby. The first time two time is only for drinks. As my fellow friends keep telling me that the food served here is very expensive and not worth the price at all. So i don’t bother to try before.

But, i decided to give myself a try yesterday (Tuesday 24th Jan 2023). There’s a promotion too on every Tuesday, it’s a Buy 1 Free 1 Steak or Chicken. Isn’t that great?!

So let’s talk about the food now. Since the on going promo is chicken and steak, we decided to give a try on chicken. I myself had the BBQ Chicken with Onion Rings and Butter Mashed, while my friend had the Peri-Peri Chicken with Cauliflower & Butter Mashed. Both chicken cooked well, and season properly. And it’s a very huge portion too! And it’s only RM45 for each Chicken Menu! Trust me, it’s super worth it! And plus there’s an ongoing promo on Tuesday, double super worth it! It’s just that the “Buttery Mashed Potato” is very dry, hard and cold. We just don’t like it snd didn’t manage to finish it all. The taste was okay, just the texture is not that great. The Strawberry Cheesecake is not creamy, not sweet just bland. I don’t know maybe it was prepared to be like that or the cake is spoiled, but it doesn’t taste bad. Just don’t have the real cake taste on it. And it RM25, so yeah.

Why 4 stars after all? The experience when were there was okay. It’s just that they seems to focus more on the downstairs than the upstairs side, there’s only 1 staff with so much things to do by him all alone. So it tooks sometimes for us to get him by the table for service. Please have more staff on the upstairs please next...

We had previously been to the Kuala Lumpur flagship restaurant and had a good experience, so we decided to return to the brand while in Penang.

When we tried to order a bottle of wine to share with our meal, they provided a taster, assuring us it was available by the bottle. But, when we ordered a bottle of said wine, they attempted to serve a completely different one to the taster —they tried this twice! Mmmm re-labeled wine?

So I went to the bar to ask them.to show me the open taster bottle and the bottle I intended to buy, they were unable to show the same identcal branded two bottles! They show different wine makers and grapes! both the waiter and the head barman seemed very suspect. They couldn’t explain the discrepancy or even show me simply the taster wine alongside the bottle we had wanted to order. That only made it seem even more suspect.

This level of dishonesty is unacceptable. We left, disappointed, as I had intended to spend a significant amount there. CENTRAL management really needs to keep an eye on what’s happening here id suggest, all way to complicated and suspect. Whats so complicated with 1) try a wine, 2)buy same wine, 3) have a nice...