White Smoke Restaurant — Restaurant in George Town

Such a shame this place has gone so far downhill. We visited 6 months ago and loved it, sadly this time it was a comedy of errors. We arrived and ordered cocktails, they have espresso martini with added parmesan cheese on the menu, I thought that sounded odd so ordered it without the cheese and was told “it won’t be nice without the cheese”. I said “it’s just the three espresso martini ingredients without the cheese, how can it not be nice?”. I should have headed the advice, when it came it was awful, my wife had it with the cheese…and it was even worse. I tried it but it was as good as it looks in the photo, appalling. I asked them to put it back in a cocktail shaker and shake it over ice to get the head. I heard for the only time I was in there (loads of other people ordered cocktails in that time) the bar tender shaking it. It was for 3 seconds which isn’t anywhere near enough but when it returned it visually resembled the actual drink. It tasted bad though, not balanced and all wrong. My wife didn’t drink much of her’s. We got an apology that the bar tender was new. That might be an explanation but it isn’t a justification when you’re charging top dollar, if they’re not ready to tend bar then don’t put them behind the bar, or remove cocktails from the menu until they are…don’t serve rubbish knowing it’s going to be bad. The dishes were a shadow of the previous visit, under seasoned, not enough time on the charcoal grill and generally lacking in flavour. The waiter after we moved to beer decided to top my glass up by pouring the remainder of my beer into my (expensive) mineral water despite me saying “no!” before he poured. That’s ok though as he kindly offered to replace my glass of now watery beer and mineral water with…tap water. I’m not kidding: “I can replace that with tap water”. Obviously I said no as the tap water in Penang isn’t always safe. I was asked “is all the food ok”, obviously they knew the drinks weren’t but still wanted to charge us. So the bill came, two drinks awful, a lot of food left on the plate, beer/water ruined but they did the professional thing and charged us for the lot, plus service.

Update: this was originally a one star review but I have adjusted after the restaurant unexpectedly followed up with me. I had booked through WhatsApp so they realised it was me and messaged to apologise and offered a full refund. I had not expected this and I don’t write reviews for that reason, but credit where credit is due they owned the mistakes, didn’t make excuses and insisted on a full refund despite me saying that I thought 50% was more than enough as we did eat most of the food. Clearly the management know what they are doing, and based on this I think the training I refer to above will happen. To be fair to the staff as well, they were making and effort and friendly, it was a lack of training rather than anything else that was the issue so I think with a bit of time they...

Great fresh ingredients, well cooked, but food was a little unbalanced on the whole. Not quite deserving of 4 stars for me, but 3 would have been way too harsh.

First off, the restaurant environment itself was very nice - clean and modern.

Excellent service. The staff were very attentive, able to answer questions about the food, and explained the elements on the plate when they served.

The food was pretty good overall and very well presented. But my main dish wasn’t well balanced in my opinion.

The cauliflower steak was well cooked and the mala cream it came with was surprising and quite enjoyable. There was probably more sauce than needed on the plate but it wasn’t an issue as the size and shape of the cauliflower meant it wasn’t drowning in it.

The mushrooms I found very tasty at first. But after a few more mouthfuls, I found the Guinness reduction way too sweet for an accompanying side dish. Again, well cooked though.

The quality of the pork was excellent with a nice amount of fat. It was very nicely cooked - tender and moist. My main issue came with the rest of the plate. The tiny confit leeks tasted of very little and felt a little style over substance. I think they would have tasted about the same if you just boiled them. The mushroom cream was okay, but after a while got a little claggy in the mouth. Combined with the soft pork and soft leeks, the dish just felt all a bit too mushy. The hazelnuts added some much needed texture, but also too much sweetness. I think the dish could really benefit from the addition of a little acidity.

My wife’s tenderloin steak was perfectly cooked and one of the best quality pieces of beef I’ve seen in a restaurant in Penang. Sadly, the red wine jus lacked any real punch or depth of flavour. The (very small) potato mille feuille was very well prepared, though I think could have done with a touch more seasoning and fat.

The chocolate lava cake was okay. Nice chocolate flavour without being too rich, as is often the case with chocolate desserts. It was also just sweet enough without being over the top. The main problem though was there was way too much lava and not enough cake! A good lava cake should look like a cake on the outside, but when you cut into it you find that delicious gooey flowing centre. This was more like a ramekin half full of lava, with a sponge cake on top.

Overall, a very nice restaurant with some pretty good food. I’m just slightly disappointed in the small issues that stopped it from...

The food here is amazing, absolutely good..the menu is so interesting. Congratulations to Chef Hou who has done such a wonderful menu. Our first course was the nasi ulam, the combination of flavours n texture of the crispy rice eaten together with the cured barracuda n the pickled onions and herbs really tickle and wake up our taste buds. Our second course was the ox tongue braised in red wine to perfection, tender and eaten together with garlic aoili, capers and pickled onion is another superb dish. We then had the white prawns which was so flavourful, perfectly grilled with fermented prawn butter, wakame n the age soy sauce made the prawns so tasty. It comes with a few pieces of charcoal grilled toast. I dont really eat bread but i tried one piece of the toast and was absolutely impressed as the toast soaked up the flavourful oil. Our main course was charcoal grilled barramundi with banana leaf in a miso coconut and the fish was so beautiful cooked n taste so good with the coconut miso cream. We also ordered a side dish of grilled cauliflower with spicy mala cream. The combination of the cauliflower with the mala (sichuan pepper) cream was again another wake up to the taste buds n it goes so well with the grilled cauliflower. The fun part is the dessert. I love the "drink Guinness stout and eat peanut" which is a combination of Guinness stout ice cream with peanut butter parfait, again it tickles my taste bud which gives me this great satisfying finale to my whole meal and my hubby love the char siew bacon ice-cream.. I am very impressed with Chef Hou who has done a wonderful job combining the different flavour and texture to give us a truly yummy tasty n flavourful adventure, tickling our tastebuds with perfection.

Very happy indeed. We hope to come back again when we next visit Penang.. A truly memorable meal....