Review : Salsas Restaurant, Penang

Chicken tortellini baked with cheese, turkey ham and brocolli and asparagus.

One of MalaysiaBest’s reader suggested this restaurant to me and I am so happy with her recommendation. It is rare to find a restaurant serving reasonably priced meals and yet taking care of the food presentation, cosy ambience, thoughtful service and varied menu.

Salsas is located at the junction of Farquhar Street and Upper Penang Road, next to Continental Hotel. We sat by the glass window and watch the traffic on the busy Upper Penang Road, with tourists on trishaws going by. The place was packed during lunch time and the few times I passed by, it is usually packed for dinner too.

My children love this feature. A wireless, call button. They cannot wait for the meal to complete so that they can press the ‘Bill’ call button. At other times, we were tended by the efficient waiters so there wasn’t a need to call.

What I like about the place is the thoughtful staffs who bring you a high chair without the need for us to ask. They gave us five dinner rolls (buns) eventhough we only ordered three main meals. We were also generously given two complimentary bowls of soups. How’s that for generousity and hospitality? And glasses of water were put on the table without asking too.

During lunch, they only serve set lunches. However, this is not your regular 3 choices set lunch but a variety of approximately 20 different and varied items (or maybe more) to choose from. The set lunch came with either a choice of soup or salad, coffee/tea or iced lemon tea/coke and a dessert. The above grilled seafood platter only costs RM23.50 which includes all the frills. The king prawn is firm and sweet, salmon cooked just right and the scallop and mussels were good too.

Other choices of set lunches only cost RM13.50 to RM19.50. My husband had the lamb pepperpot which is lamb stew with lots of black peppers and served with these yummy garlic bread. My son had the pasta on the first photo. There are other interesting items on the menu which we are going to try out on the next visit.

On reflection, I don’t know if the good services we got was because I pulled out my two cameras before our meals. Hahaha. I had been out the whole morning taking photos and when I was in the restaurant, I was doing some photos deleting to clear up some urgently needed space in my DSLR camera. Maybe, the sight of the two menacing cameras accorded us the special services? I hope not! Salsas’s food is indeed good, value for money and interesting.

The photos of the other foods we had can be seen on my personal blog here.  Salsas is pork-free.