Sky Lounge, 7th Floor MH Tower

Welcome back dear readers. I had a great an exciting weekend last week. How bout you? To kick start the strings of posts, it shall start off with a dinner on a Friday evening. Too normal? How bout having it on the 7th floor al fresco dining style? Ladies and gentleman, this is Sky Lounge, located on the 7th floor of MH Tower.

I heard many negative comments about this place all this while, particularly about the service. Especially during CNY, they impose a minimum order quantity for you to enter the limited alfresco dining area. And the funny thing is, the crowd is huge despite the arrogant service and exorbitant price of liquor/drinks. Well, its not surprising at all because this place share the same owner as Secret Garden "Fine Dining"

I'm a firm believer than besides good food, one pays also for ambiance and courteous service. I was unwilling to give this place a try until there is a promotion in Groupon. RM33+ per person for a 3 course meal. Not too bad amount to spend to test the waters.

Yes, this promotion....

Furthermore, its a special occasion as it was a farewell for one of my colleagues. Another person leaving Ipoh on hopes to make it big in KL. Here I go again with my famous sentence: Ipoh is doomed, the salary here sucks! Career advancement is limited. :O

Ok, I'm done with my ranting about low Ipoh salary. I'm sure my group of makan kaki does rant about work sometimes. Furthermore its a Friday evening. After picking our main courses, we chilled out with some beer and camwhored around the place.

Despite the haze, the amber skyline during sun set provides a good backdrop for those who loves photography... and camwhoring too. I believe that on a clearer night, you can get a great night view of this part of Ipoh city. Enough of seeing the pictures of the surrounding and my friends, lets move on to review the food! =p

Food here is below par. The best would be this only - Smoked Duck Breast. A bit too generous on the layer of fat, the meat is fragrant and "bouncy", not really chewy like Chinese roasted duck. Good to pair with beer.

My pitiful Sirloin Steak. I requested for medium well. Well, I assumed medium well is around 70-80%? But the meat came in 120%! Tough, dry. It's like a kid messing around in the grilling/BBQ pit. How come a so called "posh" dining place like this could make such mistake. This main course didn't make my RM33+ worth it.

I'm not too sure bout how the Grilled Salmon fared among my friends. The presentation looks good. But again, if you would've noticed, its kinda generic as in long beans and stewed potatoes with some gravy providing support to the meat on top. There are total of 5 choices of main course for the Groupon set - the other 2 being Grilled Lamb of Rack (which turns out to be slightly charred, more like lamb chop instead of rack of lamb) and Grilled Spring Chicken.

The dessert was a saving grace though. Brownies with Strawberry Ice Cream and Strawberry.... errrr sauce/syrup. Normally they would go for Vanilla to pair with Brownies, some might double the intensity with Chocolate flavour ice cream. But strawberry? Erm.... okay. :O

Overall, the set dinner was a failure and didn't impress me a bit. I would've criticized even more if its not because it was priced cheaper than ala carte pricing. Actually there was a soup included - The overly salty Cream of mushroom soup and the overly sweet Cream of Onion. Beer is priced much more expensive than any bar/pub you can find in Greentown. Their tower of Tiger is RM115 if I'm not mistaken. The happy hour of 5+1 "pints" of choice of beer is RM80 - making it an average of RM13 per "pint". Well, its really a pint for my Heineken, but the same cannot be said for the Kilkenny as it's not a full pint.

We left around 10pm. The al fresco area is almost half full. That's around 20 tables occupied at an estimation. The indoor lounge has only 2-3 tables. Nobody bothered to thank us or gave us any acknowledgement when we left. Well, same management as Secret Garden, where I previously had a sour dining experience from the poor service and food. I wouldn't want to return here again, though the view and breeze is very soothing and relaxing for a chill out night.

As the CEO (Chief Entertainment Officer) of the group - I hereby wish my "Financial Controller" Rachel all the best in her future undertaking. Now, there are 4 people to vote for our next outing place, some prefer Bricks And Barrel, some neutral but me the CEO normally calls for the veto power - to have it at Eurohouse, still my favourite spot to chill out. =)