Smoky Jack – Good for photos, taste not that great

Smoky Jack is a non-halal outlet.

I went to Smoky Jack along Penang Road where the Little Penang market is located with a lot of mixed feelings. Some say good, some complained it is dead lousy. My #2 son told me his friend who is the college mate of my #1 son who is studying to be a professional chef said the place is not bad. So, that’s why I went eventhough blogger Cariso didn’t have a very good experience.

We were the first customer so we have no problems of waiting for our meals or lousy service because the serving staffs were practically beating flies. I love the spooky, Halloween style of deco. There are lots of rusty, heavy metal barrels, right down to the toilet doors.

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Yesterday was a beautiful day with nice sunset on a rainy day. So, the weather and the ambience probably made the food tastes better.

We ordered one cheesy fries with bacon bits. We are kind of disappointed that the cheese is just the normal commercially produced sliced cheddar cheese torn and melted on fries. However, the fries soon disappeared because we were awfully hungry as that’s our lunch/dinner.

The other grouse is the stingy portion of bread and butter. They gave us two cute, tiny, sweet dinner roll just like KFC ones plus three very pretty looking piped butter. Well, that’s the problem with locally operated restaurants. They are just sooo stingy with 50 sen buns. This is unlike the American run restaurants where they loaded you with nice, handmade breads and rolls.

My youngest boy had the grilled chicken breast with creamy sauce and spaghetti. Taste is not bad, with lots of basil leaves and really creamy.

Another dish we had was the Big Daddy something which is a mixed grill platter of roast chicken, tenderloin and pork ribs. The tenderloin is done nicely, i.e. medium rare. The roast chicken is tasteless and we had to doggie bag the chicken home. Meanwhile, the pork ribs are rather ‘rough’. I am not sure why the meat is so fibrous. Old pig eh? Normally, I roast my own pork ribs at home, using aluminium foil to wrap and slow roast for about 1 hours at 160 deg celcius and my pork ribs are tender and soft.

My #3 son called a Jack Burger and only ate 1/4 of it. So, hubby and I had to finish the pasta, burger and part of the meat platter.

Overall, if you like taking photos, Smoky Jack is the place for you. However, I find it rather irritating when too many shutterbugs started to snap photos, here, there, everywhere. A DSLR is like a status symbol now and every one is talking White Balance and it gets a bit pretentious, you know?

Price wise, the foods are not too expensive. The pasta is RM22 and the big platter of meat is RM65. We had mushroom soup at RM6 and it is not bad. However, their soup of the day, the cream of asparagus is so fakey. It is like drinking milk mixed with flour.

Smoky Jack is the kind of place where I will go once to find out what they offer and then, not again.