Passion is Thy Name!

Some weeks ago, a friend made my day when she came to me with this news :

"Hey Eleen, I read your post on cannelloni and I’ve got great news for ya. I know of a place in Penang that serves a pretty mean dish of cannelloni. Go try it out!"
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So I made Sweetheart drive through Chulia Street on gym nights (coz those are the nights we go downtown on weeknights). It took us a few drives up and down the street to find it though. The restaurant is rather inconspicuous and one has to really look out for it to locate it. If you are driving from Penang Road turning left into Chulia Street, the restaurant is on your left.
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Tonight, I decided to check out this place and boy, was I in for a super surprise! A good kinda surprise, that is. Thanks to Rosalind, I got to enjoy a good Italian (and inexpensive) meal right in the middle of Penang’s old town. 
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The thing I love most about it is the rustic, old Penang-feel one gets upon stepping foot into the place. It has a grand total of 7 or 8 small tables (maybe 10 at the most). Here’s a picture of my dinner mates, Em & Dan, waiting hungrily for dinner to be served. Wait time was decent. We were just super hungry when we got there.

Gigantic menu displayed outside the restaurant.

Upon scanning the menu, I couldn’t find my cannelloni dish! My heart dropped to my feet and immediate thought in my head was "Gotta tell Rosalind the bad news that they took cannelloni off the menu already". Then, at a corner of the place, I saw this :

Yipppeee!! They have cannelloni! My dinner mates were like "It better be good if you are THIS excited about it!".
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So, here are our choices for dinner tonight.

• Starter : Focaccia bread with pesto dip (3 slices). Priced @ RM6. Em went over the hill with this!
• Communal : Louisiana Pizza (salami, tomato, onion, olives, tabasco sauce). Priced @ RM14. We asked for extra mushroom topping. That was an additional RM3. Its taste? Crisply Italianny!
• Main # 1 : What else? Cannelloni! Priced @ RM18, it was really good. The one I had at Mizi’s in New World Park pales in comparison to this (Mizi’s burnt their cannelloni dish!).
• Main # 2 : Homemade squid-ink pasta in tomato sauce. Erm…don’t know how much this one cost as it’s not on the menu and was a today’s-special. My experiences with squid-ink pasta had always been with white sauce and this was my first try with tomato sauce. The verdict…YUMMY! Love the combination of black olives and squid in the dish.
• Main # 3 : Truz. This is a *really* unique pasta dish. According to the friendly server, this was the brainchild of the chef’s Australian friend. What’s in it? Cajun spiced chicken, cream sauce and bananas! Yes, I thought the combination of pasta and bananas would be weird but surprisingly, it was really good! Dan loved it to bits. Priced @ RM13.
• Dessert : Crème brûlée. This French dish’s good! Not too sweet but in my humble opinion, will be yummier if the custard is more chilled. Em loved it though. Price is unknown coz it’s not on the menu and silly us didn’t check its price when the bill came.
• Drinks : Their fruit juice rocks! It’s pure juice with no sugar syrup or added water. Need a good thirst quencher? Order their orange-apple-pineapple juice. The combination is out of this world!

Total cost : RM99.50
Pretty inexpensive considering we ordered so much food AND drinks (between us, we had 7 drinks!) for just the 3 of us.

*Note to self*
Must remember to turn on phone cam’s night mode to take better shots. Not too happy with these grainy pics.
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Information on ECCO Cafe :
Location - 402, Chulia Street, Georgetown, Penang
Opening hours - 1100 hrs to 1400 hrs (for brunch & lunch), 1800 hrs to 2030 hrs (for dinner)
Opening days - Everyday except Sundays
Contact # - (04) 262 3178
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At the end of the night, we requested to speak to the chef to pay him our compliments and found the man to be a really nice guy. None of those haughty chef attitude. Good looking too!
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Finally…No, I am not getting paid or bribed by the owner for this post. Being a foodie, I just love good food and love sharing food discoveries with my friends. :))) Also, I’ve always appreciated good customer service and this place definitely measures up.
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Will I go back for more? You bet!
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Next time, I’m gonna order the pumpkin soup (the table next to ours ordered it and it looks…what else, GOOD!). I got so excited on discovering the cannelloni that I forgot to order soup. Duhh…