Lebuh Chulia, Georgetown, Penang

We’re back in Penang again and were searching the Internet to see if we could find any more little gems like the Ecco café, which we discovered by chance in Lebuh Chulia on our last visit to Georgetown.

Chulia Street is a great place to find good quality inexpensive meals and food. On our previous visit we had already visited and recommended Ecco with its emphasis on home-made Italian food, as well as its legendary banana and cheese pizzas.

I found a website with lots of good information about eating places in Penang. In particular we wanted to find another bakery as an alternative to the E&O, where we’d been buying our bread up until now. CK Lam’s blog what2seeonline was useful and from there we found just what we wanted – the Rainforest Bakery on Chulia Street.

The bakery sells a range of tasty breads and cakes (no surprise there!) as well as providing a café which sells drinks and a variety of snacks and sandwiches.

This was a lucky find for us as we’d intended to go to Ecco for breakfast – a rare occasion for us! Unfortunately we’d forgotten that Ecco is only open for brunch, lunch, and dinner, so it was closed when we got there. No worries, we ate some tasty sandwiches at the Rainforest Bakery instead. And very filling they were too – the toasted cheese and tomato open sandwich I ordered came as two generous slices of wholemeal bread, with tasty tomato and nicely melted cheese. It was a little odd that the bread itself hadn’t apparently been toasted, but no matter. Mr Not Delia enjoyed his cheese and onion baguette sandwich too, although he had a bit of difficulty explaining what he wanted – the menu has tuna, cheese and onion, and bacon, cheese and onion, but not simply cheese and onion, so our friendly waitress was a little confused…

We returned to Ecco later in the day for a pit-stop on our way back from the shops at Prangin Mall. I tried their banana lassi this time – it’s like a milk shake but made with yoghurt rather then milk. And very tasty it was too – not too sweet, like some fruit drinks.

By the way, Ecco’s opening hours are:
Mon-Sat: 1130-1430 and 1800-2230
Sun: closed

So there are two recommendations for you to try next time you’re in Georgetown.

We’re off to the new Irish bar in Tanjung Tokong, Shenanigans, next – so look out for a review of that very soon.