Tea Time at Eté Cafe, Penang

6th July 2012. Written by Xin Li.
Penang, Malaysia.
Ete Café has quite a reputation in Penang. Ran by a Taiwanese couple, Chiang Tsung-Hsun and his wife, Venessa, it is perhaps the Kki and Flor equivalent in Georgetown and when we were there the lady who served us was asking if we found Ete Café through through blogs and magazines.

First of all Ete Café is very small with barely room for 12 people and there is no air conditioning (which is like a death sentence to many of my air-con dependent friends). But that barely bother me, partly because it was such a beautiful tiny café filled with vintage décor and the plates or tea cups used has intricate details like floral patterns or Chinese motifs.

Like Kki or Black Sheep Café, instead of variety, the café goes for quality with a few of its signature cakes. Firstly we had the Sea Salted Caramel and White Chocolate Mousse Cake (10 RM), a rather rich and creamy cake but not too sweet, the mousse itself was quite smooth and the white chocolate is not very apparent (but it probably gave it a bit of an oily texture) and you could easily taste the mellow caramel which has a taste reminiscent of coffee. The salted caramel could have been slightly saltier though. Nonetheless, it a very nice classic cake, unsurprisingly it is one of the most popular cakes compared to say the Ete’s Love

Ete’s Love (8 RM) is similar to Kki’s Kinabaru, it was made with high quality mango and passionfruit preserve sourced from France. Venessa explains that the café tries to keep the flavours as close as possible to their French counterparts by using imported ingredients such as cream from France on top of providing cakes made with quality ingredients. I am not exactly a fan of Ete’s Love (neither was I a fan of Kki’s Kinabaru). However, texturewise, I felt that Ete’s Love is not as refined as Kki’s.

And then there was the Mont Blanc (12 RM) another classic made with Chestnut puree imported from France. The Mont Blanc's puree here has a rougher and slight grainy texture but flavourwise, it was stronger and richer compared to Kki’s Mont Blanc.An extremely nutty Mont Blanc in my opinion. Quite delightful.

Lastly we had an assortment of Macarons (3 for 10 RM). My friend commented it wasn’t as nice as Canele’s. I haven’t tried Canele’s hence I won’t know but while the flavours were rich in general, I find the macarons to be slightly oily and sticky for my taste. On the topic of macarons, Venessa mentioned that she liked the macarons of Laduree more than Pierre Herme’s.

One of my favourite items at the café definitely got to be its Iced Berry Tea, a sweet, cooling and fragrant fruity tea. The tea itself was very fragrant and unlike some renditions of a berry tea, I like that the flavour of the tea did not get masked by the berries, this was just right, the sweetness (and right amount of sourness of the berries and the fragrance from the tea were all there.. This is the perfect summer drink. We were told that the café sourced its tea from Taiwan.

Eté Cafe
Around 134 Lebuh Carnarvon
Georgetown, Pulau Pinang, Malaysia
Opposite the police station (a blue building)