Back here again for Sunday lunch today, this time I brought along a “ham yue fa laam pou” (pork belly with salted fish, stewed in a claypot) gourmet expert to come & try the rendition here with me. I tasted the dish myself and could not for the life of me tell the difference between this one and the ones I’d tried in other restaurants. The dish - flavoured with dark and light soy sauce, oyster sauce, dried chilis, scallions, Shaoxing wine, onions and pungent salted fish - was too robust for my palate to discern any subtle variations.
Imagine my surprise just now, when my expert taster guest declared the version here to be the best he’d ever had - even better than his erstwhile favourite version! I’m going to take his word for it. 
My favourite item here is the bitter-gourd in salted duck’s egg-yolk here: crisp, salty, slightly sweet and bitter-ish - a perfect balance of flavours and textures which the chef here got right each & every occasion I was here.
The piece de resistance for our lunch today was the sōngshǔ guì yú (squirrel-shaped mandarin fish) which I last had at Sydney’s Beijing Impressions last week. The whole fried fish here at Great Delight Kitchen had terrific textures - crisp on the outside, beautifully moist inside. But, taste-wise, it paled significantly, compared to the more authentic flavours I had at Beijing Impressions last week where, I suspect, the chef was Beijing-Chinese, whereas the chef here at Great Delight Kitchen is obviously Penang-Chinese, whose cooking has been localised to suit the Penang palate.
It’s still very good, just not like the ones I’d tasted in Shanghai or elsewhere in China.
The last dish was a simple stir-fry of baby bok choy with bacon & garlic.
This place is still my current favourite spot for a good restaurant-style Chinese meal in Penang.
