Sailing…

Nope! We were not anywhere near the beach nor the sea, just at this very new food outlet in town named Ark, located at the Esplanade along the mighty Rejang River. The owner is somebody somewhat religiously-inclined and his other restaurant is Manna at Wisma Sanyan. Bongkersz was in town yesterday, so I took him there for lunch. Outside, it does not look like anything to shout about…

…but inside, it is a different story altogether with its unique design and relatively classy ambience.

There seems to be a few sections on the ground floor and this is one of them. The whole place appears like it is not air-conditioned but apart from being environment-friendly, the fans plus the breeze bringing in the fresh air from the river make it quite comfortably pleasant and cool. The interior design is impressive. Formerly London Cafe and later a rather shabby Chinese restaurant, the renovations included some elaborate extensions around an old tree that they had circled with a fish pond with Japanese koi swimming around freely…

There is the staircase to the upper level but I did not bother to go and have a peek at what is upstairs.

For one thing though, the service needs a lot of improvement. We were there for a good 10 minutes or so and yet nobody came to serve us. When we spotted one of the staff, we had to wave frantically to get his attention before he came to show us the menu. There are a lot of choices – both local and western and we decided to try the former and ordered the lamb curry…

I liked it very much and no, they did not use A1 instant curry mix! LOL! It was more expensive (RM12) than chicken (RM10), but lamb is definitely more expensive in Sibu. The meat was nice and tender and the gravy was rich enough and very tasty. Thumbs up also for the ladies’ fingers with belacan (prawn paste) that we had… 

…but the bitter gourd with beef, though good enough, was not as nice as Y2K’s or Ruby’s bitter gourd with salted eggs.

All that with rice…..

…came up to RM33.00, inclusive of drinks. Very reasonably cheap, I would say, for the fine dining experience at a much more sophisticated place than some of my usual haunts. 

Well, Bongkersz, do come to Sibu again (or anybody else who would care to drop by) and we will go sailing again…..