History (2)…

Nope, this isn’t going to be a tribute to the late MJ who passed away on the 25th of June a year ago. Gee! How time flies!

Actually, in this post, you will get to learn a bit about the history of kompia…

…dating back to 1563 in the Fujian Province in China. Interesting, eh?

Well, you can get to see this in the former Applebee Bakery, now renamed the KomPia Tiam…

I do not recall seeing all these the last two times I dropped by the place and on the earlier occasion, I even put up a post on it.

My! My! Don’t you think the logo looks familiar?

Well, as they say, anything you can do, I can do better. LOL!!!

In case you still don’t know, this is a kompia…

…a bagel-like unleavened bread baked while stuck to the sides of a charcoal oven. It tastes quite bland actually, a little salty and crusty on the top with its own special fragrance. I bought a bagful for my friends at a course once…and there was this lady from Miri who commented that she could not understand why it was so tasteless…but she could not stop eating and had one after another – in the end, she placed an order for RM10 worth of kompia to take back and share with her family and friends.

In my earlier post, I mentioned that the humble kompia had undergone some kind of upgrading and you can now buy them with all kinds of filling…

These are the lamb curry and beef masak hitam. I had the beef rendang and the chicken mayo the other time and I thought they were very good. The lamb curry was just so-so…and Clare did not like biting into the spices in the masak hitam. By the way, the more you buy, the cheaper it gets – 2 for RM2.00, 4 for RM3.00 and 6 for RM4.00.

We also tried the chu-nu-miang…

…the sweeter version of the kompia – the cheese topping and the chicken floss. The girl at the counter told me previously that the chicken floss was their best seller…but I did not really like it…

Personally, I felt that the saltiness of the chicken floss did not blend in too well with the sweetness of the chu-nu-miang. The one with the cheese was very nice though…

…but I still think my favourite is the Nestum topping that I really liked when I tried it the last time.

There are a lot of other toppings to choose from, some of which are really bright and colourful and very attractive – like these, for instance…

…but I do not think they would tickle my fancy – most possibly a bit too sweet for my liking.

Anyway, as they say, one man’s meat is another man’s poison…so you can just hop over there and try them yourself. A word of caution though – if you are eating them there, do take a table at the far end because when they start baking the kompia, it can get a little bit too hot for comfort!