My missus and I went to Kuching on Thursday, 16th September…but the actual day for the wedding was two days later, Saturday the 18th. However, there was a pot-luck get-together for members of the family on Friday night, 17th – the night before the wedding and all those who were around already by then were invited to the reunion.
Well, we had our own reunion of sorts that very morning ourselves – a prequel to the real event when around 10 or so of us gathered at this place…
…for brunch. It seems that there is a stall there that is popular for all the Foochow favourites. Imagine me going all the way to Kuching to eat those stuff that we can find in abundance in Sibu…but with all that Foochow blood coursing through everybody’s veins, I guess everyone was in favour of having those…especially the ones from other places where it would not be possible to have the same or at least, not what is decently good enough for the likes of us.
I had the Foochow fried noodles (wet/with gravy)…
…and it was really good – just as good as at any nice place that I can find in Sibu or perhaps, even better. I think that costs RM4.00 or to the most, RM4.50…but considering the amount and all those ingredients, I definitely would consider it a steal – compared to the RM2.80/RM3.00 ones in Sibu…with the few miserable tiny bits of meat and chai hua (green leafy veg).
Somebody also ordered the soup variety…
…for which they usually fry the noodles first before adding the soup and cooking it altogether, hence the name zhar-chu mee (fried soup noodles). I did not try it but they said it was good.
I did sample the kampua noodles though…
…but despite the fact that it looked pretty good, I think if you want better kampua, you will have to go to Sibu – and even in Sibu, not all are nice. One would need to know where the better stalls are.
I did not try the dianpianngu either…
…as I’m not a fan of the stuff and neither am I crazy over zhao cai hung ngang (big mihun or rice noodles in preserved vegetable soup)…
…so I did not taste it as well. My missus did and she said that the latter was pretty good (sour enough) but not the dianpianngu, compared to the original one that we have in Sibu.
I had a bit of the Foochow mee sua (thread/string longevity noodles) in chicken soup cooked with ginger and traditional red wine…
…and I would not hesitate to give this my two thumbs up! I missed the usual hard-boiled egg that would come with the mee sua though; I think whoever ordered it chose not to have it as some of them are quite health-conscious…unlike me! LOL!!! This cost RM5.00 a bowl, so it is slightly more expensive than Sibu where we can usually get that for RM4.00-4.50.
That was indeed a delightful brunch and everyone was full of praises for the Foochow fare – now available at this place in Kuching.
That night, a whole lot of us showed up at the gathering and needless to say, there were lots of good food…and booze. The lights were somewhat too dim to allow any nice photographs to be taken unless I used the flash…which I did, and I only managed to take a photo of these sambal udang galah (freshwater prawns) that an auntie of mine brought all the way from Sibu…
I don’t like the colour when using flash and did not use it for the other dishes. Thus, they did not turn out very nice, so I have decided not to include them in this post.
Well, this is one thing good about having a wedding in the family – it provides an opportunity for members of the family to come together and meet one another – especially those who have relocated themselves to other parts of the globe and are living far away…and also for the younger ones to get to know who’s who…especially those whom they have never seen or heard of before in their lives. Imagine them passing by one another in the street and they do not even know they’re blood relations…and hasn’t it been said that blood is thicker than water? Sad, isn’t it?
...STILL CRAZY AFTER ALL THESE YEARS! 