Last time…

I guess this would be the very last time that I would be invited to the end-of-year dinner for the staff of the tuition centre here that I was attached to. It was held last Sunday at this restaurant that I had just gone to a few weeks ago…and I was delighted that this time around, they had flowers on the table…

Never mind that they were not fresh, natural flowers – at least, they were nice and tastefully arranged, unlike the horrible plastic ones that they had here. I also loved the ethnic handwoven basket that they used to hold the flowers…

…for that special local touch. Nice, very nice indeed!

Of course, we had the must-have, the specialty of the house – their lokan…

…that we also had on my previous visit and once again, we had the Melanau delicacy, the umai…

…and this time around, I made sure that I took a really nice photo of this dish that I liked a lot – the fried paku (jungle fern) in santan (coconut milk)…

The other day, the photograph came out blur so I was not able to share it in my post. If I’m not mistaken, it is actually paku fried with very nice sambal hay bee (dried prawns) and they added just a little bit of santan…so it is not as diluted as masak lemak. Perhaps we can safely say that it is a drier version of it and a nicer one at that.

We also had the salad prawns…

…which were, to me, nothing to shout about. After all, I don’t see anything great about boiled prawns served with some fruits and salad dressing/mayo and I can think of many more impressive ways to cook and serve the prawns.

They could not get hold of any udang galah (giant freshwater prawns) or what we call in Hokkien, tua thow hay (big headed prawns) that day for the special assam prawns that I had on my last visit so we had the claypot seafood instead…

…and I must say that I really enjoyed it a lot! With all the seafood in it, the soup was so very sweet and absolutely delightful.

But the highlight of the evening was their roast lamb…

Very nicely done – very tender, not drowned by all kinds of stuff…and hardly any lamb smell. Hmmmm…I wonder if they do takeaways – maybe I can order from there for my Christmas dinner this year as it certainly would be a lot cheaper than ordering from the classier hotels and a lot less trouble than having to do it myself.

There was another dish of green vegetables…and a fruit platter and all in all, I would say that the dinner was really good. It was not as heavy as those 8-course banquets at some Chinese restaurant and I would not feel so bloated like I was about to burst at the seams and there was no danger of an overdose of msg as well…and since everything was served almost simultaneously, it did not drag on and on to the extent of becoming boring. The best part, of course, was the fact that it was free… LOL!!!