Breathless…

In my previous post, I mentioned that a cousin of mine was in town and I took her here for dinner as she insisted on having the jelly pisang – a drink that she used to enjoy at that Ban Chuan coffee shop here in Sibu when she was still very young and had not had since.

Well, she had her wish granted even though it was not exactly like what we had way back then – here, they would substitute the shaved ice with vanilla ice cream (RM7.00). Of course, it is also very nice this way but some of us would tend to cling to the memories of what we had in the good ol’ days gone by.

I tried the longhouse chicken (RM16.00) that night…

…which was supposed to be something like ayam pansuh except that it was not cooked in bamboo. We felt that it had the taste but in our opinion, it was way too mild. We would prefer it to be stronger and other than all that they already had in it, they could have added some more things that we would find in the ethnic delicacy – things like daun bungkang, tapioca leaves, daun kunyit (tumeric leaf – the Bidayuhs would have that in their pansuh) and so on. Other than that, we were quite put off by the fact that they added a bit of cornflour to thicken the sweet, natural juices from the chicken plus all the ingredients used. We did tell the boss all this so hopefully, the next time around, it would be more to our satisfaction.

They did tell me that it was just meat cooked in tomato sauce so all this while, I did not bother to order their Indian red curry chicken (RM16.00)…

…to try but that night, I did. True enough, it was meat in tomato sauce and not what I had expected – something like ayam masak merah (red-cooked chicken). The saving grace was that it was very spicy and that made it taste pretty good as a whole. The gravy went very well with the rice. For this dish, you can have the option of either chicken or beef.

The boss gave me this dish of guang ming duck to try…

…on the house. It had a lot of the chopped daun kesum (Vietnamese coriander/mint) on top and that, I would say, is an acquired taste. Those who are not accustomed to eating such herbs and leaves may be put off by that and I must say that I thought it had a very peculiar taste at the start but as I went on eating, it sort of grew on me and I began to like it more and more. But I would think that they should not add cornflour to thicken the gravy in this dish as well – something that is very common in Chinese cooking.

We also had the guava salad (RM7.00)..and my cousin loved the mushroom roll (RM8.00) a lot but what took her breath away and rendered her absolutely breathless was the otak-otak (RM13.00). She instantly placed orders for a few to be wrapped up nicely so she could take them home with her when she went back the following day.

All in all, she enjoyed the dinner and would definitely love to drop by this cafe again if ever she had the opportunity to come to Sibu again.