Saturday…

Another ex-student of mine, Daniel, a doctor-to-be as well, contacted me one morning to invite me out for breakfast. He’s presently home for the summer holidays from Scotland in the UK, Aberdeen, if I remember correctly. However, I was busy that morning…with all the cleaning and clearing and the “restoration works” that I’ve been doing at my house so we were only able to make it on Saturday morning.

We went to this place and of course, I had their paos – the lau sar pao and their char siew pao…

I reckon theirs are pretty good and can rival any other place in town and at RM10.00 for 3 laus (storeys/baskets) with 3 buns in each, I would think they’re really very cheap.

We also had their har kau (prawn dumpling) and they’re not bad, I think – I do not recall them having that before…and we also had two of their meat dumplings but I avoided their siew mai. I wouldn’t know if they have improved on it but I remember that theirs used to be very coarse – one would feel the texture of the minced meat in them. Other than those, I decided to try their yam puffs…

…and I thought they were pretty good – not the best that I have had but they were good enough, definitely.

Daniel was in my English Language tuition class and also among the group of students that I had for English Literature and I’m proud to say that he scored distinctions in both. It certainly was nice to meet him again and we had a great time catching up with things that had been going on in our lives over the past few years that we had not got to meet each other.

ah^kam_koko’ was in town for the weekend as well and he asked me out for dinner. I took him here to try the crispy Filipino  pata…

…more commonly known around these parts as the Philippine pork leg.

It was quite good – a bit dry or should I say, not as juicy as I would have loved it to be…but it was tender enough for a toothless old man like me and I loved the flavours that one could taste in it – something like cinnamon or five-spice powder and stuff like that…and I loved the dip that came with it…

ah^kam_koko’ said that he liked the one he had at that place where I went for dim sum in the morning with Daniel – juicier, more tender and also cheaper. Hmmmm…it certainly looks like I will have to drop by there to give it a try one of these days then.

And indeed, “cheap” would be the last word that I would use to describe the dinner. Together with this plate of fried bitter gourd with century egg…

…plus rice and drinks (and we only had iced plain water & Chinese tea), the bill came up to over RM40.00. I guess the chunk of it went to that huge pork leg but still, I would not think it was cheap. Of course, I do understand that the prices of things have rocketted sky high lately so if that is the current price range, I certainly would not want to order it again…unless there are more than just the two of us – 4 or 5 perhaps.

Anyway, thanks for the dinner, ah^kam_koko’. The next time you come downtown, we’ll go some place to eat again…and it will be my treat next round, ok?