Waiting in line…

It really amazes me how people are willing to wait in line for a place in a cafe or restaurant to eat. No matter how good the food may be, I would just go elsewhere and settle for something that may be just as nice or at times, even better. There is one restaurant here that is always so crowded and I hear that even if you can get a table, while you are eating, there will be people standing around waiting for you to finish so they can grab your table and in the meantime, they will be watching you eat like you’re some animals in the zoo. Well, you would never catch me there ever, that’s for sure.

I remember that one time at the restaurant in Malacca when we had to go in to write down our names and right after that, we were shooed outside and made to wait by the roadside till it was our turn and they would call us back inside to eat. Actually, I wanted to leave and go some place else already but my friend, Mandy, said that since we were there already, we might as well just wait…and that was what we did (and I would not say that I was overwhelmed by what we had there that day) but I don’t think I would ever want to do anything of the sort again.

That was why when we went to this place the other night for dinner, we decided to go elsewhere instead. I went there at least twice before for lunch but lately, it no longer opens in the daytime – only for dinner at night and I’ve been told that they open quite early, at around 5.30 p.m. We got there before 6.00 p.m. but the place was packed and there were a number of people standing around the pavement and in the parking lot…waiting. If they think I would join the crowd and do the same, they’d better think again.

So in the end, we adjourned to this place but nobody wanted the western dishes available at one of the stalls there. My daughter had the Penang har mee (prawn noodles) which I liked a lot and had had a number of times before and she enjoyed it tremendously. My missus had the nasi ayam penyet (cobbled chicken rice) while I decided to try the bak kut teh noodles (RM5.00)…

…from one of the other stalls in that coffee shop.

The soup was very tasty, fragrant with the herbal taste but not overly strong and they used what people call the Emperor noodles (huang ti mien). I would say it was really very compatible with the bak kut teh soup, much nicer than the instant noodle-like ones that they use elsewhere or our local yellow noodles.

I enjoyed it very much and I certainly would not mind having that again. Unfortunately, there were only two chunks of meat – I did wish they had given more and maybe jacked up the price by a ringgit or so.

On another day in the morning, I took my daughter here to try the very nice bitter gourd mihun that I enjoyed very much on one of my earlier visits. She liked it a lot but the serving was a bit too huge for her to finish – she’s not really a big eater like the father, you see. My missus tried the kampua noodles (RM2.30)…

…which is cheaper than most other places in town but although it wasn’t too bad, I thought it was a little bit too starchy for my liking.

I had the tom yam goong, RM4.00 or was it RM4.50, I can’t remember exactly now…

…or the white tom yam by virtue of the santan (coconut milk added.

It was very nice – spicy enough and sour, perhaps a little bit too sour for me but on the whole, I quite enjoyed it. They had minced meat, fish slices, meat balls and black fungus, tomatoes in it…

…and if you order the RM6.50 bowl of the same, you would get some prawns.

I certainly would prefer to go to such less overcrowded places where I would not have to wait in line and other than that, it would not be so unbearably noisy and at times, even hot and stuffy so much so that one’s appetite would be absolutely ruined…but I guess, unlike me, many actually do not mind at all.