It is called chap fan in Chinese (Cantonese, if I’m not mistaken) and nasi campur in Malay and they both mean the same – mixed rice. There have been other names used at those Chinese chap fan stalls such as economic rice or economy rice – which I feel would not be the right name for it if what they mean is that it is cheap and one can save money eating this for one’s meals and should be called economical instead like what I have mentioned before in this post a long time ago. Some will call it fast food which I would think is quite appropriate except at some very popular ones where you would need to queue up for a long time to get what you want, in which case it would not be exactly fast at all.
The mamaks (Indian muslims) have their nasi kandar shops and if you do not know what that name means, I googled and managed to stumble upon this piece of information:
‘Nasi’ means rice in Malay while ‘Kandar’ refers to a formidable stick that is slung across one’s shoulder to carry heavy objects securely hung on both ends of the stick.
from this website. But of course, there have been a lot of complaints that at times, after picking our choices and sitting down to eat it all up, we may feel the pinch when it is time to pay the bill as at times, it may be somewhat expensive and the total may go way beyond RM10.00 depending on what we have – for instance, I paid a whooping RM11.00 for what I had here.
Thankfully, we can have something similar here for a lot less…like what I had the other day…
…at a Malay/Melanau Muslim place here in Sibu…
For the lamb curry, the baby sotong (squids), the big chunk of chicken liver and the sambal emplam and the rice, I only had to pay RM5.50. At some places, they may have fixed prices starting from say, RM3.00. depending on what you take – 3 veg…or 1 meat and 2 veg…or 2 meat and 1 veg but I had 3 meat and 1 veg in my combination.
I like eating at some of these nasi campur places more than the chap fan ones as usually they do not cook so much and it would taste much better – something like our own home-cooked dishes. There was even dabai (black olives) that day…
…but we have had too much of the fruit this year and I guessed I have had more than enough, thank you.
Melissa had a thosai…
– I think this is about the only place in town where one can have that. I hear there’s another one down the road but I was told that they only sell roti canai the whole day and one can only have thosai at around 4.00 p.m. in the evening. Anyway, the ones here are nice and Melissa loves them – in fact, she prefers them to the ones she had in Sungai Petani, Kedah.
My missus had their mee mamak…
…and it was nice too.
The total, inclusive of drinks, came up to only RM14.00. I would say that’s pretty reasonable, don’t you think?
...STILL CRAZY AFTER ALL THESE YEARS! 