Just for a day…

The morning my friend, Ivan, arrived in Sibu, we stopped by here for the kampua noodles…

I ordered the pian sip- kampua combo so we got the meat dumplings instead of those few thin slices of boiled meat. I also ordered the RM3.00 special instead of the usual RM2.30-2.50, requesting for extra dumplings and this was what we got. Incidentally, this is Huai Bin‘s favourite in town but Ivan said that he liked the noodles at this other place more but he felt that the pian sip here was nicer and I would concur. That other place never had nice pian sip in the past but lately, they have improved somewhat but theirs are definitely not the best in town.

I also ordered the traditional Foochow mee sua (thread/string noodles)…

…to share for longevity and prosperity. This was from another stall in that same coffee shop and though it was quite nice, we felt it was a bit oily and could do with a little more of the traditional Foochow red wine. One thing’s for sure, if given a choice, I would definitely head elsewhere or cook my own at home.

For our drinks, Ivan had the 3-layer teh-c peng special while I had my usual kopi-o peng…

Among some other things, Ivan brought us this…

– the celebrated pomelo from Ipoh, this large ancestor of the grapefruit that signifies abundance, as the Chinese word for pomelo sounds like the word for “to have.”

That same day, I noticed that our pussy willows were blooming…

My missus had stuck some stems into a pot and used them for decoration for the festive season and I had noticed earlier that they were sprouting leaves and now the buds were flowering. Well, if these are indications of a forthcoming windfall, that has yet to happen…unfortunately. LOL!!!

Well, Ivan left the following day but we did manage to drop by here for lunch first and of course, we had to have the midin (wild jungle fern) fried with belacan (dried prawn paste)…

Actually when we were placing our orders, we were informed that they had run out of midin (they did not have any either at the restaurant where we went for dinner the previous night) but a few minutes later, the waitress came back and said that the midin had been delivered and we could change our order if we wanted…and we did. What I suspected was that the supply was dwindling due to the heavy demand over the Chinese New Year festive season when every Tom, Dick or Harry would be home for the celebration…and probably, they were reserving whatever they had for regular patrons and when the lady boss realised that it was me in the corner, she sent the waitress back to our table to tell us that we could have midin, after all.

Melissa wanted the creamy butter prawns again…

…and this time around, they certainly seemed very generous with the rich thick gravy. Yum! Yum!

I ordered their salted egg pork ribs to try…

…and it was good. I would not mind having that again sometimes.

We never had this before either- their sea cucumber fried with egg…

Long ago, they used sharks’ fins but they do not do that now and at one time, they used tung hoon (glass noodles) in place of the offensive stuff. All of us loved this very much – it certainly was pretty good, I would say.

We had the Foochow-style tofu soup as well – the one they cook with minced meat and canned oysters and Ivan loved it a lot – he said it tasted like sharks’ fins soup and he actually liked the food here more, compared to what we had for dinner the night before.

Well, not long after lunch, I sent him back to the airport to catch his flight home. Thank you so much, Ivan, for everything and especially for taking the trouble to come by just to extend your Happy Chinese New Year greetings. It certainly was very nice and sweet of you and here’s hoping that you will have a wonderfully awesome Year of the $$$$$$$$nake ahead too!