Good to the last drop…

If you may recall, I did not quite like the Sibu Foochow-style sio bee that I had here the other day and frankly, I would say that really good ones are few and far between – not that easy  to find these days. Some may be mostly vegetable inside – cabbage or sengkuang/mangkuang…or some would be mostly flour and I think the worst would be those mushy ones. They probably use a whole lot of fatty meat to make them or horror of horrors – I hear that they get the cheap meat from the “unwanted” parts of the animal from the butcher.

Anyway, the people at this place shared a photograph of their sio bee on Facebook and of course, I made a beeline to the place to give them a try. There is a partition now with a sliding door so you have a choice between sitting in air-conditioned comfort inside or dining al fresco in the outer portion of the place. The coffee was really very good!!! I had the kopi-o-peng…

…and I certainly was not disappointed. Well, for RM2.50 a glass, it has got to be good, right? LOL!!!

They made the sio bee themselves, they said…

…and I would say that I was not disappointed with what I had as well. There was just the right amount of meat inside – I could taste the texture…and there was not too much of it…

Our Sibu Foochow-style sio bee is not meant to be all meat – there has to be a perfect balance between that and the other ingredients that go into the making of the dumpling and I would say they have managed to achieve that pretty well.

They are selling them in a set of 6 at RM5.00 so that would work out to less than 85 sen each. Considering that the 70 sen ones that I had were so disappointing, I would say these aren’t expensive at all and are value for money. They also have what they call the deep fried sio bee…

…but I think it looked like they were lightly pan-fried like what they do with gyozas. Personally, I prefer the traditional steamed ones but my daughter loves these – well, she loves gyozas too or anything fried, for that matter.

Melissa also had their century egg porridge (RM5.80)…

…which was actually meat porridge with the condiments on top. She liked it very much and needless to say, it would be a whole lot better than what I had here – theirs is plain porridge so after you have eaten everything on top, you will be stuck with a huge bowl of bland, tasteless gruel. That one time I had that there, I did not even finish half the bowl.

Well, that morning when we dropped by here, I decided to order their Foochow mee sua (RM8.80) for myself…

It is RM9.80 at that other place and between the two, I would say that not only is this one RM1.00 cheaper but it tastes a whole lot nicer. Other than that, they give you some extra traditional Foochow red wine to add to the soup yourself if you so desire.

I did think it was a tad too oily though…

…but with the chicken from the market these days, even if you get rid of all the skin and the visible fat (and end up with something looking quite unappealing), you will still find what you cook to be a bit too oily for your liking. At home, I would use my fat separator to get rid of the excess oil.

Still, that did not stop me from enjoying it…

…and I would say that it was really good to the last drop! Seeing is believing, eh? LOL!!!