A friend…

She’s my daughter’s friend – an English teacher from the same overseas programme but from another institute/university, not the same ones as my daughter’s. She’s not from Sibu either and she has been posted to teach at a school in one of the towns upriver and since she would be coming for the same course/briefing that I mentioned in an earlier post that my daughter would be attending, we arranged to pick her up at the express boat terminal here after which, we could all go for brunch together.

We went to this breakfast place, the spin-off from the cafe next door -and as a matter of fact, we had just gone for lunch the previous day at their branch in another part of town. Unfortunately, the Sibu Foochow-style sio bee (meat dumplings) that we like a lot were not available that day so I ordered the kompia, Tiong Hua Road style (RM3.80)…

…stuffed with stewed pork belly and served in the sauce (RM3.80)…

…to try. A friend of mine had that sometime ago and she said that they were really very nice and since then, I had been wanting to have a go at them myself and at long last, I finally got round to doing that. I would say that I found them to be a lot nicer than the original at Tiong Hua Road here plus I did not have to put up with the not-so-friendly old lady at that place nor sit on the not-so-comfortable furniture to eat in the not-very-conducive surroundings.

We also had the ones stuffed with minced meat (RM2.80)…

These are toasted, not deep-fried like the ones at this other place in  town (and if I’m not wrong, the ones here are a little cheaper) or elsewhere…and I quite enjoyed them too though I thought it could do with a little less msg in the filling.

My missus must have loved the Foochow-style fried noodles, wet (RM7.80)…

…that she had the last time we were here as that was what she wanted again this time around. I am quite positive they did not have that fried egg on top the previous time, not that it was anything to get excited about seeing that it was overdone and not the way I would have loved it. Melissa’s friend had the same and according to her, after having been around this part of the state for a few months now, she had grown to love our local Foochow delights like the noodles, fried this way…and of course, our celebrated kampua mee.

Melissa had the Teochew bak-kut-teh mee (RM9.80)…

…served with a bowl of yew-char-koi /yu tiao (Chinese crullers or fried bread sticks). Don’t ask me why it is specifically classified as being Teochew as I really do not have the slightest clue. All I can say is that Melissa thought it was nice but she could not finish the whole bowl as the serving was kind of big for her to handle.

As for me, I had the sizzling hot plate yee mee (RM9.80)…

…which was certainly to my liking but I did state very clearly when ordering that I would not like a lot of msg in it and just a little bit would be fine. No doubt that was a bit pricey but there were a lot of prawns in it, at least 6-8 of them albeit their being rather small ones…along with a lot of the other added ingredients. I did wish, however, that there had been a lot more egg in the sauce like what I had in my own version of this dish.

So after having had our fill, we went home to get Melissa’s things and when it was time for the girls to report, I drove them to the hotel that was to be the venue of the course/briefing and dropped them off there.