Fiesta…

I went strolling around the vicinity of the hotel in Miri where we were staying and I saw this place…

…and I made up my mind right away that I would have to drop by and try the cuisine served there. I have a few Filipino friends in the blogging world and also on Facebook including Ishmael and Rome so they would be able to tell me whether the dishes that I ordered were really authentic Filipino or not but the moment I stepped into the place…

…I was pretty sure it would be as authentic as authentic could be. The people were conversing in Tagalog and there was that big picture of the Last Supper on the wall and the crucifix and the holy pictures all over. I guess most everybody would know that the majority of Filipinos are Catholics and very devout ones at that, except perhaps those in the south closer to Sabah.

Of course I did not order the Crispy Prata as we just had that on our first night in Miri and besides, there were only the two of us and I was afraid that we might not be able to finish one whole leg by ourselves. Instead, I settled for the fish…

…with all the bones removed and deep fried. Actually, I took a photograph of the dish but with so many photographs taken during the trip in my memory card, I must have deleted it by mistake so all I have left now is this close-up view of the fish…

I would not say that it swept me off my feet as it was deep-fried plain unlike our ikan bakar (grilled fish) where they would marinate it with all kinds of stuff and serve it with very nice sambal (chili dip). Besides, considering that it was just deep fried and served like that, the taste would be heavily dependent on the fish. Yes, it was fresh, the meat was soft and smooth but I was not fond of the smell (like how I don’t quite fancy the smell of salmon). I am not familiar with this type of fish and I am not too sure whether I have eaten it before or not…but eaten with the dark soy sauce and the cut fresh chilies in it, it was, at best, not too bad.

For the soup, I ordered this dish…

…and what caught my attention most of all was the name. Baboy or to be more exact, babui is pig or pork in our ethnic Melanau langauge. I have blogged about the similarities between Tagalog and our local ethnic or Malay languages before here.

Well, this was what it looked like…

…and no, despite the presence of that huge chili, it was not spicy at all. It was sourish though and I would say I quite liked it.

I did not order the Tinolang Manok…

…and manok is actually chicken in Iban and in the Sarawak Malay dialect as well.

I enjoyed this a lot that day – their Tortang Talong…

…or the binjal (called terung/terong here) omelette. They had the skin of the vegetable removed and coating it with egg, they fried it to make this very special omelette…

I certainly liked that very much but no, I don’t think I would try cooking that myself – I am pretty sure I would mash up the poor vegetable and make an absolute mess.

Everyone would know by now, I suppose, what we call pian sip or pian sik here in Sibu – our Foochow version of the wanton or meat dumplings. It seems that in Tagalog, their pansit refers to noodles…

…so this dish would be their Cantonese fried noodles, I guess.

No, I did not order that and neither did I have the time to go back to try it or any of the other dishes on their menu. We just were not in Miri long enough…but you can be sure that should I ever go over again, I would make it a point to go back there to sample more of their specialties.