Next stop – Carpenter Street.
I was hoping we could drop by Lau Ya Keng or Ann Lee but there were no parking spaces available. Lay Ya Keng is actually the location of a Chinese temple where they have all the hawker stalls and they do have some pretty nice stuff there. Ann Lee is an old school restaurant from long ago – I used to love their rice with char siew and steamed chicken and they would splash their very diluted curry gravy over everything. I don’t know if I would like it still but I enjoyed that a lot then.
We tried locating the kolo mee place in Padungan – it used to be at a corner shop along Carpenter Street and was very very popular. The place would be packed and it would be so hard to get a seat…and even though the old guy was not known to be very friendly, what he dished out was so good. We did not manage to find it initially and in the end, we went for this one…
…instead. There were a lot of vacant parking spaces at the end of the street at that time of day – around 11 to noon, it seemed.
The people here…
…are a lot more pleasant and the kolo mee…
…is also very nice.
Yes, there are other places in Kuching with really great kolo mee but at this one (and that elusive one, now in Padungan), they also serve this soup…
…with the liver, innards and stuff that I love so much.
Oh, incidentally, that bowl of noodles was Philip’s – I had the special…
…which, of course, had more delights on top. Hehehehehehe!!!!!
Philip saw somebody at the next table having their fried rice and he wanted to try as well and this was what he got…
The rice was pretty well done and the egg was fried the old-school way – the way I would like it but it certainly looked that this one was a bit over-fried and the yolk did not appear like it was still runny.
After that very nice lunch, we dropped by here…
…as I have heard so much about their coffee…
After all those praises that I’ve heard, I just could not leave town without giving it a try. It is a very small place…
…non-airconditioned and it certainly looked like they’re not really bothered about making the place look nice and presentable…
…with anything and everything, all that clutter all over the shop. There are only a few tables in the shop…
…so if you are looking for a comfortable place with nice ambiance to relax and enjoy a cup of coffee and while the time away, I am afraid this is not the one you are looking for.
As for the coffee,
…yes, it was fragrant and strong but no, it was not what we would enjoy – it wasn’t the old-school kopitiam (coffee shop) local brew that we have enjoyed and grown to love since time immemorial. The beans are dry roast, not with butter for that special fragrance that we truly love a lot. Theirs is more like those very popular branded coffee…and if I am not wrong, the prices are somewhat similar as well – I think Philip forked out over RM10 for the two glasses that we had.
After our cuppa, we were on the road again…to our next destination for the day.
...STILL CRAZY AFTER ALL THESE YEARS! 