Sometime ago…

This was two Saturdays ago when we had a dinner here to celebrate my mother-in-law’s 81st birthday…

…12 of us altogether – her, my missus, Melissa and I, my brother-in-law and his wife and their daughter, back from Singapore and their son, home from KL and then, there was also my brother-in-law from Bintulu and his wife and one of their sons plus my niece’s good friend.

Luckily, we had made a reservation before hand as the place was packed to the brim (and parking can be such a pain in that part of town) so we had to wait for quite a while before the food was served. As what they would usually do, we were served these Mukah keropok as starters…

…which were great, and dipped in the chili sauce provided, they were even nicer.

This restaurant claims to be the only one in Malaysia serving lokan…

…and everyone loved it!

Some of my in-laws tried umai…

…for the first time and they enjoyed it. I’ve heard people calling this the Melanau sashimi but I don’t think it is the same – the raw fish in this dish would have been “cooked” already by the calamansi lime juice added (some use vinegar but I think it is not as nice).

We ordered another specialty of the house – the paku in santan (coconut milk) but when we were served, it turned out to be midin instead…

Well, it was perfectly all right as it tasted great. In fact, personally I felt it was a lot nicer than paku which I had had many times already on my previous visits.

Another specialty of the house would be their roast lamb…

…which Melissa enjoyed so very much. I would have to take her back there again sometime for more.

We also ordered their sea cucumber soup…

…and their creamy butter prawns…

…using the very expensive freshwater udang galah, were really good too.

Everybody sang praises of their fried chicken with onion rings…

…though I was not too thrilled by it. When I said that, Melissa remarked that it was definitely much nicer than the colonel’s, case closed.

On the other hand, I absolutely loved the sweet and sour fish…

…so so so much. My Bintulu brother-in-law brought a huge one over, I think it  was a red snapper, and got them to cook it for us. I really feasted on it from head to tail.

People always say that the prices here can be quite steep but ours that night, inclusive of drinks (some had more than one) and rice (quite a lot of it, really), came up to RM325.00 for 12 persons which I thought was very reasonable. That prawn dish alone would have cost quite a bit already. To me, that was, without doubt, a truly awesome dinner – a delightful change that was so much nicer than the ones we had before and I certainly would love to go back there again and again.