Fortunate…

How fortunate I was last Thursday to be invited out for breakfast by my friend, Rose! Actually, she has already blogged about it here.

Well, she said she was feeling like having something fried and I remember seeing a photograph that a friend of mine shared on Facebook of a plate of yee mee (noodles) in tomato sauce gravy and it did seem really nice. I sent her the photo to have a look and she agreed that we could drop by to see if it was as good as it looked.

I got there first and I searched high and low…

…but could not find the coffee shop that my friend was talking about. He gave me the location and I do know the place – the same block of shops where this place used to be but in the middle. Well, if it’s the one in the middle, then it would have to be this one…

– the other one in the previous photo (Daisy Cafe), to the extreme right of the block, was not open.

In a couple of minutes, Rose arrived with her little girl – she was having the day off owing to the UPSR resit and needless to say, she was overjoyed by the fact that she had an extra two days off as a result of the leakage…but of course, many others were not at all happy over that most disgraceful and humiliating fiasco. Anyway, back to our breakfast, we decided that since we were already there, we might as well give this place a try…

Rose had the Foochow-style fried noodles…

…and I ordered the tomato kway teow…

…from the stall at the back. We both liked what we were served just that I thought they could perhaps give a little prawn or two and/or sotong (squid) plus a couple of fish cake slices instead of only those few bits of meat. Actually, I would not mind if they charge a little bit more or perhaps, they could give customers the option to choose between the normal (what we had above) or the special and pay a little bit extra for the added ingredients. I’m not too sure how much they were that morning but Rose paid RM8.30 for both and I guess it might be RM3.80 for hers (which is the standard price these days here for Foochow-style fried noodles) and RM4.50 for mine…which made me wonder what would account for the 70 sen extra for what I had. The tomato sauce used?

Incidentally, something happened that I would like to give special mention to here. I placed the order before we took our seats at the table of our choice and the kway teow was served first – TWO plates of it when I had ordered only one. I said I had ordered one plate of kway teow and one plate of mee and the lady said that the mee was in the process of being cooked and would be coming out soon. She did not seem too keen on taking the extra plate of kway teow back so I said if that was the case, she could just tapao it for us to take away. Ok, we’ll stop here for a short break and I’ll get back to the story later. Hehehehehe!!!!

Rose’s daughter had the kolo mee…

…from the stall in front and she said it was very nice, nicer than what she had here (and they went back for more the following weekend as they thought it was so very good!!!).

It came with the usual sliced chili in vinegar dip and they even gave the chopped spring onions and fried shallots…

…separately, something I had not seen done elsewhere before. This way, you need not add them to your noodles if you are not so fond of the garnishes.

This was the guy selling the kolo mee plus a whole list of things that you may fancy…

…but I’m afraid you can’t see it in the photograph. I noticed that the stall further in sold popiah (spring roll) but it was not open when we were there. We were told that she would cook her stuff at home and bring over so she would open a bit later, say, after 9.00 a.m. She did show up later but we were too full already and decided that we would give it a miss this time around and come back again another day to try.

Back to the aforementioned kway teow, we waited for the lady to bring it out again but it never came so we called her to find out…and she told us that it was all right – they would just take the plate of kway teow back and would not charge us for it. Wasn’t that nice? Nobody else was having that so they could not just serve that to them. I guess they would just have to eat it themselves but I must say that such gestures are definitely a feather in their cap – it is these little things that will keep customers coming back.

Incidentally, if anyone is interested, she told us that they also serve tom yam noodles with the giant freshwater prawns but I did not ask how much they are selling that for…and I’m not really into this, tom yam style. Perhaps the next  time I drop by, I will ask them if they do it any other way. For those of you who cannot make out the exact location from the first photograph above, that is the Everwin Supermarket in the distance, the one beside the Sibu Bus Terminal. Yes, the roads in this area are atrocious  owing to the sinking swampy land but if you drive straight ahead from the traffic lights at Jalan Pahlawan and turn left at Yum Yum Cafe, this coffee shop is in that lane in the middle of the block of shops on your right. They seemed to have resurfaced the roads around there so for the time being, you should not have any problem getting there.

Oopsss!!!! I almost forgot! Thank you so much, Rose, for the delightful breakfast treat. Would love to do it again sometime…before you and your family move back to Kuching.

P.S.:
For your general information, those of you who have not managed to get hold of a copy of the book…

*Archive photo*

…can now browse through or download the e-book copy of it here:
http://online.3dpageflip.com/ptrm/jxir/

However, if you’re a local and you would like the hard copy for keeps, you can go to the Sibu Resident’s Office, 5th Floor of the new Islamic Complex (opposite St Mary’s Church) to ask for it – they will give you one but if you can tell them some nice stories like you would like  more to send to your overseas siblings or relatives or friends, you may get a few more.