As usual…

As usual, the other Sunday, we went to attend the midday service at the cathedral in town and then we went for lunch.

We had not been here…

…for quite sometime…

…as usually, we would go to their Japanese joint a few doors away or the pork place right next door, all along Jalan Chew Geok Lin (beside the Tua Pek Kong Temple/Seven-storey Pagoda). More often than not, I would avoid this place at night as it gets very crowded and extremely noisy and also around lunch hour on weekdays but it is all right on Sundays and so it was that day – except for the guy at the next table who seemed to be selling something to his girlfriend and could not stop talking the whole time we were there. Tsk! Tsk! We had no choice but to sit right next to them as I wanted a place right by the window for the light so that the photos would look a lot nicer.

My missus had the stonebowl own-made fish tofu udon soup (RM15.00)…

…which both she and my girl said was very nice. I wouldn’t know as I did not give it  a try myself.

I had what they called the Dayak lamb rice set (RM22.00)…

…though I really wondered about that Dayak and lamb combination as I would not think that lamb is a regular feature in our local ethnic cuisine. However, the way they cooked it reminded me of how they would cook the exotic wild game like  wild boar, wild deer, iguana, snake and so on at the shops in the small towns like Selangau with a lot of lengkuas (galangal), serai (lemon grass) and chili with thick soy sauce and I would say it was very nice.

The lamb was also served in a stonebowl and came with two cubes of tau joo (fermented bean curd)…

…which went extremely well with the rice and the meat, a great change indeed from the usual salted fish that one would find in the similar claypot pork belly or chicken dish…and coming from me, one  who does not like the stuff at all, this may be regarded as a huge compliment!

My girl opted for their chicken chop rice (RM19.00)…

…which was very nice too…

…though it did take quite a while to be served and I would agree with my girl when she said that what we had here was very much nicer.

I also ordered their cake of the day (RM8.00)…

…for dessert, what they called their black and white cheese chocolate cake even though there was neither black nor white as far as I could see. I had expected them to use Oreos…or perhaps even Japanese bamboo charcoal but it turned out to be just the usual cheese cake on top of the layers of chocolate cake and cream – ok, not bad…but nothing to shout about.

All in all, it was a pretty good lunch, nothing sensational nor was it all that cheap but I always believe that it is perfectly all right to give oneself and one’s loved ones a nice treat once in a while…especially considering that I had been neglecting them quite a bit when my Singaporean friends were in town.