I’m not Lisa…

No, I’m not Lisa. My name is Liza…

…with a zee and I am located at the end of Sungai Merah bazaar (2.327044,111.83921), opposite this primary school and church…

If anyone is wondering, no, this is not an English primary school. In the past, some schools were divided into two, one where the medium of instruction was English, and thus named, and the other Chinese until after the switch to Malay here sometime in the 80’s but despite that, they have retained the original name so even though you see the name of a school, tagged as English at the end like this, it is actually a Malay-medium school.

The other day, my missus and I dropped by this coffee shop that has been around for quite sometime now, just that we never bothered to go and check it out. I saw a lot of people eating the roti canai (RM1.20)…

…but I was kind of disappointed when it was served. It looked rather pale and the dhal dip was so diluted…

…not thick and rich the way I would love it. However, the sambal that came with it saved the day – I would not say it was all that great but with that and the dip, the roti canai was not too bad, after all, just that there are better ones around like the nice one round the corner from here that comes with a bowl of curry gravy.

We were early but though it was only mid-morning, the selections for their nasi campur (mixed rice) were ready. Everything looked good so we decided to have brunch there and save us the trouble of having to cook lunch once we got home. There were a few types of curry to choose from – chicken, beef, fish…and I chose the lamb…

…and yes, it was very good and the meat was very nice and tender.

The sambal egg…

…at these Malay places is my favourite so I just had to have one and I had the sotong (squids)…

…masak kicap (cooked with soy sauce) too. Both were good though the squids were a tad too salty and my missus, who had that too, was of the same opinion – they could have used less soy sauce or the sweet type instead.

I picked the very nicely-done ladies’ fingers…

…too and in fact, I took quite a lot of that – probably twice the amount of one regular serving if they do it for you at this type of stalls and just look at that…

– the salted egg yolk, so red and oily, truly a beauty and it was beckoning to me! Come! Come! Take me! Take me! So, how could I resist that, you tell me? LOL!!! Unfortunately, it was not as good as it appeared to be as it was rather salty and not really to my liking. There! I should have known better than to judge it solely based on appearance.

No, my missus had better self-control and did not give in to temptation so very easily so she just had the rice and the sotong and ladies’ fingers and she also had some kangkong, that was all, unlike what I ended up having on my plate…

When I asked them to calculate everything that both my missus and I had, including two glasses of kopi-o-peng (iced black coffee), I could not believe my ears when she told me it was only RM11.20 (excluding the roti canai). I have had a lot less at those nasi kandar shops in the peninsula and charged a whole lot more…like that time when I had to fork out RM11.00 for me alone at this place in Penang and I only had rice plus one quite big sotong and a small piece of fish, nothing else!

Hmmm…give and take a little here and there, at that price, I certainly would not mind coming back here again, that’s for sure!