Why not me…

This place is a favourite of many – it has become so very popular that it is always packed and best avoided during lunch hour as you may not be able to find a table plus it tends to get rather noisy.

No, it was not in the list of nominations but after lunch, I took the Kuching guys to the hotel to check in and after that, we drove around a bit before we stopped by here for tea. They wanted to try the mee sua…

…and I insisted that they tried their kompia – with pork belly filling…

…or minced meat…

They thought they had had better mee sua elsewhere and as for the kompia, they did say right at the start that they would prefer eating the fresh ones just like that – no deep frying, no toasting, no filling. They did finish all of it so I guess on the whole, it was all right.

Back to the mee sua, I personally quite like the one here though there may be some elsewhere that may have a little edge over it but I would not think there is all that much difference. For one thing, one can enjoy it here in air-conditioned comfort instead of sweating it out in some hot and stuffy coffee shop and for another, like I told the guys, this would be an ideal stop for people dropping by Sibu for just one or two nights only as they would be able to enjoy all the Sibu (Foochow) delights at one go. They have the kampua noodles and the pian sip here as well, not the best in town but they do have those, and I love their kueh chap too. That sure beats going from one coffee shop to another to eat one thing at each stop and if in a group, there is always the problem that not everybody wants to eat the same thing and there is just that one thing that is nice at that shop. Surely, nobody wants to sit there and eat while all the rest sit around and stare. LOL!!!

It sure was a different story with the other things that I ordered for them to try though. Gerald was not all that keen when he heard that I was ordering the macarons – my favourite flavours, the salted caramel and the mint…

…that I feel are nicer and not as sweet as the rest, as he had that at one five-star hotel in Kuching but he did not think it was anything great and he just could not understand why people seem to like it so much. Just one bite into the ones here and he was singing a different tune. He said they were so very nice, totally different from what he had tried before that was so very hard and sweet. There! I wouldn’t order anything that is not nice, would I? Hehehehehe!!!

They also enjoyed the mille crepe, rum and raisin…

…and they really loved the chocolate lava cake…

…with ice cream – they thought the slightly warm cake and the cold ice cream and the sweet chocolate oozing out from inside and the mildly sweet ice cream together made a perfect combination and it literally swept them off their feet.

This is fairly new – their coffee choux semifreddo (RM5.90)…

…and I ordered that as I had never tried it before. It was not all that great though – ice cream in some dough that was on the hard, crusty side with a lot of coffee powder all over it. One of the guys who probably was not into coffee said it made it taste bitter. Ah well!!! At least we know now…and we would not know unless we try, right?

Then a waiter brought this – their passion cheese cake…

…to our table, much to our surprise and we all said that we did not order that but he said that it was a special treat for me from the boss. That certainly was a really sweet gesture on the part of the guy but I guess everybody knows by now that I am not all that into cheese cakes having had an overdose of it at one time and other than that, fat people are generally not into things that are sour either…and the fresh passion fruit that was used in the making of the cake was on the sour side. It did not matter much though as probably, the guys quite liked it and they finished it all off. Other than that, they also enjoyed the Dinosaur, Godzilla and Monster drinks that they all had (while I stayed faithful to my glass of iced cold water) that they thought were really cheap compared to the same elsewhere. One Horlicks Godzilla here (a Dinosaur with one scoop of ice cream added, that is) is very much cheaper than the Dinosaur (no ice cream) in KL, for instance.

Then one of the guys turned to Gerald (who’s actually the chairman of the committee involved in this whole award thing) and asked why this place was not in the list of nominations considering that they had such awesome stuff here and from the tourism point of view, like what I said, it would be an ideal one-stop centre for visitors from out of town on very short visits to enjoy all the local delights at one go. They certainly were impressed by the place as well and they were surprised that even at around 3 in the afternoon, the place was packed, almost full – don’t all these people have to work, they asked. Well, the answer to that was simple – nobody nominated it. Unfortunately, nominations were already closed but they did say they would bring it up at the next committee meeting to see if they could slip this place in to compete with the rest…but if that was not possible, they certainly would make sure it would be in line for consideration for the award next year.

Incidentally, the boss did mention to me that they will open a new outlet, a new branch, here (2.302749,111.843028), right next to this fairly new restaurant in one of the blocks of shops there. I am not sure if it is already open now or not as I seemed to see something going on there everytime I drove past but he said that it would be open in December – I did not clarify whether what he meant was that the official opening would be in December or what. I must say that location would be a lot better than their present rather tight and congested surroundings in a not-all-that-nice neighbourhood and often, parking can be such a pain. I certainly look forward to their new place, that’s for sure.