Alternative…

I have the feeling that many true blue Sibu born and bred have made their way back home for the forthcoming Chinese New Year as I see a lot of people at the malls, heavy traffic on the road…or maybe, they are all those from the nearby towns making their way here to do their shopping to prepare for the festive season.

After the sunset church service last Saturday evening, my girl wanted to drop by here for dinner but when we glanced inside, it looked like the place was full…or at least, there were a lot of people in the restaurant so we decided to pick to an alternative instead and the obvious choice would be this one right round the corner. Somehow or other, we never go to the one right next door as most of the time, it is very crowded and one may have difficulty trying to get a table…plus I am not all that fond of very busy, packed places.

Anyway, that night, we decided not to order the usual dishes that we would have here like their very nice sweet and sour fish fillet, for instance, but I can’t say we have a wide selection to choose from and in the end, we settled for their lemon chicken…

…which, of course, we had had before but we love how they do it. Firstly, unlike the thick batter at most other places, the very thinly-coated pre-deep fried pieces of chicken are always a cut above the rest. Other than that, fresh lemon is used – that is quite obvious, I guess, seeing the slices on top…

…unlike at many places where the lemon chicken reeks terribly of the bottled essence which is such a put-off.

We did not want to order the fried cangkuk manis with egg or the sweet potato leaves anymore so we had their midin (wild jungle fern)…

– something we have not had here for a while as well and my girl requested for it to be fried with belacan (dried prawn paste) and yes, they do it very well, much nicer than a number of places and one probable reason, of course, would be the quality of the belacan used. The not-so-nice ones would give the dish a not-very-pleasant fragrance and taste.

On the way in, we saw some guys at a table outside having this tofu dish…

…and it looked good so we also wanted that. Now, this would be one dish here that we had not tried before and at other places, it is served in a claypot but here, they use this stainless thing with a special stand and a small fire down below to keep it hot and nice.

The lady boss seemed quite reluctant to accept any more orders, possibly because in her mind, she was thinking that those would be enough for the three of us but I felt like having one more so I asked for their fried beef with ginger…

…and this too was very nice. Somehow or other, if we order this dish at any place in town, it will taste more or less the same except maybe the sizzling beef on a hot plate here…but we were pleasantly surprised that there was a difference in how they cooked that here and we loved it!

That certainly was a delightful dinner and true enough, as the lady boss appeared to be expecting, we could not finish everything and had to tapao quite a lot of the tofu home. Actually, I suggested just leaving it behind but my girl loved it so much and insisted that we took it home with us so she could take it with her to her school to heat it up for one of her meals there in the week to come.

The total for the four dishes for three persons came up to RM52.00 and I did hear the lady boss telling the cook, her hubby, to cook for three persons – usually, I would ask that they cook for two and the total would be a little less but that night, I did not bother. Of course, most importantly, everything was to our satisfaction and we made our way home happily, having enjoyed the pleasant meal together.