New broom…

New brooms sweep well, they say, but no, it is not necessarily always so.

Last Saturday, by some stroke of good luck, we were able to find a parking space so we decided to check this place…

…out. I asked the guy if this was the same place moved from the old location or a totally brand new outlet altogether and he said it was the same one.

I think the decor was a whole lot nicer formerly – all that iron roofing used for the walls…

…makes the place look like some kind of warehouse.

While there were some sweet young ethnic girls running the place before very smoothly and efficiently, there was just this young man here who seemed to be at a loss as to what was going on. Everything that I asked, he had to go to the kitchen to ask somebody inside and after a few times of that, my patience was wearing pretty thin so I just decided to order whatever they had.

No, I did not want the laksa as I had that the one and only time I dropped by this franchise place and I was not at all thrilled by it, to put it mildly. I wanted to try the chicken rendang…

…so the guy went into the kitchen and came out saying that it was not available.

They had a lot of choices in their menu and on the banners…

…but it appeared to me that all those with the prices covered up were currently not available…and I guess that also applied to anything where the price was not stated at all…

…which left me with no choice, no…not the otah – the price was covered up too…but the nasi lemak…

I asked the boy what the difference was between the standard and the premium and in he went into the kitchen again…and when he came out, he said they were the same except that for the premium, I would be getting a larger piece of chicken.

The couple at the table next to ours ordered the nasi lemak, standard and all three plates were served together. I noticed that they only had a chicken wing each while everything else was the same. For my premium (RM12.90)…

…I got one chicken thigh which I felt was not all that much bigger. Thankfully, it wasn’t one of those frozen chicken with the bland, soft and almost mushy meat…so this one was all right but of course, one can’t expect too much from deep fried chicken and that was exactly what it was.

The egg…

…obviously, was flipped in the pan, I think and looked nothing like what I would dish out. Indeed, it is quite hard to splash the hot oil over the top while frying an egg unlike when using a kuali but it was all right as the yolk was runny…

…just the way I would like it.

Eeeeeee….look at the ikan bilis (dried anchovies)…

This is the much cheaper white bait variety with those big black beady eyes staring at you…and they were not all that generous with the sambal as well. All in all, what I was served sure did not look anything like what they had on the banner…and the ones here, with or without the chicken curry or masak hitam beef, are a whole lot cheaper and a whole lot nicer, no question about that.

Both my girl and the mum had the standard Katong laksa (RM9.90)…

…and not only did it look nicer than what I had at the old place but it tasted better too. However, the two ladies said that the enjoyment was only temporary as the richness of the broth with all that santan in it was kind of overpowering and they did not think it was all that great towards the end.

We saw this on the banner outside the shop…

…and so we ordered two for the two bowls of the laksa that we had and we did confirm with the young guy that we would getting them at 99 sen each and he said yes. However, we wanted it cold/iced and I am not sure whether that rendered the offer null and void or what but he never said anything to that effect. When I checked the chit from the cash register…

…upon reaching home, I found that I had been charged RM2.50 a glass.

Well, all things considered plus the fact that finding a place to park in that area can be such a pain, I certainly would be in no hurry to go back there again anytime soon.