Taken over…

This used to be here but what I was told was that they were short of hand and found it difficult to manage two places at one time so they decided to give it up and a lady named Mary took over this one and it turned out to be someone I know – we had dinner here once together with some friends of ours and lunch here on another occasion.

My friend and ex-classmate, Robert, had asked me to drop by – according to him, he liked some of the Thai-style dishes he had here and all this while, I had wanted to do so but never got round to doing that. Then, last Friday, he called me and he said that their true-blue Thai chef had just arrived and asked me and my family to join him for dinner there so there we were at this place…

…finally, at long last!

The decor is basically the same, nothing much has changed but I don’t recall having seen this cute thing before…

…and I love the fact that they have real table cloth which puts it a class above many of the rest in town. Other than that, I was quite impressed by the rather exclusive crockery used though they are all white, no blue and white ones that have always been my weakness.

They are still working on the menu so in the meantime, this…

…may be of help if you have no idea what you would like to have but Mary is always at hand to give you some suggestions and take my word for it, she is very nice and friendly and you will feel quite at home with her around.

This was served first…

– the fried barramundi with the chef’s special sauce and we absolutely loved it. It was very big though so perhaps it would be more suitable for big groups having their dinner here. I wonder if the chef would be able to do the same with some smaller varieties of fish.

I loved this sotong (squid) with some kind of sourish lime sauce…

…that was bursting with flavours, very typical of Thai cuisine…and I would say the same about the som tam – the Thai green papaya salad…

…but some in the group thought it was a little too spicy for them to handle. Of course, it was perfectly all right for me and my missus – we have had a lot of training at home.

I think this was the slipper lobster…

…and I sure was glad that they had the shell removed. I always found it quite tedious eating this because of the hard and very difficult to open shell. Yes, it was very nice too though personally, I have a preference for prawns especially our own freshwater udang galah.

I think this was the petola ular soup…

…that we also had – I am not all that good with names of vegetables in Chinese dialects. It was somewhat sweet but no, they do not use msg here so it probably was the sweetness from the vegetable…and this was Mary’s own special order and it definitely is not Thai – the fried ketola with egg and with fermented beans added…

…but I was already too full by the time it was served so I did not give it a try.

I am not sure if the Thais have this too – the or chian or oyster omelette…

…and yes, I truly enjoyed this especially with the very nice pounded chili dip that was made available at our table – I did not use the chili sauce by the side, not at all.

This was the chicken rice that Mary cooked for herself and she served us some…

…alongside the plain white rice and in no time at all, there wasn’t a single grain left. Yes, it  was that good! We were suggesting to her that she should open the place for lunch and serve set lunches such as the chicken rice set and others – that should go down well with the general public around here.

Robert’s wife, Angela, made this kuih talam…

…and brought it along for dessert and it was so very nice, so lemak (rich with santan/coconut milk). and no prize for guessing who had the most number of pieces. She said that she tried six times before getting it almost right. Good grief!!! I would have given up after the first time and never bother to try again.

That certainly was a very pleasant evening – great food, great company and thank you so much, Mary, for the awesome dinner…and thanks to you too, Robert, for asking us to come along and not forgetting Angela for the delightful kuih talam.