Used to be better…

I was thinking of checking out one new place in town, western, that night on my missus’ birthday but my girl said she felt like having rice and dishes and suggested going here…

…for dinner instead and of course, her wish was my command.

I had read comments on Facebook about how expensive this place had become and how the food served was not always nice anymore. I did feel the things getting a little pricey even before they moved here from the old place but quality control was always consistent – we did enjoy what we had, most of the time at least.

Anyway, since it was my missus’ birthday, I thought we should go to some place nice…

…and a little more grand…

…than our usual haunts, never mind that it might be a little more expensive and fingers crossed, hopefully, the food would be good…plus, this would be a chance for me to check out their new premises…

– I had not been here since they moved.

My girl wanted this…

…their combination of four types of beans fried with sambal belacan (dried prawn paste) but it turned out to be just long beans, ladies fingers, brinjal and baby corn so it was not really all beans, actually. I thought it tasted all right and so was this dish of asparagus…

…that I also ordered. Unfortunately, my girl was recovering from a flu that she had in the course of the week but she was getting much better already. Still, she had a bit of a stuffed nose that night and could not really taste what she ate. Everything came across as rather salty to her, nothing more and nothing less.

We also ordered our favourite, the creamy butter prawns…

…and this was probably the third time they got our order wrong. We specifically said we would want the “wet” version and yet, it came out dry. If ever we were to go back again, which is highly unlikely, I would insist on them taking it back and cooking it again, the way we would like it.

We wanted steamed fish and they did not have our favourite, the lajong and the chief waitress who took our orders suggested their ngor hu, whatever that is called in English or Malay. This was what it looked like…

…not a very pleasant sight, I must say, and I expected one or two slices of the fish which can be rather big sometimes but what we got in the end was one whole fish…

…and thankfully, it was not a very big one. It would have been very nice but unfortunately, I think it was not all that fresh, probably kept frozen for quite a while already so it tasted bland, not sweet at all and not all that nice…so I had to resort to dipping it in soy sauce which I would never do with anything that tastes great.

Of course, with the fish and the prawns which were quite big, very fresh and firm and succulent, we did not expect the meal to be all that cheap and the total for all the food, rice and drinks came up to RM99.90, RM105.90 with GST.

Stunned by the price and somewhat disappointed with what we had, and rather put off by the songs by some Chinese singers in some kind of a reality show on those television screens blasting in our ears the whole time we were there through the huge loudspeakers all over the not-very-big place on the ground floor (may be good for around 15 tables or so only), we left as soon as we could and adjourned somewhere else for dessert in the hope that we might find a little consolation…but that will be in the next post!