Work it out…

I heard that there is a new Korean restaurant in town and friends were sharing photographs of what they ate there on Facebook so when my girl was home for the weekend last week, I took her there for lunch at around noon on Saturday – I had read in some of the comments that for some reason, it was not open for dinner till the 19th.

When we got to the place, there were a lot of people standing outside, waiting for a table and there was no proper queuing system so I guess you could just grab any that was made available, the survival of the fittest. Tsk! Tsk! It has some kind of a coffee shop setting, nothing fancy, nothing impressive, no nice decor, nothing (I would say that I have seen some coffee shops around here that are a whole lot nicer) and when I looked around, I saw that more than half of those seated either had not ordered or they were still waiting to be served and none of them looked very happy. Of course we did not bother to wait and left the place right away.

I don’t know whether we will ever go back there again but for one thing, I did get to see the menu here and the things sure look rather expensive for a dowdy place like that and it made me wonder what prompted somebody to say that it was cheap, nice and cheap.

Anyway, that day, we made our way to this coffee shop just round the corner…

…where I thought the food was indeed really nice and cheap but I really could not work out how they charged us each time – here and also here.

As a matter of fact, my missus and I dropped by there the day before, Friday…and as it was our no-meat day, I had this…

– half a salted egg and two types of fish, the very nice stingray curry and the fried kembong…

…which was quite good too. Very often, at many places, they would use the cheap frozen-for-too-long ones that are neither sweet nor tasty, so very bland despite all that they use to marinate the fish.

I was wishing they had split the stalks of the paku (wild jungle fern)…

…into two though as it was quite a task for me to chew. Thankfully, it was nicely done and we had all the time in the world so I did manage somehow and licked the plate clean.

As always, my missus was more disciplined and she had the stingray curry as well plus 2 types of vegetables…and this time around, I did find out that our drinks cost RM3.00 only, one kopi-o-peng (iced black coffee) and one iced lemon…so deducting that from the overall total of RM14.00, the food cost us RM11.00. Gee!!! It was RM13.00 the last time, inclusive of drinks, and I picked 5 items altogether then, this time only 4. Perhaps fish is more expensive, I wouldn’t know.

As for our lunch the very next day. my missus tried their mee mamak (RM4.50)…

…which they said was all right though I did not see them getting all excited about it so I guess it was just that, all right.

I also ordered the rojak tambi (RM3.00)…

…from the stall at that shop even though we did not really intend to have that with our lunch. I noticed that the man could only use his left arm – his right arm was hanging limp by the side. I did not ask why but I just thought I would order something from him just to give him some extra business and help him out a bit. It was not as nice this time around though – the peanut sauce was not as thick, a little too watery but the cucur ( fritters) were slightly better, not as rubbery.

So what did we eat from the nasi campur stall? My girl had this…

…the lamb curry with the sambal brinjal and fried ladies’ fingers, 3 items only – one meat and two veggie while I had this…

…the beef curry with potatoes, the sambal egg and the lovely fried egg with all those golden frills…the sambal brinjal and the daun ubi masak lemak (tapioca leaves in coconut milk), 5 altogether and minus the drinks and my missus’ noodles, the total for our two plates of nasi campur came up to…RM11.00 – exactly the same as what we had the day before.

No, there is no way I can work out as to the how or the why – just eat!!! LOL!!!