After the fire…

There was a devastating fire here in 2013 that destroyed this block of shops along Blacksmith Road, now known as Jalan Tukang Besi, but they have rebuilt it and upon completion…

…it has been business as usual since. I don’t know how many of them were originally there before it was burnt to cinders but currently, there are two coffee shops here, a smaller one at the second shop from the right and this bigger one…

…at the end of the block that stretches from this side to the other side facing the so-called Butterfly Garden, the location of the pasar malam (night market) here in Sibu and if I am not mistaken, there is at least another coffee shop or maybe two, on the other side.

We dropped by this one the other morning and I noticed that the Malay stall selling halal kampua noodles had ceased operation but there is a roti canai stall there. Further in, there is this chap fan (mixed rice) stall…

…and I must say that the choices they had that day looked pretty good…

They are very clear about the prices…

…so there would not be any need to try and guess how and why they charge a certain amount for what you pick to eat.

We saw somebody eating the GIANT pao (steamed buns)…

…that was a lot bigger than the ones I had in KL, named after a certain Hong Kong actress for obvious reasons (I had placed the spoon there so you can see how big they were!). It came as no surprise at all that he could not finish it and had to ask for a doggy bag to bring the rest of it home. I did catch a glimpse of the filling inside…

…and I would not say I was all that impressed but my missus insisted on buying two home, at RM2.50 each, to try. The skin was very nice but I did not quite care for the filling, mostly those preserved vegetables but there was HALF a hardboiled egg in it and THAT, I liked!!!

Well, that morning, we had the noodles from this stall…

…at that shop. I had the Foochow fried noodles (RM4.00)…

…and yes, it was very good. I don’t think it was exactly like the original or authentic ones that we grew up eating but it had its own taste and I did enjoy it very much.

My missus had the sambal kway teow (RM5.00)…

…and she loved it. However, the serving was too huge for her to handle so she was not able to finish all of it and I had to help her with that. It was spicy and had the very nice hint of the fragrant belacan (dried prawn paste) and I really liked it a lot – I would say it was nicer than the noodles I had and I would prefer it to the kway teow here…and definitely a lot more than the one here.

I also caught a glimpse of the wat tan hor that someone else ordered and it sure looked very nice as well. I certainly would love to go back there again to try whatever else there is on the menu but that coffee shop is located in the terribly congested part of town and searching for a parking space can be such a pain…plus it is not free. So, we’ll see…