Few and far between…

I overheard a visitor asking one of the distinguished quests at one function at a hotel in town if there were any mamak makan shops here in Sibu and the guy replied that there was none and added that there were no Indians in Sibu. That, of course, was grossly incorrect! Indeed, we may not have that many Indians around here but no, we do have a couple of mamak or Indian-owned shops in town, one that was right across the road from the hotel and another one not too far away.

If I am not wrong, they are all West Malaysians who have settled down here and so far, I only know of one that has an authentic Indian chef from North India, and a very handsome one at that, so anytime and everytime my girl wants something Indian, that would be the one that we would head to, no less.

That day, she wanted the butter chicken curry…

…with a special request for the bryani rice instead of the pilau rice and yes, it was consistently good and my girl enjoyed it to the max.

The mum stuck faithfully to the kalio ayam…

*Archive photo*

…that she would always go for everytime we drop by here, and without fail, with her usual request for the curry…

…to be extra spicy.

We were early, at least an hour or so before opening time, and the Indonesian chef was out when we got there so her assistant had to cook our orders for us. By the time the former came back with the boss of the cafe, everything was more or less done and the boss was aghast that I had ordered the mee jawa…

…but I thought it was nice – different, very different from those that one would find at the Malay shops around town including my favourite here but I enjoyed it especially with a squeeze of the calamansi lime provided.

I read somewhere that mee Bandung did not originate from Bandung, Indonesia and actually started in Muar, Johore but I don’t recall seeing or hearing anything along this same line about mee Jawa – whether it is originally Javanese or Indonesian but I’ve read somewhere that it is served with a tomato-based sauce and this one that I had here had just that which made it a little different from the local ones which, among other things, would not be so strong on the tomato and would have sweet potatoes in the kuah (gravy).

I wanted the mee bakso too (noodles served in beef ball soup) but the girl said that I might not be able to finish all of that as there would be noodles too in the mee jawa…

…so I settled for just the soup…

…instead.

Yes, I loved the freshly-made beef meatballs unlike the frozen ones that they would use elsewhere or at least, that was what I thought they were, here or here and I enjoyed the light clear soup as well but I would not think it would be enough to go with noodles – that would need a much thicker and richer broth.

Our bill came up to over RM60.00 but the boss collected RM50.00 only from me as he was somewhat apologetic that I had ordered the mee jawa plus we had to make do with what the assistant, not the chief Indonesian chef, dished out…which, in my opinion, was no big deal really as what we had were, to us, pretty good and we sure enjoyed the delightful lunch that day.