Here she is…

She…

…was here originally until the grandson came back and took over the business (he has since left town though to venture into the Sangkaya coconut ice cream business in KL) but not long after that, she started another stall of her own here and then, word went round that she was going to retire (again) and what I heard then was that the people who used to help her at the latter stall took over and I did drop by to try once. Unfortunately, we did not think they could do it quite as well as the old lady.

Then, not long after that, word went round on Facebook that she had decided to come out of retirement (again) and this time, she would be at this coffee shop…

…facing the Dewan Suarah (Civic Centre), Sibu…

We dropped by one morning last week and boy, there was quite a crowd there. Somebody commented that every kampua mee stall at that coffee shop did not last very long but it sure seemed that this one would be here to stay.

The coffee…

…wasn’t really great though, just all right but it was heaps better than the ones here or here. The kampua noodles, on the other hand, were really something else.

My missus had hers tossed in chili sauce (RM2.80)…

…while I had it without (RM2.80)…

I did not notice at the time that my missus got the meat with all that fat but she sure did not complain and ate it all up.

I got all the bits that looked like the edges of whatever that was left…

…and so very much of it and it was all lean meat.

Normally, when one goes for kampua mee in Sibu, one common remark would be on how thin the meat has been sliced, so thin that if you switch on the fan at full speed, the meat with go flying off your plate…and other than that, you would probably get around four miserable slices only. That, of course, is not applicable here, not at all.

While other places use boiled pork dyed red to look like char siew, which it isn’t, the old lady uses stewed pork which, of course, has an edge over the aforementioned. I don’t know if there is a bit of the sauce in the noodles or what but there have been people who are not all that fond of it insisting that it is not quite the same, not what they are looking for…and critics have complained that she uses a lot of msg. I don’t know how true that is but I did not leave the coffee shop with that unpleasant lingering taste in the mouth unlike the ones I have had elsewhere…and I did not even have to go and tell her to add less like what I would do at some places in town. Haters will hate, I guess.

Personally, I would rank hers among the top together with the other favourites of mine here but what I love most would be her meatball soup (RM5.00)…

Such a big bowl and so many meatballs…

– rolled fresh minced meat, not those horrible smelly frozen ones and not those with the springy fishball-like texture…but what I like the most about it is the soup – very very thick bone stock soup, so very very nice indeed! At other places, it is always so diluted and msg-enhanced, not the one here. The rich flavour of this one is so very strong that I actually thought I would not mind it if it had been diluted a little bit.

We were there at around 10 something in the morning and probably, they were  running out of everything and would be closing for the day because when I ordered the soup, the lady helping out had to go and check to see if there was enough for one last bowl…and that is why I said the meat in my plate of kampua mee looked like the edges left from all the meat that had been sliced all morning.

Never mind that there seems to be people who are not fans of this old lady’s kampua noodles, with all the people at the coffee shop every morning, I am pretty confident that she is here to stay…until she decides she is going to retire…again!