Christmas Eve…

My cousin from Sydney, Australia flew into town the night before Christmas Eve and his brother from Miri that morning and I took them to lunch…

…here. It wasn’t as gaily decorated for Christmas as in previous years…

…just a little bit here and there…

…but I like how there are always fresh flowers…

…here, there and everywhere each time we drop by this place.

Well, my cousin liked the otak-otak (RM13.00 with rice)…

…and the mushroom roll (RM8.00)…

…though they did not seem to get him all that excited. His mum is a Hakka and he had his fill of kacang ma all those times when she was in confinement with lots of ginger and wine so he was not too thrilled by what he had here (RM16.00)…

He felt it was not as strong as he would have loved it to be and besides, it was overshadowed by the stronger tastes of the other dishes. I did notice that there wasn’t any of the fried hair-like/fibrous shredded ginger on top – they would usually have that in the past.

He enjoyed my daughter’s favourite, the Bangladeshi lamb curry (RM19.00)…

…very much but it was the belimbing prawns (RM17.00)…

(we had two servings of this)…and the Payung rojak (RM10.00, small)…

…that won his praises the most. He loved the generous use of the herbs and all the natural ingredients and how every dish was unique in its own right, not anything he could find elsewhere in the world…and he does travel a great deal, I must say.

We shared the durian ice cream, the mango ice cream (which is actually quinee, our local mango) and the Dreamy Nite for dessert and with our drinks, the total came up to RM135.00 for 5 persons. I guess that wasn’t too bad especially when everybody enjoyed what I ordered that day…and besides, it isn’t every day that I can get to meet my cousin from Australia and that sure called for something a little bit more special that the usual.