It’s still here…

I dropped by here on the day of its soft opening in November, 2015 and when my girl was home, we went a second time. Well, after all this time, it is still around and the other morning, my missus and I dropped by to see if anything has changed.

Well, they have home delivery now…

…but I did not ask them the radius. I am sure they will not want to send if your house is too far away.

Despite being a self service eatery…

…you do not go to the counter to place your order, pay for everything and then wait for the food to take to your table yourself like what one would usually do at those fast food franchises. Here, you can pick your table and take your seat – they will send the menu to you together with some blank pieces of paper and a pencil to write what you want. Once that is done, you take it to the counter and pay for everything and then you return to your seat and wait to be served.

That was not a problem for me as I am all right with the languages used here – Malay and English but it turned out that the girl served us one drink only as she did not see the 2 that I wrote by the side to indicate that I would want two of the same.

Ah yes!!! You will have to go yourself to the designated place to get your chili dips…

…so that day, my missus went and helped herself to a whole lot for herself and also for me. In the end, I did not touch any of the two types of dips available – I will explain why later – but my missus did say that she liked the one on the left that looked like the dips at those chicken rice places.

I asked for the gado-gado (RM7.00)…

…to share as I remember I did enjoy it on one of the two previous occasions when we were here. I was wishing the whole time that they had left out the somewhat bland and not very tasty keropok (prawn crackers) especially when we are so accustomed to the homemade ones that we would usually get from Mukah or Bintulu that are nicer by a mile. I wouldn’t mind a bit more potatoes…

…but at places like this, I do not think they will adhere to your whims and fancies. You will just have to take it as it is.

I picked one of the breakfast sets…

…available from 10.00 a.m. till 12.30 p.m. only – the nasi lemak ayam bakar (RM8.40, inclusive of GST)…

…that turned out to be pretty nice. This is called by its Indonesian name on their regular menu – nasi uduk and it is priced at over RM12.00 but the girl said that if I ordered that, the serving would be bigger. No, thank you! There was a lot already on my platter, very very filling and it sure took me quite a while to finish everything.

The chicken was so very good – I loved the smoked fragrance from the bakar-ing (grilling) and the taste of everything used to marinate the meat but though it was better than those times when we were here before, I did feel that the texture of the chicken was not as firm as I would like it to be. Maybe they marinated it for too long or what till it became way too tender/soft, I would not know.

Other than the half-boiled egg, half of it, they had this version of the kacang (peanuts) and the ikan bilis (dried anchovies)…

…by the side where I think you will have to add sugar and cook over low heat to caramelise everything. I actually love this but unfortunately, the kacang had gone soft/limp (lau hong/masuk angin) so I did not enjoy it.

The sambal…

…was very nice but no, it was definitely not something for the faint-hearted. It was so so so so very spicy hot that I was actually suffering instead of enjoying eating it. If someone like me who is so much into spicy stuff had a problem with it, it would take someone with a tongue of steel, I think,  to be able to handle that level of spiciness…and that was why I did not need those aforementioned chili dips at all.

As for the rice, it was not lemak – I could not detect the santan (coconut milk) but it made up for it with the nice fragrances of whatever was used in the cooking, probably serai (lemon grass), pandan (screwpine leaves) and whatever else.

My missus had the ayam penyet with rice (RM10.30, inclusive of GST)…

…and yes, she did enjoy it somewhat…

…and she finished all the chili dips that she took, both hers and mine.

All in all, I would say that was a pretty good brunch that we had but for RM32.30, inclusive of drinks, it would take a lot more than this to get us to drop by here a lot more often.

AYAM PENYET RIA (2.318555, 111.832076) is located at Jalan Tapang Timur, off Jalan Kampung Nangka, among the shops in the vicinity of Sungai Antu, directly opposite the RTM office/studio and transmitting station here.