If you think that if the place is very crowded, the food must be great, that may not always be true. I do find some of the “unsung heroes” around here a lot nicer that the ones that a lot of people go to but I guess they have their reason(s).
This place has always been crowded and the last time we were here, there were hits and misses. We liked two of the dishes we ordered but the third one was not to our liking but as that Meatloaf song goes, “Two out of three ain’t bad.”
Actually, we wanted to drop by here for the very nice nasi kerabu that day but it was closed and I noticed that it now has a different name. I will have to go there again one of these days to see if there are some new people running the show or what and whether their nasi kerabu is as nice as the one we used to love a lot. In the end, we decided to have our lunch here that day as it would be very convenient for my girl to stroll over to the mall close by to shop for a few things once we were done.
As always, the place was very packed and it sure did not help that it was a Saturday and a public holiday but luckily, we were able to grab a table for three by the side. The nice matronly lady from the chu char place at the back came and took our orders and she was very accommodating, taking note of our request not to suggest anything with wheat flour and soy sauce. She said that the hot plate tofu would have soy sauce as it would be used for marinating the minced meat in the dish so she was of the opinion that it would be better if we had the ang sio version…
…instead. It was very nice – we did enjoy it – but we thought it paled in comparison to the one here or here.
The salted vegetable tofu soup…
…was nice too, nicer than here but the one here is still better – more like what we would cook ourselves at home. I am not too sure but somehow I felt that the sour taste of the soup was not completely from the salted vegetables. It seemed to me like they had added some vinegar to it so even though it was all right, it just was not the same.
I ordered their bitter gourd omelette…
…to give it a try and it was all right too, just that personally, I would prefer the one here with the lap cheong (Chinese sausage) or here.
After she assured us that they would coat the meat with tapioca flour, not wheat, to deep fry, I ordered their kiam sor (salty and crispy/crusty) pork…
…but we were served a plate of sweet and sour pork instead. Of course, we had to ask them to take it back as there is wheat in tomato sauce too even though we did not mention it to the lady since we did not order anything with ketchup. Once again, we could detect the use of some bottled essence as in the case of the salad sotong that we had on our previous visit so this was not to our liking.
The total came up to RM36.60, inclusive of 3 plates of rice, which was not as cheap as I had expected but it was all right, just that I was thinking that if we had gone some place else, we probably would have enjoyed the lunch a lot more.
MEI LE CAFE (2.313147, 111.846968) is located along Jalan Gambir, a stone’s throw away from the Delta Mall, on your left as soon as you turn into that road from Jalan Pedada.
...STILL CRAZY AFTER ALL THESE YEARS! 