Wrong move…

Last Friday, we dropped by here as it was our no-meat Friday, purely by choice, not owing to any kind of obligation and I wanted to come here for the fish curry.

No sooner had we arrived, a man came by our table with bags of the chay lenggeng/green matakucing (cat’s eyes)…

…or bua’ esau in Melanau – the yellow ones are called bua’ kurih.

My missus enjoys these green ones so I bought 1 kilo for her, RM20.00! These local fruits certainly cost an arm or a leg these days. Come to think of it, it may be cheaper to go for the used-to-be-more-expensive imported fruits instead. Of course, I would not touch the fruit – I was still having my cough though the vigorous bouts of coughing (till I go all red in the face) were getting fewer and far between.

The man was also selling these dabai (black olive)…

They were very cheap now, only RM15.00 a kilo. When they first appeared this season, they were going for as much as RM50.00 a kilo. Goodness gracious me! I just can’t believe that there are people willing to fork out that kind of money for the fruit. My missus also loved eating them (and me too, but I was having my cough, remember?) so I bought a kilo for her.

Both of us had the nasi campur (mixed rice) and she had these…

– their fish curry, ladies’ fingers and bitter gourd.

I had their fish curry too…

…and I did take a few more of the ladies’ fingers in it as well.

I thought this was pineapple…

…but when I got down to eating it, I found that it wasn’t and I just could not tell what it was. In the end, I did ask them and it turned out to be unripe papaya. Hmmm…that was nice! I sure wouldn’t mind having a go at it again should I happen to see it here.

I also took this fried fish…

…and they had prepared this very nice sambal belacan (dried prawn paste dip)…

…to go with it. They placed the bottle strategically beside the fish in the display cabinet and one could help to as much as one desired at no extra charge, unlike here where you would have to fork out 50 sen for just a miserable tablespoon more of the sambal. Tsk! Tsk!

The nice and handsome young boy asked us if we would like any complimentary soup and we said no, we were fine without it but he insisted on serving it to us…

It was very nice, very strong on the beef flavour and I truly enjoyed it a lot.

I had the teh tarek, shaken not stirred…

…and my missus had the iced lemon and the total for what we had, inclusive of drinks, was RM15.00. I thought that was quite reasonable – yes, I was glad that I was not given any more so-very-generous discounts like on so many of our previous visits. Business is business.

That night, for dinner, my missus prepared some of the dabai to eat and I did have a few seeds as well – yes, it was very very nice, so very rich and creamy but that certainly was a wrong move on my part, a really terrible mistake. My coughing the whole night through kept me awake till morning. I swore there and then that I would not eat any of these fruits ever again…till the next season.

SRI PELITA CAFE (2.293579, 111.820700) is located along Lorong Kampung Datu 11, off Jalan Kampung Datu, the first shop in the block to the right of Paramount Hotel.