How the west was won…

This sparkling new place…

…just opened its doors a few weeks ago…

…and has been drawing the crowd by the droves…

…which came as a pleasant surprise, seeing that its location is kind of out of the way, quite far from the town and the commercial centres with just this Malay coffee shop in the block next door and nothing much else all around.

We would drive past every week when we sent my girl to her school in the jungle or went there to fetch her and bring her home and seeing the crowd and the cars there, we had been quite reluctant to go and check the place out all this while. However, Sunday was my missus’ birthday but we would be on the road again that day so we had our little celebration a day earlier, on Saturday.

I would give them top marks for their decor – it certainly is a very nice place despite the fact that it is not air-conditioned, right down to the signs on their washroom doors, this one for the gentlemen…

…and this one for the ladies…

Prior to our visit, a lot of my friends had dropped by there and they were praising the food to the skies on the restaurant’s Facebook page and also their own so I must say that my expectations were really very high when we went that day. Gee!!! It must be really very good, I was thinking.

The drinks…

…were fine,  RM2.50 for the kopi-o (coffee, black), hot or cold and RM6.90 for the lime juice. In the background, you can see one of the glass panels that allow you to catch a glimpse of the people preparing your food and talking about the food, my girl wanted the mushroom soup (RM6.00)…

…and I asked the girl whether they used the canned ones but she was not conversant in English and we ended up speaking in Malay as I was not in the mood to struggle with my Mandarin to communicate with her. No, she said, they made theirs from scratch…but no, it was way too diluted, nowhere near as nice as the ones here at that same price and their own-made garlic bread reminded me of one of my girl’s disastrous attempts at making gluten-free bread.

The mashed potatoes (RM6.00)…

…served with brown sauce were nothing more than potatoes, boiled and mashed but I loved the variety used, the rich and creamy ones that taste so good even on their own which, of course, meant that I did enjoy it very much. I used the Australian red potatoes for my beef soup that day but no, I did not think they were all that nice.

I had the aglio-olio spaghetti with grilled chicken (RM10.00)…

…which was a far cry from the ones we used to enjoy very much here but of course, for a mere RM10.00, I guess I have no cause for complaint. As for the chicken, yes, it was nice – my missus had the grilled chicken chop (RM15.00)…

…which, I guess, would be the one and the same thing but she wasn’t exactly thrilled by it unlike the ones that she would always go for here for RM9.50 only but of course, that one is just a coffee shop, nothing fancy, not an upscale classier place like this one.

My girl enjoyed her grilled New Zealand lamb shoulder (RM26.00)…

However, she said her favourite in town would be what she had here but if I remember correctly, the one there was almost double what one would need to fork out here.

All in all, it was a nice enough lunch – could probably do with a lot more of those herbs and spices to bring the taste to a whole new level. As it was, I did not feel it was anything sensational that would get us rushing back for more, definitely nothing like the impression I got from all the fave reviews that I saw. It made me think of this place here that used to draw people in such large numbers that people had to go real early and many had to queue to wait for a table – pretty decent cheap/affordable pseudo-western fare – but I heard it had since closed down – ever since the chef left and started his own elsewhere.

Actually, I was afraid that we might not get a table that day so I sent them a message via their Facebook page to make my reservation and I also asked if gluten-intolerant customers could bring our own gluten-free pasta like what we did here but no, I did not get any reply. My girl’s colleague wanted to drop by and try too that very night and she said that she called them twice but nobody answered the phone. Maybe this was because they are still new but they certainly would need to pull up their socks quickly and sort out the existing teething problems at this point in time.

WOW WOW WEST Sibu (2.296407, 111.885216) is 24 & 26, Jalan Tunku Abdul Rahman – on your left along the road leading to the Sibu Airport, past the traffic lights junction where you would turn left to go to the Sibu General Hospital but before the next junction where you would turn right to go into Jalan Tun Ahmad Zaidi Adruce.