I wanted to take my girl here…
…for dinner that night to give her a really special treat but we were too early, even after our stroll around the pasar malam (night market) round the corner but that did not deter us from our plan so we just loitered around outside and waited for it to open…
…and it finally did, for reasons unknown, a little bit after 6.00 p.m.
It is located along what used to be called Old Street (My father had his shop at No. 8)…
…now renamed Jalan Chew Geok Lin, and yes, the restaurant is as old as its sign – nothing much has changed since the last time I was here and I am glad to say that it is the same with the food they serve too. I do enjoy some of their dishes here and I would not mind the higher-than-most prices even but parking in the area is such a pain so I usually do not bother coming here and that is why I have not been here for some years now.
Yes, we were served the keropok (fish crackers) – that is their usual practice here and no, it is not complimentary. You will find it charged to your bill eventually…but no, we did not mind that one bit. We never did! But this time around, we asked them to take it back as we were unsure as to whether any wheat flour was used in the making, rendering it not gluten-free…and yes, they were willing to do that, no problem whatsoever at all.
We ordered their very nice paku (wild jungle fern) with santan (coconut milk)…
…and I dare say nobody does it better! It not only tastes good, it looks really good too, so much so that somebody saw it fitting to use the photograph from this old post of mine in her article here – without giving any credit whatsoever and it was only until I went and made noise that they linked my photos to my blog. Sadly, the story did not end there – others helped themselves to the photographs and they even cropped them to get rid of the credit given to my blog at the bottom to share on their Facebook pages. Sigh!!! Where is the decency and integrity, I wonder?
Anyway, back to the food, yes, this dish was very nice as always and we also ordered their midin (another variety of our local wild jungle fern) fried with belacan (dried prawn paste) as well but they had run out of it so we had it replaced with kangkong (water spinach)…
…instead. I would be quite reluctant to order anything with belacan elsewhere as I would not be sure that they would use the best quality ones from Bintulu and what they dish out in the end may have a not-so-pleasant smell and taste. Of course we did not encounter any problem here and yes, we really enjoyed the greens very much.
We also had the lokan (clams), one each…
…stuffed with meat filling…
…and deep fried and yes, they were good too.
However, the main reason why I wanted to bring my daughter here for dinner was because I wanted her to enjoy their roast rack of lamb served with mint sauce and some garlic and ginger dip…
…and my girl enjoyed it to the max. It sure looked like they had worked on improving their presentation…
…too but no, it did not come cheap – I had to fork out RM50.00 for the three thick slabs but one thing I must say is that I am pleased that that was exactly the same price I paid way back in 2014 for two much bigger slabs of the meat and after all these years, it was as good as it was then.
The total for the dinner did not come up to RM80.00 and I definitely would say it was well worth it. I sure would not mind coming back here again and perhaps next time, I could call a Grab car so I would not need to worry about looking for a place to park my car.
FISHERMAN RESTAURANT (2.287413, 111.826648), telephone no. 084-316888, is located at No 4, Jalan Chew Geok Lin, the road that leads straight to the Chinese temple in the Sibu town centre with the seven-storey pagoda.
...STILL CRAZY AFTER ALL THESE YEARS! 