That’s not it…

I can positively remember a variation of the ang sio hu, what they call the sui tee hu or sweet and sour fish at times, if I am not wrong, that does not have any tomato sauce in it and is thus, not red in colour. I do recall having that at our 10 or 12-course banquets at our local restaurants in my younger days and there would be some know-it-all at the time who would snootily scoff at the fish, saying that it was not fresh and that was why they deep-fried it and served it that way instead of steaming it.

Sometimes, on days when my mum was caught up with something, my dad would bring along the tiffin carrier and buy a few dishes home for our meals and yes, he did buy deep-fried fish, or chio/ikan bawal hitam (black pomfret), cooked this way too. Once, those days when my mum was bed-ridden and I was there every morning to keep her company, he bought it from here and yes, it was very very nice. However, he never did buy it again and I never did ask him why.

Well, I did ask them before when I finally got round to dropping by myself for a meal but they said they only had the one with tomato sauce, either that or deep-fried and served plain garnished with lots of fried garlic and whatever on top. Of course, I was baffled as I was positive that my dad bought it from there then until sometime ago, I heard from one of my cousins that the people who were originally there had moved here…

…in the area of shops behind the Rejang Medical Centre, right round the corner from this bak kut teh place…

They have this zhi-char (煮炒, literally translated as cook & fry) section at the back…

…and I spotted this phak lor ark (stewed five-spice duck)…

…in the cabinet. I would have loved to order that and my girl would have loved it too but these days, she is off soy sauce, not gluten-free, so we had to give it a miss.

I asked the guy who came to take our orders and he said yes, he could cook it without adding any tomato sauce but my hopes were dashed when it was served…

No, that was not it! It certainly did not look like that at all – the Bombay onions, tomato and chili, and there was garlic too, were all chopped into tiny bits and the sauce was a little thicker – probably more cornflour had been added to it. Thankfully, it tasted great and we really enjoyed it. For one thing, he was very young so probably it was his dad or someone else who used to cook the way I wanted, not him.

We also had the midin, ching chao (wild jungle fern, cooked plain)

…and also the pork trotter and Szechuan vegetable soup…

Both were good too but my girl said that she liked the soup at the other place a lot more. This one had too many wolfberries and the taste drowned out that of the Szechuan vegetables…but I could detect that in the meat, not so much the soup.

Maybe it was the size of the fish and there was quite a lot of meat in the soup and that explained why the total for the food alone came up to RM46.00 which would be more or less what I would usually fork out at that other place but that would be for more than just three dishes. Nonetheless, since we did enjoy the food as a whole, we sure would not mind coming back here again  when we feel like it.

HAI JING CAFE (2.293430, 111.835477) is located at the end of Lorong Chew Siik Hong 5 in the Fortune Commercial Centre – the area of shops behind the Rejang Medical Centre.