Old friend…

Well, he’s not old, just that we go back a long way to the days when we were very active on the radio and I had a few posts from way back in 2008 when we got to meet a number of times. Lately, with his family commitments and his work in Indonesia, we do not get to meet all that often but he did make it a point to drop by every year round Chinese New Year, except this year as I was not celebrating.

It so happened that he was in town and I saw the photograph on Facebook of the kampua mee he had…

*Friend’s photo on Facebook*

…here. That is exactly what every true blue local born and bred would do the instant they come back home, go and eat kampua mee. Of course, I got in touch with him right away and we agreed to meet for lunch the following day here…

I have not had their claypot rice…

*Archive photo*

…for a very long time – we can’t order it when we drop by there now because it is not gluten-free – there is soy sauce in it and what we had had elsewhere may look nice, more or less the same but no, the taste just wasn’t there. It so happened that my friend went and googled to check out the place and he too saw the photo of their claypot rice and was looking forward to having that as well as he too was looking for THE right one.

Unfortunately, we were informed that it was not available and we would have to call a day earlier to place an order should we want to have that. WHAT? But all the times we had it, we never had to pre-order? I was quite put off by it but what to do? They were adamant that we could not have it so we had no choice but to order something else on their menu.

My friend’s wife had their pork chop with orange sauce rice…

…that my missus had once and loved it a lot but we do not order that anymore as the meat would be coated with bread crumbs…

…and would not be gluten-free as well. It was RM12.90  in 2016 – I dunno how much it is now.

My friend went for one of the lunch sets (RM9.90 each), the tomato pork chop with rice…

…and when it was served, I thought I could detect the bolognese smell but he said it was lighter, not as strong and yes, it was good.

I went for what they call the Mexican pancake lunch set…

…and it sure looked a lot more substantial in the blurry photograph in their menu – I was positive I saw a slab of chicken chop and a sausage and something else, probably coleslaw, other than the fries but the lady did ask me if I wanted the big or the small and I chose the latter.

I can’t say I am all that crazy about the name especially with all those modern-day connotations and I did read somewhere that Mexicans call their pancakes honcakes and this one that I had looked like a chicken quesadilla, probably using those tortilla wraps available at the supermarkets – I did not ask if they made their own but yes, it was very nice – I loved the very tasty chicken filling…

…inside and I would say that I did enjoy it a lot.

All in all, we did have a pretty nice lunch and it was great getting to meet an old friend and his missus and catching up with one another’s lives but it could have been better if we had had the elusive claypot rice.

LE CAFE (2.299452,111.830832) is located along Brooke Drive, on your left if you are driving from town, in a block of shops after you have gone past the building where the Sheraton Restaurant is…before you get to the traffic lights where you turn right to get to the Sibu Medical Centre.