You treat me so good…

I sent word to Andy that we would be dropping by…

…for lunch that day and when we got there, that nice guy had reserved a table specially for us with fresh flowers and the lovely pua kumbu tablecloth…

Of course we didn’t want to sit there as it wasn’t any special occasion and we did not want to dirty the tablecloth and they would have to wash it later so we took a table without any table cloth (they usually have that for dinner, not for lunch) but with those lovely fresh torch ginger flowers, no less…

…but of course, that special treatment did not go unnoticed – they sure treat me so good here.

They gave me these apple mangoes from Peter’s own garden…

…but they’re not ripe yet so I have not eaten them at the time of writing.

In the meantime, they have made this fresh batch of their super-duper hot chili sauce…

…selling for RM15.00 now, up from RM12.00 that last time but of course, these bottles are bigger than the previous cylindrical plastic ones.

My girl wanted the chicken chop…

…with the special chicken sauce and it was done perfectly well and we thought it was extra nice that day.

Like what we did a few times before, we requested for the two slices of their garlic bread to be left out as it is not gluten free and had it replaced by their mashed potato instead. It never occurred to me that it was not really a fair switch – the mashed potato probably cost around the same as their garlic bread dish…

…with four or five slices plus the sauce…but they did not mind doing it upon our request – I heard that others had tried asking for the same but sorry, they were not accorded that same privilege. Still, I do think it would not be so nice to do it all the time so perhaps the next time, we would just order the chicken chop as it is and we can eat the bread (would be lovely to dunk it in curry) or just ask them to omit it…and we will have the mashed potato as a separate order to go with the meat.

I had their Bangladeshi lamb curry…

…that I had not ordered for a while because my girl has this preference for their lamb masala that is just as nice and not spicy at all. This curry may be spicy sometimes depending on the chili that they manage to get from the market – some days, the chili is not hot at all or as what one seller told me once, they would be good only for the colour and for decoration. Well, that day, it wasn’t spicy so Andy gave us a bit of their aforementioned chili sauce and they went so well together – it certainly was so good with it.

It looked like I was given a lot more than their regular serving with just three chunks of the meat – there were at least 4 or more that day plus some bite-sized boneless pieces as well…and there were quite a lot of the potatoes too. I so love potatoes in curry.

The green curry…

…that my missus had was very nice as well and it was spicy! I asked Peter why the colour was not red and he said that they use green chili for the dish.

To go with our meat dishes and rice, I ordered their version of the Thai som tam – the papaya salad…

– I saw Andy making it and the strips of the petals of the torch ginger flower that he added helped enhance the taste and bring it to a whole new level. We did enjoy it a lot, I must say.

That sure was a delightful lunch, as always and it so happened that my friend/ex-student, Alex, dropped by for lunch too with his missus and new-born baby girl and when I wanted to pay, I was informed that he had picked up the tab already – thank you so much, Alex! We gotta bump into each other a lot more often. LOL!!!

Incidentally, I have heard of people trying to locate this place but in vain even though I always give the address, the GPS and a description of the location…

*Photo from Google Maps*

Yes, the shop sign is blocked by the thatched roof in front, part of the decor of the place but there is one at the back that you can see quite clearly if you are coming down the lane to the right of that leading hotel in town at the back and there is another sign by the side now – just that it is not lit so it may not be all that visible at night. Nonetheless, it is there to the extreme left of that block of shophouses (the one with what look like four Roman columns), right behind the hotel.

PAYUNG CAFÉ (2.284049, 111.833014) is located at No.20F, Lanang Road, Sibu, Malaysia, back to back with the multi-storey car park of the Kingwood Hotel which faces the majestic Rejang River.