Presumptuous…

After the early morning church service last Sunday, we dropped by here for breakfast.

I spotted this (RM6.00)…

…on sale so I grabbed one to try – there was only one left at that point in time.

I thought it was all right…

– it tasted something like our sambal udang kering except that ikan bilis (dried anchovies) was used instead, great with rice, bread or crackers. My missus loved it though, for the simple reason that it was very spicy.

She had her favourite sambal fried kway teow here…

…with a special request for it to be extra spicy, of course and I ordered the same for my girl but I asked for it to be fried “white” or without soy sauce, that is…

She did not seem to enjoy it so much though and was struggling with it and in the end, I think she barely finished half of it. I did try a bit and I thought it was all right just that it was not quite the same – I guess we are more used to having soy sauce in our char kway teow and would prefer it that way. She had the bihun fried this way once and she did enjoy it then.

This local franchise…

…has taken over the roti canai stall – they serve burgers but instead of using buns, they use our Foochow chu nu miang, the sweet and soft version of the bagel-like kompia. I did not try that though as I had something else in mind – the mee sua…

…from the stall somewhere in the middle.

I had it once and I liked it a lot and there I went praising it to the skies and an ex-student suggested that I went and tried the one here – I thought that was very good too but the one here was better. Well, the sad news is that the one there (the kampua mee and the pian sip were very good too, rather popular among the locals) had closed down and the shop will be taken over by this Kuching Indian/mamak franchise, scheduled to open in December.

I ordered what I wanted and sat there waiting and I observed that the ladies were busy with other things and were not getting down to cook what I had wanted. They noticed that and asked me what I wanted – that sure pissed me off. I had already placed my order and after all this while, you asked me again what I wanted. Still, I did not see them getting down to it.

After some time, I saw a not-very-young lady with a bowl of hung ngang (the big bihun) in a tray trying to serve it to the people at the table behind me and of course, those folks insisted they did not order that. The ladies from the aforementioned stall came over and said that I had ordered that but with mee sua…and by then, a young guy had come over and he looked kind of physically disabled but not very seriously. Seeing that and since the lady serving was no spring chicken either, I said that I would have that bowl of hung ngang…

…if it wasn’t anybody else’s order.

I was already fuming by then and the coffee shop owner attracted by the confusion and commotion had come over and he told me that those ladies were no longer selling mee sua as they could not cope and they had ordered from another stall in the coffee shop – the one right beside the kampua mee stall.  He added that he had tried it before and though the taste was not quite the same, it was pretty good as well.

Now, that sure was grossly presumptuous of them, I must say. They should have told me that they were not selling that anymore (and they should have taken down that photograph at their stall) and suggested that I ordered from this other stall. Yes, it did not taste quite the same and yes, it tasted all right but I did not want hung ngang…

– I wanted mee sua and besides. it was RM7.00 a bowl! The one I had before was RM6.00 a bowl only and there were two chunks of chicken, a shitake mushroom and one hard-boiled egg while this one had one drumstick, one shitake mushroom and a poached egg, that was all.

No, I did not make a scene – my girl would not like that but I guessed she knew I was upset and apparently, that affected her somewhat – she is always kind of emotional – and I think that was the real reason why she could barely finish half her plate of kway teow. After this kind of experience, I don’t think we will be in a hurry to go back to that coffee shop again…not for a long, long time.

HAPPINESS CAFE, (2.306608, 111.827179) formerly KONG MA MA, is located along Lorong Delta 4, off Jalan Delta. The left turn into Lorong Delta 9 will lead you straight to the Delta Public Swimming Pool.