Shangri La…

I knew of this place because I had seen friends sharing photographs of the food they ate there on Facebook but I did hear of the confusion some people had trying to locate it because they just assumed it was “Shangri La” instead of the Mandarin transcription, “Sianggelila“…

…which was in fact, a very popular Chinese song in the 50’s or earlier.

That day, we decided to check the place out and dropped by for lunch and that little sign above the entrance got me wondering why they did not have something bigger and a lot more impressive as it certainly was a very nice place…

…and it was only when we had left the restaurant and were driving away that I turned round the corner when I saw the main entrance – you come in through here…

…if you are entering through that side and it sure looked very grand. However, I did not bother to stop and take a photograph of that – another time, perhaps.

This was actually Furama, a restaurant in the next block of shops, but they have shifted here and renamed it, instead of sticking to the original. A friend who has a shop in that block kept telling me that the food was nice and I should go and try but I never did.

That day, we decided to go for the Marmite spare ribs…

It seems kinda popular these days, Marmite crabs, Marmite prawns, Marmite chicken, Marmite whatever and yes, it was very very nice…

…not too strong on the Marmite taste, lightly sweet, not really salty and we all loved it! We certainly would want to order it again should we come across any other place serving Marmite-anything.

The kiam sor (salty and crusty) fish fillet…

…that my girl wanted was all right – it was the frozen fish fillet (dory) that I am never fond of. I enjoyed the fish, tapah probably…

…in the chao chai (preserved vegetable) soup…

…a lot more except that I had to be very careful with the bones.

The photograph of the Four Heavenly Kings came out blur and incidentally, they only have three here – brinjal, long bean and baby corn and we asked for it to be fried with sambal belacan (dried prawn paste) and yes, that was very good.

They certainly were very generous with the freshly-cut sliced chilies…

…with soy sauce but unfortunately, they were not spicy/hot at all – the problem that we often encounter when we buy these peppers nowadays.

The peanuts…

…didn’t come free – that plate was RM4.00, I think. My girl used to enjoy it when going for Chinese sit-down dinners but she can’t eat that anymore, the coating is not gluten free. Well, if I am not wrong, I could have asked them to take it back and strike it off my bill but I did not bother.

We also had a 1.5 litre bottle of their own made lo han kuo (RM6.00) drink to share and I think the rice is a bit pricey here, RM2.00 a bowl. Having said that, the total for the food was only RM57.00…even though overall, it came up to RM75.00. All in all, we enjoyed the lunch – we liked the food though I would not mind a little less msg – I will have to tell them that the next time we come here…and perhaps, one meat dish, one vegetable and a soup would be enough for the three of us seeing how generally, the servings were kind of huge.

SIANGGELILIA XIQING RESTAURANT (2.306309, 111.848066) is located at No. 48, Lorong 7C, Jalan Pahlawan back to back with the wet market (and Baba & Siam) among the shops to the left of the Sibu Bus terminal. Somebody opened a big food court there a long time ago but it did not last very long and the place had been vacant since.