Only the names have been changed…

It used to be called by this name…but now, it has been changed to…

…literally translated as mum’s house/home, while inside, everything pretty much remains the same…

Other than the name, the menu is different now too though I would not say any of the items would be anything I would find at my mum’s house. I saw laksa and mee sua in the list but I was kind of put off by the tints of blue – they probably have a lot of the bunga telang (butterfly pea flower) growing at home. Yes, they have a dish with blue rice that looked like it would be nice but I certainly would  draw the line at a blue hard-boiled egg!

We dropped by for lunch the other day and my attention was drawn to the gong lou mee. As far as I know, while the Sibu kampua noodles and the Kuching kolo mee are native to Sarawak, Sabah has its own konlou mee , its own version of the tossed and served kind of noodles, and I ordered that right away to see if it was any good even though personally, I did not think very much of the one I had there many years ago  or the one I had at another place here more recently.

This was I got (RM16.80)…

…in the end with the butter milk chicken by the side, one nicely-done poached egg and two lightly-blanched leaves of green vegetable. The noodles came across to me like fried egg noodles or our own freshly-made thinner and curly kampua mee – it did not seem anything like boiled-to-cook noodles tossed in whatever ingredients.

Having said that, I thought it was quite nice, a tad salty but it was all right after I had broken the egg yolk and mixed it along with the vegetable and garnishings altogether with the noodles…and yes, the chicken was very nice, no doubt about that.

I was served this chicken soup…

…compliments from the chef – I guess that would be what I would get had I ordered the mee sua and though I did not think it was anything like our own home-cooked version, my girl liked it a lot. Maybe it was the wine used.

My girl wanted the mee mamak that the mum had on one of our previous visits and even though they said the serving would be smaller (RM15.80)…

…we thought it was the same except that for RM2.00 more the last time, we got two sticks of their very nice satay and the peanut sauce to go with them…plus the prawns were very much bigger too!

I was delighted to see porchetta in the menu – I had seen that in friends’ blogs and online and was looking forward to giving it a try someday, just that I don’t think it is available anywhere here. Unfortunately, I was duly informed that it was still in the process of being cooked and it would be available had I come in for dinner. I guess I will just have to try my luck another time then.

In the end, we asked for their golden squid (RM15.80)…

…which turned out to be really nice and we did enjoy that a lot.

My ex-student, John, whose family runs the place says that he prefers the previous menu and I must say that I would agree too. It did seem to go down quite well with the locals though – there seemed to be a lot more people there now. Maybe they were all there to give it a try – the trick would be to please them enough to get them coming back for more. Hopefully, they are able to do just that.

NIANG JIA, formerly LADOREE CAFE & EVENTS (2.302891, 111.842997), is located at Wisma Liberty, Lot 4047, Block 3, Jalan Pedada (now Jalan Dr. Wong Soon Kai).