Save…

Whenever he is home from Auckland, New Zealand, my brother would walk to a coffee shop in this vicinity when he is not going out – the house is right around the corner some 200 metres or so away – for his kampua mee fix. Personally, I am not crazy about most of what I had at the stall there and I thought the kampua mee paled in comparison with the old lady’s when she was there before. I would much sooner go to this coffee shop…

…to the extreme right of this same block beside the grocery store at the very end.

The kampua mee is very nice, more like the old school, original/authentic ones that we grew up eating and loving so much in our growing up years. I asked my brother why he would not go there instead and he said that he heard someone say that the shop was very dirty. It used to be run by an old couple, an old man and an old lady and they sure were no Marie Kondo – there were boxes and crates and bags of stuff strewn everywhere all over the shop but I do not see them there now. The shop is now run by a young man and a lady, probably the son and the daughter of the old couple as I could see the resemblance to the mother, and another lady, maybe the daughter-in-law.

I must say that unlike before, everything is arranged and put away nicely now…

…but of course, the mosaic-tiled floor has seen better days and a fresh coat of paint on the walls would certainly help spruce things up. However, I did not think it was dirty in any way, not at all…and I guess the many customers that I see eating and drinking here every day do not feel it is so either.

I dropped by the other morning and had the kopi-o-peng (RM1.50)…

…and it was very good, cheaper than most places by 30 sen and I would say it could rank among the best in town.

I saw a lady and her daughter having some fried stuff so I decided to give that a try for a change. While I was waiting, I looked at the menu…

…and noticed that it would cost only RM3.80, 20 sen cheaper than most places elsewhere and a lot cheaper than some.

When it was served, I was kind of disappointed as I would prefer the ones with the dark gravy…

…but once tossed…

…it would look pretty much the same, anyway. For one thing, I was very impressed by the amount of ingredients – elsewhere, one would hardly be able to see the bits of meat and vegetables with the naked eye. I am not all that fond of the vegetable though, the khiew chai (curly vegetable), great in soup – usually, they will use sawi and when it comes to fried noodles, I like that more.

It may not seem like a lot but for what I paid for the mee and the coffee, I did manage to save 50 sen and if my missus had been with me, that would be a ringgit already. As they say in Malay, sikit sikit jadi bukit (a bit at a time, a mountain in the end) but most importantly, the mee and the drink were great. I hear the Sarawak laksa is good too – perhaps I will try that next time.

TUNG MING CAFE (2.307601, 111.824983) is located along Lorong Delta 10, the second shop in the first block of shops on your right, after the first one – a grocery store, as you turn into the lane from Jalan Delta in the vicinity of the houses behind the Delta Public Swimming Pool.