As time passes by…

On our first morning in Kuching, I had gone out at the break of dawn for the kueh chap at Lao Ya Keng – I had blogged about that in yesterday’s post and when my girl was up around mid-morning, we walked all the way here…

I was here once in 2011 and actually, my girl was with me at the time but it had completely slipped my mind.

Yes, the kolo mee stall was still around…

…enjoying really brisk business with a whole of of people stopping by for the noodles. It is a lot more expensive now though – the price had gone up from RM2.80 in 2011 to RM4.00 for a small bowl and RM5.00…

…for the large one.

I noticed that they served a complimentary bowl of clear soup now, something that they did not use to do before but I did not think it was all that nice this time around. The char siew was kind of dry and hard and though on the whole, it was quite all right with a very strong garlicky taste, it did not sweep me off my feet, unlike the first time we were here.

I asked my girl and she too felt that same way. I guess we shall not go through all that effort to make our way there anymore should we happen to hop over to Kuching again.

After we had had our fill, we walked back to India Street…

…and browsed around the shops in the vicinity on our way back to the hotel.

I strolled over to my favourite pastry shop at Kai Joo Lane…

…but I guess it was still early in the morning and they did not have everything in their list…

I bought a few of their meat pastry or what they call siew pau…

…but no, sad to say, these too were not as nice as when the old folks were making them way back in the 70’s. Back then, the filling was a bit moist and one could see chunks of char siew and green peas but these days, it is all minced meat and rather dry but to give credit where credit is due, it still tasted quite good and the main draw, the pastry, is still as nice as I remember it to be.

The yam puffs…

…are more expensive by a ringgit but it is very much bigger and even though they do not seem to be able to make it like how people usually do it – with a nice fibrous exterior, I thought they were very nice, perhaps even nicer than the siew pau. I regretted not buying more – I only asked for three, one for each one of us, to eat in our hotel room.

ORIENTAL PARK CAFE 国泰东方古早味 (1.558891, 110.341900) is located at Market/Gertak Lane where the now-closed-down Cathay Cinema was and CHONG CHON BISCUIT MAKER (1.559214, 110.343394) is located at No. 6, Kai Joo Lane, off India Street, on the left in Kuching.