Greedy…

Last week, my girl told me that she and her mum had to go some place to do something late evening, Saturday and I told her that I could take them there and once they were done, we could go some place nice for dinner.

That was why we did not cook lunch that day but my girl did fry this very nice mee mamak…

…for brunch to tide us over till dinnertime.

For our dinner that day, we agreed to drop by here where we could sit at the tables at the covered pavement outside, all nicely spaced out for physical distancing and anyway, we were early so there were no other customers at the time. The boss was busy preparing some water chestnuts, probably for the drinks so his handsome young son took my orders.

My girl loved the fried own-made tofu that previous time we were here and we liked the prawn fritters too so we would like to have those again. We did not have the mini ngor hiang balls as it was a Friday that day so of course, this time around, I asked for the combination of all three for three persons (RM16.50)…

…and obviously, that meant three of each. The ngor hiang seemed a little bigger and yes, it was as good as ever!

Normally, that would do for our meat dish but I was feeling like having some stewed pork leg after seeing what Nancy’s hubby had that day so I asked for a smaller serving. The boy said that the minimum would be for two persons so I agreed to have that with two stewed eggs (RM22.00)…

…by the side. That was quite a lot – I didn’t expect that much actually and I loved how we were not given any of the trotters/hooves nor the very fat cuts, just the lean and the skin, all that collagen. I guess without the trotters, there were no tendons at all then.

I must have been feeling real hungry or was just being plain greedy especially when I had not eaten much the whole day and I thought I would want another meat dish. I remember I had some very nice pork ribs…

…here once, marinated in traditional Foochow red wine, a bit of ang chao (the residue from making the wine) and also tau joo (fermented bean curd) and then, deep fried. Unfortunately, the boy was conversant only in Mandarin and I could not make head or tail out of what he was talking about most of the time.

In the end, I settled for the sweet and sour pork (RM24.00)…

…which, in my girl’s humble opinion, came nowhere near the very nice sweet and sour dishes here and anyway, there was too much for us to eat so we hardly ate much of it and asked for it to be tapao-ed for us to take home and heat up for lunch the next day.

The fried midin, ching chao (fried plain)…

…was very nice, just as nice as the last time we had it but this was RM12.00 a plate and only RM10.00 when the dad (boss) took my orders and suggested having servings for two only and looking at that post, it looked like there was a whole lot more. Maybe this is because of the current rising prices of anything and everything and there seems to be shortage of fresh local vegetables lately, just a lot of those imported ones.

We did not eat much of the ladies’ fingers (RM12.00)…

…so we took most of it home. I liked how it was not sticky but I did not like how it tasted burnt. Maybe they burnt the belacan when they toasted the dried prawn paste, I wouldn’t know.

I missed their fish maw clear soup (RM25.00)…

…my favourite soup anywhere in town. It did taste vaguely similar but no, it did not look the same…

For one thing, the soup was cloudy, not clear. Truth be told, if this is how they are going to do it these days, I shall not be ordering it again, thank you very much.

The total came up to over RM100.00 but of course, that was because I over-ordered. We could have had more than enough to enjoy with two less meat dishes and one less vegetable, actually. I guess when you have been confined to the house for too long, the moment you get to go out, you would want to order everything and besides, we hardly ate much the whole day that day.

A-PLUS FOOD CENTRE/RESTAURANT (2.293355, 111.823653) is located among the shops along Jalan Kampung Datu behind the block of shops (where Fresh & Pay Supermarket is) near the traffic lights at its junction with Jalan Tun Abang Haji Openg and Jalan Kampung Nyabor.