Generally…

The first time I went to Singapore was in 1971, if I remember correctly, and they took me to this place at Queen Elizabeth’s Walk, where the Merlion was located, to what they called the Satay Club.

They had so many stalls there, all selling satay, and of course, I was bewildered. How on earth would they be able to make good business if they were all selling the same thing! They did not seem to have a problem with that though and it was business as usual each passing day. Probably they had a lot more people in Singapore or perhaps, a lot of tourists would go there and would drop by so business was always good.

Here, we have satay in the area that we call Bandong. There are two at the MUC (Malay Union Club) hawker centre, this one and this one and among the Bandong shops, there is this one plus a new one that I saw the other day but I have not given it a try yet.

I bought the satay from another one somewhere among the shops, a Chinese man, once and I thought his was pretty good as well but when I mentioned it on Facebook, I was bombarded by virtually everybody. They were all shocked that I did not go to this stall…

…at Bandong Walk and they all insisted that their satay…

…was the best in town.

They did forewarn me that I would have to go early as by 4.00 p.m., there would be a long queue there already. I did go over a couple of times and yes, there were long queues or it was not open. Then, disaster struck – the pandemic broke out and I did not bother going over to check out the place in those two years or more.

Well, I felt like having some satay for dinner the other day so I went to have a look. Yes, it was open and YES!!! There was no queue!!! I quickly parked my car by the side of the road and walked over and placed my order right away…

The girl said that they would be open by around 3.30 p.m. every day. They would cook the skewers of marinated meat over the hot charcoal fire and then put them aside – once somebody orders any, they would take them and cook them again to char them nicely this time around before serving…

This way, customers would not have to wait too long.

I bought 10 sticks of chicken and 5 sticks of beef and 10 sticks of lamb…

Why only 5 of the beef, you may wonder? Once, I did not like the beef these Malay stalls used – some people told me it was from India and it was bad enough that it had some kind of an unpleasant smell but it was also so very tough, so tough that even the strongest and sharpest teeth would find it hard to bite and chew.

However, lately, I find the beef ones to be very nice including the ones that I bought that day. In fact, the beef ones were the nicest and personally, I was not too crazy about the chicken. The old lady at the stall gave me the peanut satay sauce…

…one plastic tub of it and I asked if she could give me some more so she gave me another one…

…slightly smaller.

The total for all that I bought came up to RM34.50…

…and because they did not have any ketupat, I went to the shop at the back and bought 3, RM1.00 each…

…from the Bangla guy there. I did not buy any cucumber as we had our own at home and we could eat that together with the satay and the ketupat. So what did I like about this stall?

For one thing, the people were very gentle and soft-spoken, so very nice and they were all very well-dressed. Most of them would just put on some very old discoloured t-shirts, all tattered and torn and looking so shabby it would put off one’s appetite right away.

As for the taste, yes, it was very very nice but the thing is generally, I find all the satay from these Malay shops and stalls very much to my liking – they are all very nice. I bought the ones from the Bangla guy for my niece home from Auckland, New Zealand once and she declared out loud that she had never tasted any satay in the world that was so very nice!!!

The only ones that I no longer like would be these here at the Chinese coffee shop – they were so very nice before but obviously there has not been any quality control so the last time I had some, the taste was off and they have shrunk! The ones here, not far from my house, were very nice too but right now they are at a temporary location while they are renovating the hawker centre (and taking forever to do it). I guess there are others elsewhere like the stalls at Taman Harmoni or those in the other parts of town and chances are generally, they are all not too bad.

LATIFAH CAFE (2.314476, 111.825297) is one of the stalls/kiosks in the middle of Bandong Walk, along Jalan Bandong here, to the right if you are coming from town.

A little bit later on…

7.30 a.m. on Monday morning, I was at the car wash – as they say, it’s the early bird that catches the worm. By around 8.00 a.m., I was done so I went round looking for something I could enjoy for my late breakfast.

I ended up at this food court, thinking that I would be able to go for the roast duck/siew yoke kampua mee…

…but unfortunately, though the stall was open, there was nothing in the glass display cabinet. Perhaps I should have gone a little bit later as it was too early and the roast meats had not arrived yet (obviously they do not do the roasting and cooking there) and the young guy there was busy getting the stall ready.

The beef noodles stall was not open either and the Seremban guy was nowhere to be seen. Probably they and a few other stalls had taken the day off but looking at the photographs at the stall and the things on the latter’s menu, it sure looked like the guy had added a lot of things to his list of things that are available now. I saw Hakka mee in the list and I remember the very nice one I had at Yi Poh in Seremban, Negeri Sembilan…

I really must make it a point to drop by a little bit later on one of these days to give it a try!

In the end, I decided to order the fish balls soup…

…from the stall to the right of the Lok Lok stall in this section of the food court…

that they proudly declare are their own homemade with mackerel (bay kar/ikan tenggiri), no less.

As you can see in the photograph, there were not many people at the time after I had placed my order and gone to take my seat at a table and wait. Within minutes, a little bit later on, the place was full!

Perhaps it was an optical illusion but the fish balls looked big in the photographs I took…

…and the ones on display at the stall whereas in actual fact, they were flat, about the size of a 20-sen coin. I thought they were a bit over-beaten/whipped so it was a little too bouncy (QQ) for my liking. There could be no denying that lovely mackerel taste and flavour in the delightful soup though and I sure enjoyed it to the max.

A bowl of the soup is priced at RM10.00 and add an extra RM1.00, you can have your pick of any kind of noodles you prefer. Of course, I went for the tang hoon (glass noodles)…

…and that was good!

There were bits of minced meat in the soup but no minced meat balls like the ones in what I had here…

…not too long ago. The fish flavour was not that strong in that one but then again, it was only RM6.50 a bowl, so much cheaper and I would say, it was much nicer too (plus there was no parking fee in the vicinity)!

Of course, I shall be back here again soon but I’d try something else, the Seremban guy’s Hakka mee perhaps, not this fish balls soup, not at that kind of price, especially.

7七夜cafe (2.307862, 111.848497)…

…is located off Jalan Sena in the blocks of shops opposite Jalan Deshon on the right, the same side as Wikitea

Join in…

This beef noodle place at S/L 25, No. 1, GF, Lorong Bukit Assek 7, has been around since its soft opening on March 17 ,2022 and looking at the crowd there, day in and day out, it is pretty obvious that they have been doing well. Even my Penang blogger-friend, Ken, dropped by when he was in town with his fiancee and finally, at long last, I decided to join in the crowd myself.

I must say that they have been VERY aggressive in promoting their business on social media unlike many of the half-baked eateries around here. I believe many, especially the very good ones, would do exceptionally well if they had taken the trouble to go all out to publicise and advertise and promote their businesses like this one. Some, it seems, seem to think that money will miraculously drop down from the sky!

Initially, I would see something from them on Facebook every day or every other day, so very often and then, there were many of their customers sharing their experiences when they dropped by the place to give the beef noodles a try. It’s a bit quiet now but I guess everybody knows about it already so there is no need to go all out anymore, like before. There were mixed reviews – some liked what they had, some felt others were better, some said it was expensive, others said it was cheaper than others. I guess that is only to be expected – everyone is entitled to his or her own opinion or like I always say, to each his own!

I never dropped by to try though, despite the fact that my girl’s school is about a hundred metres away but when my girl came home talking about how her colleagues went and were praising it to the skies, nicer than here, they said (though I’ve heard others saying otherwise), I reckoned it was time for us to drop by and give it a try for ourselves, first-hand.

I had the triple – the beef, tripe and tendon, dry (RM21.90)…

…while my missus had the tripe, dry (RM10.90)…

…and our girl had just the beef, also dry (RM12.90)…

…with their own-made noodles…

…which were very firm and al dente, not quite like our regular (not) yellow noodles here in Sibu and each order came with this delightful bowl of beef soup…

The soup was very good, bursting with the taste and flavours of beef and we all enjoyed our individual orders of noodles. We never had these Taiwanese-style beef noodles dry before so we were unable to compare with the rest that we had had before, all the soup versions. I would say, however, that there was room for improvement where the tripe was concerned, not as soft and nice as what I had here but the meat and the tendon were fine.

“arki” is Iban for grandfather and of course, “sapi” is cow or beef and it is stated in front that it is own [SIC} by Minah Cafe…

…a Malay coffee shop at another part of town once. However, the guy running the place, obviously the owner, looked very Chinese and looking at all the other customers – a lot of Chinese and Malays, it did come across to me that this place was truly reflective of what we call keluarga Malaysia, all in the family.

The place is very small but there are TWO air-conditioners so it can get to be quite cold. Those not fond of air conditioning would be better off dining al fresco – there are tables and chairs outside all around where customers can sit and enjoy what they order.

Unlike the other (very popular) place that I mentioned earlier, there were many customers but not overly so and the waiting staff members were very prompt and efficient and what we ordered were served pretty fast. We did not have to wait forever like at that other place…and for that reason alone (among others), I dread going back there ever again!

ARKI SAPI NOODLE HOUSE (2.288391, 111.834351) is located at 33D, S/L 25, No. 1, GF, Lorong Bukit Assek 7.

Don’t change…

My girl wanted to drop by here for lunch that day because when we were here a fortnite earlier, it was on a Friday, our no-meat day, so she was not able to order her favourite here, their sizzling beef on a hot plate…

Of course, I did not have a problem with that and off we went!

Yes, it was very good, as nice as ever and to everyone’s liking and for our vegetable dish, we had the butter baby kai lan (Chinese broccoli)…

…which was good too.

There were a few other dishes that we used to order but I thought of trying something different for a change so I asked the young boy taking our orders (the lady boss’ son) if they had any “lok bak“. Unfortunately, he was monolingual and did not know what I was talking about – he did not know what “rusa” or “venison” is and unfortunately, I don’t know what it is in Mandarin so I asked him to call his mum who is conversant in Hokkien but unfortunately, they did not have the meat.

Eventually, I settled for “beef tendon in a claypot” on the menu and this…

…was what we got.

Well, it wasn’t in a claypot – the lady boss said it would be in one, a small one and no, the serving was definitely not small. It would not have mattered much if it had tasted great but no, I was not impressed, not at all. The sauce in the sizzling hot plate beef was heaps nicer!

Other than the taste, I was quite put off by what I could (or could not) find inside! There was hardly any beef tendon at all and just a few paper thin slices of beef. Instead, there were a whole lot of oyster mushroom and fried tofu, cut into thin long strips. Honestly, sometimes, it is better to stick to what’s familiar, things that we know are nice. This is one dish I would never order again.

The bill came up to RM63.00 for the three dishes, not cheap but of course, beef is not cheap and perhaps, that was a sign of the things to come, the rising prices. We just have to expect the pinch when we eat out these days.

After lunch, my missus wanted to go and buy some roast meats for dinner. There is a very popular stall at a coffee shop down the road – if I am not wrong, that is the older brother of the one in our neighbourhood that I frequent quite a lot so I suggested trying the ones here…for a change.

We were here once in 2020 but it did not sweep us off our feet so we never went back again. In the meantime, my good friend/ex-classmate, Robert, said their roast duck (sold out when we went that day) was the best in town so I told my good friend, Annie, when she came home for Ching Ming that day but she said it was salty and not to their liking. Ah well! I guess I would just have to try it myself.

My missus paid RM30.00 for this much…

…and yes, the roast duck was very good, not salty, tender and nice. The char siew was all right, nothing to make it stand out above the rest and the siew yoke (roast pork) would have been very nice but the crackling was so very salty that we had no choice but to give it our thumbs down! All things considered, I think I’d rather go to the stall here that I really liked a lot or I’d just stick to my regular stall – everything there is pretty good and being right round the corner from my house, it is a whole lot convenient to go there and buy.

NICE HOUSE RESTAURANT (2.29201,111.82739)…

…is located in the vicinity of the Tunku Osman shops, opposite Rejang Bookstore.

It’s Friday…

Ever since I bought the beautiful ikan terubok (chee khak/toli shad) that day, I had been looking forward to Friday, our no-meat day when we would cook that to enjoy.

It looked so fresh and fleshy too and I was quite sure it was going to be good but the boy told me there was no roe (egg) in it. It did not matter though as we are not really into those but somehow, I have the feeling that if there are eggs in the fish, it is more lemak (fat/rich).

My missus trimmed the tail and the fins…

…to get it ready to be panggang-ed (grilled/baked) in our Tatung pot. We decided not to line the foil with daun kunyit (turmeric leaves) this time around so we just rubbed it with a bit of salt and wrapped it up before putting it in the pot.

A Kelabit teacher-friend of mine saw my photograph on Facebook and commented that he never gutted the fish that he would cook over an open fire to eat. Yes, that is one thing my late mum taught us – to never clean the fish as it would not be so sweet and nice if we did that. She loved to eat the black stuff inside, something a bit bitter but I think that is an acquired taste. I tried it before and no, I did not think I would want to eat it again so everytime we cooked the fish, we would just throw it away.

It sure looked so good when it was done…

Just look at all the juices that had seeped out of the fish, an indication as to how lemak (fat/rich) it was. I love drowning my rice with the juices and eating them together! Omega 3 plus plus!!! Absolutely yummy!!!

To eat the fish, the scales had to be painstakingly removed…

…completely so we would not have deal with them all over the fish, here there and everywhere as that chore might affect our enjoyment to some extent.

A lot of people commented that they would not buy the fish because there are a lot of bones. Bones? What bones?

Of course, there are some BIG ones that are easily removed, not as many and not so hard to spot and get rid of as in the upriver empurau (wang poo liao) and its “cousins”. Those fish may be very sweet, so very smooth, so very fine…but the task of picking out the bones and getting rid of them is so time-consuming and it takes away much of the enjoyment of eating those super expensive fish! Another thing is if the fish have been caught and kept frozen for a long time, they will sell them to you at those ridiculous prices but sadly, they are no longer as sweet, not really nice anymore.

Anyway, back to the ikan terubok, I don’t know if those were from a different source – some say there are those from Bangladesh (cheap and used mainly to make those salted ikan terubok) but there used to be another variety where the top half of the fish was full of tiny bones like those in the ikan lumek. We would eat and leave that top part behind. Much to my delight, those that we get these days do not have those tiny bones so we can enjoy it from one end to the other.

Of course, at RM60.00 a kilo, RM48.00 for the one that I bought that day, I would not be buying it all that often. Once in a while will be fine especially with the rising prices of everything these days – one would need to be a bit prudent in one’s spending now, don’t you think?

That day, we had these long beans fried with sambal hay bee (dried prawns)…

…for our vegetable dish and this Chinese-style (oyster) mushroom and egg drop soup…

– my girl loved it! She said it was like sharks’ fins soup.

Cups…

I used to fly between Sibu (SBW) and Kuala Lumpur (KUL) very frequently when I was still working as I was involved in a lot of things with the ministry and the other sections like exams, for instance.

Going was never a problem as the flight, I remember, was at 11.50 a.m. – ample time to do a lot of things before leaving for the airport to catch my flight. Coming home was a problem though because the one and only flight in a day was at 7.50 a.m. so I had to be at KLIA by 6.50 a.m. (one hour before the flight) which meant that I had to leave the hotel very early as KLIA isn’t exactly a stone’s throw away from KL city. There was a 50% surcharge if we took a taxi between 12 midnight and 6.00 a.m. so of course, I had to pay extra every time.

Another problem was breakfast since it would be way too early to go for the hotel’s complimentary (buffet) breakfast! At times, I would wait till I got to KLIA before going for the miserable breakfast options at McD or KFC, miserable but affordable unlike at the other eateries, for instance, the RM23.80 nasi lemak at the Asian Cafe! Sometimes, I would buy some drinks and Gardenia buns from 7-11 and at other times, I would buy some cup noodles to cook and eat before vacating the hotel room.

Cup noodles? Gosh!!! That was so long ago that I cannot even remember what brand I used to buy and what flavours I liked. Anyway, the other day, I had these made-in-Korea ones…

My missus went and bought some…

…and she said they were nice so of course, I wanted to give them a try!

Inside the cup, there were the noodles…

…with some dried ingredients and a sachet of seasoning…

I emptied the sachet into the cup with the noodles…

…and poured in some boiling water a little past the line indicated inside the cup. My missus said I should add a bit more as it was a little salty.

I waited for 4 minutes, as instructed…

…before tossing the noodles and loosening the strands and leaving it to stand a while longer.

So, what did it taste like? Was it nice? My missus said it was over RM4.00 each!!! For that kind of money, I would much sooner run to the nearby shop and grab a packet of kampua mee for RM3.50. I certainly would enjoy it a lot more and I would still have some change leftover.

I can’t remember what lobsters taste like – in fact, I can’t remember if I have ever eaten a lobster before and anyway, this tasted like…instant noodles, that usual umami (msg) taste, nothing more and nothing less. I don’t know if I imagined it or what but I thought I could detect a bit of udang kering (dried prawn) taste, just a bit, so slight that it could have easily gone unnoticed.

I must say, however, that I liked the texture and taste of the noodles. They were firm and QQ and did not have any taste – most of our local brands have their own taste and some come across like plain biscuits, not quite like noodles.

I cooked two half-boiled/cooked Omega-3 eggs to go with the noodles…

…and yes, I did enjoy them.

I must say that at the end of the day, I would much sooner go for our Malaysian own Maggi kari – for RM4 something, I can buy a pack of 5 and enjoy myself a whole lot more.

I’m not in love…

There were others here before but more recently, I liked the kampua mee with dong quai soup from this guy there and his version of the Sarawak laksa was pretty good too. One fine day, some new owners took over the coffee shop and the poor guy was asked to move elsewhere. I did drop by to try their kampua mee and at best, I would say it was pretty decent, just not anything to get me rushing back for more.

Recently, I noticed that the coffee shop has been taken over AGAIN and now comes under a different name so that day, I made it a point to stop by and look around.

There wasn’t much that I could eat so I settled for plate of the kampua mee (RM3.50)…

…from this stall…

…there.

I would not say it got me all excited as I found it rather bland and the noodles…

…were overcooked, way too soft and soggy for my liking. I asked for a bit of chili sauce to go with it and yes, that did help a bit.

The complimentary soup…

…was not too bad but unfortunately, it failed to save the day.

For one thing, everyone at the coffee shop spoke only Mandarin and Foochow so I had a problem communicating with them. I saw a photograph of their pek ting eyok (Eight Herbal Treasures) on display at the stall and it looked very good. Unfortunately, it was not available that morning and later, I found out that it was pork leg – I had the impression from the snapshot that it was chicken. The mee sua in traditional red wine and ginger chicken soup looked very good too in the photograph but I don’t think I’d be dropping by to give it a try in the near future.

They have chap fan (mixed rice) at the coffee shop and even though it was still early, around 10.30 a.m., the dishes had started coming out and I saw some people going for it already. I must say that some of the dishes looked very good and it made me wonder if one can order any fried noodle dishes from the kitchen at the back or not. I guess I’ll never know because I am not planning to go back there again…or at least, not this soon.

JIN JIN CAFE, formerly Soon Kien Wang Cafe and Wan Long Cafe (2.312977, 111.847257) is located past Delta Mall, if you are coming from town, at the corner among the shops at the junction of Jalan Gambir and Jalan Dr Wong Soon Kai, formerly Jalan Pedada.

We’re in charge…

The other day, after enjoying my fish soup kway teow here, I decided to walk over to my favourite fish & seafood stall at the end of that block of shops to say hello to the very nice Mdm. Lau there. I did not drop by for quite sometime as I had not been so mobile lately.

Unfortunately, she was not around! She had left her young boy helpers in charge and according to them, she was at home making up for lost time because her daughter had come home from Singapore and they had not seen each other for over two years, all throughout the horrible pandemic.

I bought some of those little fishes, quite a lot of bak chik and there were two kembong left and I took those for RM12.00 altogether and I decided to buy one whole ikan senangin, not a very big one for RM20.00. I could not remember what fish the latter was until I checked my post here – it turned out to be the very nice ngor hu or the threadfin.

One of the boys asked if I would like to steam or deep fry it and since I was not too sure, he just cut it up into slices for deep frying. He said he could do it differently depending on what I would want to do with it, like what he did to the ikan siakap (barramundi)…

…that I bought from him once.

Oh? So he was the one! Mdm. Lau has a few helpers, young Malay or Melanau boys, all very nice and friendly, very trustworthy and able to work independently so I do not really remember all of them. I asked him if there was any siakap that morning but he said that they did, just a few but he would not sell them to me as they were two days old, not freshly delivered from Batang Ai that day. Now, isn’t that nice? I am pretty sure others will just sell it to me quietly and run laughing all the way to the bank!

It was then that I saw the ikan terubok (chee khak/toli shad)…

It was so fat and looked so fresh and nice plus it had been a while since we last ate one.

However, one of the boys kept repeating the price, “RM60.00 a kilo! RM60.00 a kilo!” Obviously, he was trying to discourage me from buying, not because it was not good – he did admit it was very nice but because it was so expensive.

I had just bumped into my girl’s coursemate on Facebook – they were together in Sg Petani, Kedah and in Wellington, New Zealand and they had just moved her to Daro in the Rejang Delta. I gathered from Mdm. Lau that she gets their ikan terubok from there but my girl’s coursemate said they were not in season at this point in time, very difficult to come by. I sure was lucky and of course, I insisted on buying one for RM48.00 (less than 1 kg) and taking it home happily!

It is not difficult to get hold of the salted ones…

…and the salted roe (eggs)…

…here. Folks from West Malaysia would buy these by the boxes to take home everytime they fly over to Kuching to spend their holidays.

I do enjoy eating those too but to me, nothing beats eating the fresh ones, rubbed with a bit of salt and wrapped in aluminum foil and baked…

…in our Tatung pot…

We tried baking it in the oven but it was not as nice.

These days, we would line the foil with daun kunyit (turmeric leaves) for the added fragrance…

It is simply out of this world, so very sweet, so very fragrant, so so delicious – a whole lot nicer than cooking the fish any other way!

The fish & seafood stall…

…is located to the right of CCL FRESH MINI MARKET against the wall at that end of the block to the right of the Grand Wonderful Hotel (2.309601, 111.845163) along Jalan Pipit, off Jalan Dr Wong Soon Kai.

I enjoyed it…

I saw the photograph of the fish soup in front of the stall when I was here that afternoon and it sure looked so good. I made up my mind right away that I would drop by there to give it a try – after all, it is just round the corner from my house, very near! Unfortunately, it had been raining quite a bit these past few days and I was not able to make it till yesterday morning.

To be frank, I was a little bit disappointed when it (RM6.50)…

…was served – it seemed a lot nicer in the aforementioned photograph.

I thought I saw freshly-made oval-shaped fish balls (like those freshly-made minced meat ones) and in the end, I only got two factory-made frozen ones from the supermarket. Actually, they can easily make their own nowadays – we can buy the fish paste (from Jakar, Sarikei) and roll them ourselves.

There were some sliced fish fillet…

…and thankfully, they were nice, no smell, nice fish texture so I had no complaint about it and yes, I loved the meatballs!

Normally, for fish or fish ball soup, I would ask for tang hoon (glass noodles) to go with it but I did not see that in the list, only mee (noodles), bihun and kway teow and I opted for the latter…

It was nice but I do prefer tang hoon. Perhaps I did not look carefully – I must make it a point to do so the next time I drop by here for this.

Yes, you can bet your bottom dollar that I shall be back there again soon for more of this…

…because I enjoyed it so much, the soup especially. It was love at first sip and believe you me, I had to refrain from asking for a second bowl!

In case you are wondering, this is in this BIG food court and it is the stall at the back, the one to the right…

…where I once had the lor mee and the mee sua and both weren’t too bad either. This is the left half and there are two more stalls in the section on the right, this one and the kampua mee stall – the rest were vacant and sadly, the whole place looks like this most of the time, almost deserted…unlike those days before the pandemic.

GRAND WONDERFUL FOOD COURT (2.309601, 111.845163)…

…is located along Jalan Pipit, off Jalan Dr Wong Soon Kai, on your right. You can also go in via Jalan Pipit from Jalan Pahlawan – go straight ahead till you get to it on your left.

Light and easy…

I was still feeling full after that lamb shank I had for lunch – I enjoyed that and had the lion’s share but my girl insisted on going out for something light and easy that evening.

She wasn’t too happy to see that my appetite had not been all that good these days and my taste buds had been acting kind of cranky. That was probably why I thought some of what we had for lunch were salty when the ladies said they were all right. In the end, I relented and we ended up here.

She asked for their beef spaghetti bolognese (RM19.00)…

…with their own-made bolognese sauce using lots of fresh tomatoes and Italian herbs. I do enjoy that too…usually, anytime a lot more than the commercially-available bottled sauces that come across to me like tomato ketchup straight from the bottle.

I did not feel like having that, of course and asked for their pomelo salad (RM8.00)…

…instead. This has not been available for a while now, since they reopened fully after the pandemic, so we just went for their Payung rojak most of the time. It sure was nice to be able to enjoy this again, very refreshing, indeed.

I also ordered their mashed potato (RM8.00)…

…which is different from the regular mashed potatoes elsewhere by virtue of the garlic and whatever ingredients added. That day, I was kind of turned off by the taste though so I just left it there. In the end, my girl finished it off for me – she enjoys it very much.

My missus had their mushroom roll (RM9.00)…

…and I did help myself to one. I thought it tasted great but like most of what I had for lunch, I thought it was very salty so I did not have any more.

I did not encounter a similar problem with the jelly pisang (RM9.00)…

…though when I helped myself to the jelly and the bananas (and the milk) but no, being on a low sugar diet, I did not touch the ice cream.

My missus and I just had drinking water on the house while my girl had their coconut milk shake (RM9.00). She insisted on picking up the tab, her treat for Father’s Day, and the total came up to RM62.00 altogether.

We finished early, at around 6.00 p.m. by which time, there were already three other tables – probably families there to celebrate the special occasion and there was a private function on the top floor upstairs that night, an appreciation dinner for the volunteers at the recent Sibu International Dance Festival 2022 so everyone was kinda busy at the time. I was glad to hear that they did enjoy brisk business over the two-week Gawai Dayak break too.

PAYUNG CAFÉ (2.284049, 111.833014) is located at No.20F, Lanang Road, Sibu, Malaysia, back to back with the multi-storey car park of the Kingwood Hotel which faces the majestic Rejang River.