Today’s special…

Yesterday was Father’s Day so we decided to go out some place for something special for lunch.

Ever since my sister shared a photograph of the lamb shank she had here…

…on Instagram, we had been waiting for the chance to go there and give it a try ourselves.

We had the M (medium), RM39.00 and it was served with this what-they-called nasi mandi…

The lamb was so very good, fall-off-the-bone-tender and so very flavourful, bursting with the fragrances of the herbs that it was stewed with.

We felt the rice was very fragrant too like one of those nasi Arab or Indian biryani rice but unfortunately, it was a little on the dry and hard side and there wasn’t much gravy/sauce to mandi (bathe, in Malay) it with and because we had ordered a lot, we left quite a bit of the rice behind.

Actually, we had no idea what nasi mandi was but a reader was kind enough to post a comment to enlighten me about it (See comment below). It seems that according to Wikipedia, mandi (مندي) is a traditional dish that originated from Yemen, consisting mainly of meat and rice with a special blend of spices, cooked in a pit underground. A Malay friend commented on my sister’s aforementioned photograph asking if it wasn’t nasi Mandy, whatever that was. Well, at least, we now know it is indeed something along those same lines as nasi Arab or nasi biryani, thank you, SW in the UK, whoever you may be.

The grilled chicken with ayam percik sauce (RM18.00)…

…would have been very nice too – we particularly loved the sauce/gravy, if only they had given us a lot more of it. The ladies thought the chicken was all right but I found it somewhat salty plus it was overdone, a little on the dry and hard side. I certainly enjoyed the lamb shank a whole lot more.

This plate of plain rice…

…came with the chicken and just as in the case of the lamb shank, it would have been a whole lot nicer if they had given us a lot more of the very nice ayam percik gravy to enjoy the rice with.

The sotong goreng ala tempura or fried calamari (RM16.00)…

…was, to me, a little on the salty side but the ladies were fine with it. It turned out that they used the giant frozen sotong (squid) which is usually a little hard and rubbery and not all that sweet and nice.

The Penang-style char kway teow (RM12.00)…

…never came and in the end, we asked for it to be packed for us to take home. I never got to try it so I can’t say how good it was but actually, I insisted on ordering it as when we entered the restaurant…

…I saw somebody eating fried kway teow with a whole lot of prawns and it sure looked very enticing! It turned out to be another item on their menu – the seafood noodles where you have a choice of noodles and whatever seafood you would want in the dish. Perhaps I will order that next time.

Service was excellent – the young Malay girls were very nice and friendly, very efficient and fast and there was a Chinese man in charge (the girls told me he was the manager and the place is Malay-owned).

We did not have to wait very long for the dishes to come out of the kitchen (except for the char kway teow) and if I had a bone to pick about anything, the thought did cross my mind that they could vary the presentation of each dish a bit. All of them had more or less the same things by the side.

There was a huge cauldron of chicken soup – I went and asked and yes, as I had suspected, it was complimentary but nobody ever said anything about it and there wasn’t any sign to let the customers know. There was a jug of iced water with slices of lemon and glasses by the side – I think one can help oneself to that FOC too…but nobody said anything about that too. My missus’ teh tarek (pulled tea) was RM6.00 a glass while the plain water that my girl and i had was on the house.

All in all, we did enjoy the lunch and yes, we would not mind going back there again…especially for the lamb shank that I did enjoy tremendously.

OLE OLE KAMPUNG by ROOK 3 (2.291155, 111.821081)…

…is located at Lot 8, Lorong Lau King Howe 1.