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.