The good ones…

I was telling my girl about what used to be our favourite Sarawak laksa in town and how I went to give it a try that day to see if it was still good . Unfortunately, it turned out otherwise, so different from the way it was, definitely nowhere near as nice as before anymore.

I guess that must have triggered a craving in her for our local culinary delight that the late Anthony Bourdain called “the breakfast of the gods“ so she asked me if we could have that for lunch on Sunday. Of course, we could, just that we would not be going for our former No. 1 and would have to settle for what used to be our No. 2 instead…

Gosh!!! The coffee shops in that area were all so crowded but luckily, somebody was going to vacate his space so I was able to park quite near the one we were going to. Usually, I would be around there for a bite to eat early, at around 8.00 a.m. so I never encountered any problem whatsoever.

I was surprised to see some new people running the kampua mee stall in front, not this guy anymore and according to the ladies, they had taken over the stall for around three months now. Some new people are selling salad chicken rice at the second stall and the 3rd one, the pan mee stall, was vacant. The Malay stall was still around and the chu-char (cook &fry) section at the back sure seemed to be doing brisk business with people queuing up to buy their chap fan (mixed rice). Well, I guess everyone was buying their lunch since it was past 11, almost 12 noon already at the time.

I placed an order for 3 bowls of the Sarawak laksa…

…from the stall there and despite the crowd, it was served in no time at all.

This one with the tofu puffs is obviously aimed at the Sibu crowd – you will never see those if you go for it anywhere in Kuching. My girl loves those a lot – she likes to dip them in the broth to soak up the delicious gravy and eat and talking about the gravy, it is also a bit more lemak (richer with the addition of a bit more santan/coconut milk) than the ones in Kuching, the way they like it here in Sibu.

On the whole, everyone was in agreement that it was very good like on those few occasions when we had it before but no, I did not order the special at RM13.00 a bowl with so many giant prawns. What we had was only RM7.00 a bowl so we were given those two tiny shrimps. Somebody was telling me that he would go for the RM9.00 a bowl one – I wonder whether there is a difference. Perhaps I can order that next time just to compare.

They sure did not seem all that generous with the sambal belacan (dried prawn paste dip)…

The laksa was served without any of that, none at all so I asked the boy for it, insisting that he gave us a bit more. He said o.k. but none came so I had to get his attention and asked for it a second time and finally, we got what we wanted.

Obviously, they are not using the top class Bintulu belacan here – it was RM50.00 a kilo before and last I heard, it had gone up to RM80.00 a kilo. I guess that explains the difficulty in getting that little bit to go with the laksa. That, together with a squeeze of the calamansi lime, would surely bring the taste to a whole new level.

We certainly would come again for more of this…

…unless we are able to find something just as nice or even better. There are others that are very popular but are not quite what we are looking for and of course, some are quite hopeless, like the one here or here, not worth the calories at all. You will never catch me going for those.

e-CAFE (2.311913, 111.846213)…

…is the first shop right behind Delta Mall, Jalan Pedada – the block a little to your left if you are coming out of the mall via the back entrance.