: : Mooncake Festival, Part I : :

3:30 p.m.

Wena : Mahmah! Get ready ah! We’re going to mooncake festival at Carpenter Street! Will pick you up after work at around 6 p.m.!

Granny : Hai! I haven’t mandi (bath) yet lah!

Wena : Never mind. We go one day only lah!

6:00 p.m.

Well, we left nearly home on time and managed to find a good parking spot behind Harbourview Hotel. The streets weren’t so crowded yet as it had just stopped raining and people haven’t started to arrive yet.

One of the first things we saw was this stall. I actually read about it in Vampire’s posting so was curious to find out more about it. They were making popsicles by turning the containers in iced water. Looks like hard work to me. They were freezing Fruitade and Cherry Ade. It came out as a thin popsicle on a satay stick. 🙂

Nearby was a drink stall selling coconut drinks and sugar cane drinks.

I decided not to buy some after seeing how the uncle was making the juice. He had a cigarette in his mouth! Wasn’t taking the chance of drinking cigarette ashes in my drink.

Thought these mini fruit tarts looked so tasty that I bought some. Unfortunately, by the time we got back home, the fruit tarts were a messed. Oh well.

I actually have more pictures and videos but have to sort them out first before posting them. 🙂 So, that’s for tomorrow!

: : Hilton ~ Wedding Banquet : :

I went to a wedding banquet today as my cousin from my father’s side was getting married. Was a pretty packed dinner and my Dad and other cousin thinks there were about 60 tables alone! It was pretty hard to get to our table as there was very little space to move. Definitely tough to go to the washroom.

The pictures aren’t that great because :

-Lighting was bad

-I was shy to take pictures with flash at a major wedding

-Too lazy to edit out the yellow colour

So, please bear with me.

First dish to come out of the kitchen was the appetizers. It was the traditional Chinese cuts where we had 4 different varieties. From the left, clockwise, it was :

-imitation abalone with fruit salad

-jellyfish that was crunchy, sweet and spicy at the same time

-a roll with chicken meat and crabsticks

-cold prawns with salad cream and lettuce

It was a first time for me tasting imitation abalone and Dad explained that it was a Japanese idea. Well, it still tasted good and very tasty. Then again, I’m not that fussy about shell food.

Next on the list was the Shark’s Fin with Seafood and Assorted Mushroom soup. Not a lot of shark’s fin but a lot of sea cucumber slices added in. A very starchy soup but goes great with black vinegar.

After that, came the the Steamed Sulta Fish “Cantonese” style i.e. a lot of soy sauce and ginger+garlic. The flesh was very sweet and delicious but slightly boney. Not as bad as terubok but one has to be careful when eating this sort of fish.

Roasted Chicken is a favourite amongst the Chinese especially when the chicken skin is very crispy. We had this with plum sauce and some sea salt. However, the lime juice was missing. Usually, lime juice is added with the rock salt to give it a tangy flavour.

This was very nice. It’s Fried Prawn with Honey Sauce and was pretty sweet. Crunchy too.

The Yong Chow Fried Rice came next. I asked Dad what it meant and he said it was Cantonese cooking? Anyone can verify this?

Next was the Broccoli with Double Mushroom. Well, it was mostly sliced black mushroom (rehydrated dried mushroom) and the oyster mushroom (can’t remember the Japanese name. Anyone?).

This was the 8th and final dish of the night : Snow Fungus with Dried Longan and Lotus Seed. I just love lotus seed and fungus. Yum yum. A cold and sweet dessert dish and it was a nice way to end a very big dinner.

I enjoyed watching the Powerpoint presentation of the bride and groom. It’s always interesting to see how they look like while growing up and always good to have a good laugh.

Dinner finished at 10 p.m. which was fine by yours truly. Later left with my parents to my Auntie’s place. Had some coffee and then later came back home to blog about the dinner. Hee hee hee!

Nite nite people! Don’t drool too much! :p

: : The Venue : :

Sina’ (Mother in Kelabit) and Dad came down for Emeline’s wedding tomorrow night. Ben and I picked them up at the airport and sent them over to my Auntie Mimi and Uncle Kwang’s house to drop off their luggage. Then, off we went looking for a seafood place that has terubok. Decided to go to the Venue and see if we could get it there as the food are really good and the pricing very reasonable.

First order that arrived was the midin cooked with garlic and chinese wine. Taste a bit sourish but as we were all hungry, we wallop it pretty quick.

Of course, Sina’ and Dad definitely went for the oyster omelette. Tasted delicious and again, everything was eaten heartily.

Sina’ : Is that our fish on the counter? Aiyo! I wish they hurry up and bring it to us before it gets cold.

Well, it came a bit later compared to the first two dishes. As I was pretty hungry, I completely FORGOT to take a picture of it. By the time I remember, we finished half of it already. So, apologies if the picture doesn’t look so appetizing. Click here for more information on the fish terubok. It’s an extremely boney fish so the only way to eat it is with rice. The bones stuck in one’s throat will stick to the rice and be removed. Ben told me that most of the terubok fish found in restaurants around Sarawak doesn’t come from Sarawak but rather from Bangladesh! This is because there aren’t enough fish population to sustain the demand for it in Sarawak. The flesh is very sweet and juicy, but like I said, very boney.

They actually got our dish wrong here. We ordered Baked Crab but the orders were mixed up so we ended up with Fried Crab with Egg instead. Still, it tasted pretty good so we didn’t complain so much after that.

About The Venue, the last time I was there was back in the month of June. At that time, there weren’t so many diners there compared to now. It was pretty packed this time both inside and outside the restaurant. It was chaotic and took sometime for our orders to be delivered. Later, we found out from Auntie Mimi it’s because they’re not organized and she was right. However, if one is not so picky, the restaurant serves extremely good food. Unfortunately, it is non-halal as they cook pork leg there, which looked pretty appetizing but it sure was a lot.

Address of the restaurant :

The Venue

RH Plaza Commercial Center

Lorong Lapangan Terbang No. 1

Off Jalan Airport

93250 Kuching

Tel : 082-452186, 012 808 1186

That’s it from me on Sunday night! Off to bed now! Nite nite!

: : The Servant : :

Update on 13 Sep 03 : Found out that it was a vegetarian restaurant. Posting was not amended so that viewers can have a good laugh. HAHA!

Missed posting this last night as was too tired after dinner and the session at Monsoon to post anything up.

Bernard was in town for a brief stop so BJ and I took him out to dinner. It was a nightmare getting to Harbourview Hotel (where he was staying) on Saturday evening due to the Mooncake Festival being held at Carpenter Street.

Anyway, we managed to pick him up before it got too late and off we went to try out a new place called The Servant. It’s located along Jalan Abell (Abell Road) near Sin Hian Chia. It is behind Pandugan Street where there are some chairs and plants located outside the restaurant. I’ve been asking friends and collegues whether they’ve been to this place before and the answer was always NO. So, we went to try it out that night.

Upon sitting down, we were given a very nice welcome drink. It is Chinese Tea although I did not write down the name of the tea as the waitress spoke Mandarin and I don’t. Even Bernard was hard put to translate it for us. Anyway, all I could gather was that it was some kind of tea that tasted like coffee. Hmm… after the first sip, I’d have to say that it has a mild coffee aftertaste that was pleasantt. We were also given some sumboi (dried plum) sweets.

This is the menu given to us. Looking through it, I realised it’s a non-halal establishment so, Fina, guess we cannot meet up here. Hmm… anyway, it’s one of the few restaurants in town that does not use MSG in their cooking and all the food that we ordered were pretty good.

While waiting for the food to come, took some pictures of the restaurant.

BJ : Err… Wena, better put down the camera. Like, NOW!

Luckily, the food came pretty fast. And it was still steaming hot! Yum!

First one was the Fried Golden Needle Mushrooms (or as it says in the menu). At first, we all thought it was the Fried Squid but didn’t look like it to me. When the squid came, then we realised it was the mushroom. We ate all the meals with rice which was very soft and tasty. When one is out eating Chinese food, the rice makes a lot of difference to the overall meal. If it’s hard or half-cooked, it spoils the entire meal.

This was the Assam Fish. It’s actually tuna fish patties shaped to look like a big fish slices. Still, they did use assam seasoning and added in pounded ginger for added taste. Very tasty.

We thought that we were going to get Sabah Veggie as the waitress mentioned Vegetable A listed in the menu was that. I did think that RM6 for a small dish of Sabah Veggie was dirt cheap. However, when the dish came, it was actually Chinese lettuce! Still, it was tasty with the right amount of seasoning. Oh well.

Finally the fried squid came! Apparently a specialty of the restaurant, it tasted great. It comes with a spicy soy sauce which we were using to dip the fried mushrooms in!

By the time we finished the meal, all of us were pretty full! Here are some pictures of the restaurant that I took while waiting for the bill. When the bill finally came, we were all kind of shock to see that it only came to RM34 (US$8.90)! Not bad for a great meal. The portion do look a bit small but believe me, it was worth every penny.

Restaurant Details :

The Servant

Lot 105, Abell Road, Kuching.

There was no telephone number on the bill and they had no namecards to give out. Oh well. Pretty easy to fine although parking is a bit limited. Think there was only about 6 lots for carpark space so if you wanna go here, better go early.

That’s it for The Servant! Enjoy eating there!

: : What Herb are You? : :

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: : Mooncake Festival at Carpenter Street : :

A quick notice : Mooncake Festival at Carpenter Street, Kuching, will start tomorrow 6 September 2003 starting 6 p.m. until 11 p.m. The festival will last until 11 September.

Parking will be a nightmare as usual as the roads in the middle of town is pretty small. Here is map of the town centre and location of Carpenter Street.

Best carpark spot would be Star Cineplex but watch out for when movies end. Traffic jam in the carpark for sure!!