After the initial shock of my lodgings arrangements, my mood wasn’t the slightest bit improved when I found out that dinner was just drinks & finger food.
God damn. I need to be fed and I need to be fed properly.
Thank god for kind Sarawakians like Pierce and Norman, who answered our SOS calls & whisked the hungry grouchy bunch of us to the famous Kuching Open Air Food Court for some local grub before any of us passed out from hunger!
That very night was my first initiation to the colourful & innovative Sarawakian drinks. They came with funky monikers too – the tall one below is White Lady, the creamy white one is the local chendol & the one with the lemon slice is Mount Matterhorn.
The Mount Matterhorn– you’ll be reminded of our Peninsular chendol with the green jellies, except that this one is refreshingly sour with no coconut milk nor red beans.
The White Lady came with lychees, canned pineapple cubes, fresh watermelon, colourful jellies and shaved ice drizzled with evaporated milk & syrup. I was told that each hawker stall in Kuching may include different ingredients but that’s pretty much is the basics for this local concoction.
The chendol here was really good as well. Thick & milky, the red beans was the smooth & soft type that I liked. I think I’ve lamented about it before in my post here about the quality of red beans used in Sarawak’s desserts compared to what we have in KL. This particular grade is so much better compared to the cheaper variety or God forbid, the use of kidney beans in chendols!
Kolo Mee is a must order at every meal but the version here was just so-so.
Mee Sapi is next. Somehow the noodles dishes in Sarawak tend to be heavy on the noodles and with very little (“liao”) ingredients. Which somewhat explains the price. And gave me an overall impression of the lifestyle here. The pampered KL-ites in us would probably need to “kar liu” (add ingredients). I know I would!
The fried radish cake met with my approval. Soft fluffy cubes with generous heaps of chai poh (preserved vegetables) & fried with the right balance of condiments, the edges were nicely brown and crispy too, making it the perfect plate of chai kueh.
Another local snack, and a twist of our local siew mai, is the Sio Bee.
It does look like siew mai yes, but it doesn’t taste anything like our siew mai. Ingredients-wise, it differs as well. Sio Bee is made up of glutinous rice, with mackerel meat, pork and rice starch plus loads of other secret untold ingredients, with some including prawns. The texture is much denser than our siew mai too.
Even the paus (steamed buns) here is different somewhat in terms of the fillings.
My char siew pau (BBQ pork) buns were bigger in size for one. …
…and the fillings are less overwhelmed with sauce. The sauce is not those awfully sticky salty or sweet ones either. Another reason for my preference is the higher ratio of lean meat to fat.
We washed down our satisfying supper with fresh soya milk.
The famous Open Air Food Court.
The 2 handsome hosts 😉 . Thank you guys! Truly appreciate the hospitality & warm welcome to your home state! *hugs *
See? We are all smiles now! 😉
Kuching Open Air Food Court
Jalan Market, Kuching.
Open all day and night.
GPS: N 01° 55.907′, E 110° 34.247′
ermmm, Matterhorn is named after Mount Matterhorn as when it was first made some 30-40 years ago, the first customer was a Brit who was serving as a policeman (back when the current Hui Sing Hawker Stall operators was still operating outside the Police Head Quarters near Palm Road/Baharuddin Road) first savoured the drinks and said the drink looked like mount Matterhorn and is as cooling as liken to be on mount Matterhorn. Hence the name was bestowed to the drink.
Wow! Thanks for the clarification! SO many search results on google yields the name Matehon only…
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yummy!! i love the kolo mee!! thats the best!!
eeks, i’m really bad at recognizing chinese food. i would have thought the kolo mee was regular kl char siew noodles and the mee sapi was beef tendon noodles! 😀
Think the correct GPS should be
N01° 33.581′, E110° 20.544′
Oh ok.. I ‘m in KL, that was the coordnates i got. Thks for the updates 🙂
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