Phew! Working on a Sunday is never nice. So, Lam and I went for a nice lunch outside. We ended up at Jojo Cafe at 3rd mile. It’s an air-conditioned Chinese restaurant with home-cook cookings.

This is a common sight in Chinese restaurants. The utensils are soaked in hot water to sterilize them and to prove to their customers that everything is clean. Anyway, Lam and I order some side dishes to be eaten with white rice.

The 1st dish that came out is the Deep Fried Chicken which is a specialty at Jojo’s. It comes with a sweet chilli sauce.

The next dish is the Mixed-Vegetable, Lo-Han style. The veggies mostly consists of different types of mushrooms : Golden Mushrooms, Button Mushrooms, Straw Mushrooms, Portabellos. It’s cook with some sweet corn, Chinese broccoli @ Kailan, and some tanghoon @ glass noodles along with some oyster sauce.

Final dish was the Assam Fish Meat. A nonya dish that is both sour and spicy at the same time. It was cooked with some mackerel and believe me, it tasted like the ones in Penang. Yummy. 🙂

The bill for 2 people was RM43 (USD11.30). Definitely value for money. Unfortunately a bit far out for the tourists.

It was a great day yesterday when I went out to meet Yolanda, Ari and cutey-pie Rhyanna a.k.a. Nana. We went hunting around looking for a baju kurung for Ari for Hari Raya and eventually found it in Wisma Saberkas (one of the shopping complexes in Kuching). Then, it was off to Travilion to eat dinner and we settled in at Oregano. It’s an Italian alfresco restaurant but we sat inside since it look like a huge rainstorm was coming. In the end, it was just a simple pitter patter.

It was fresh lime, water, coke and house wine. I had the house wine although I couldn’t remember to take a snapshot of the menu to get the names. It was Chardonnay by Rothbury I think.

This is a shot of the kitchen. It’s an open kitchen concept so all the wonderous smells came out. On the right hand side, out of the picture, is the bar. Taken by placing the cameraphone on the table. Shots are not too bad but I couldn’t focus.

Yolanda ordered the Seafood Marinara i.e. seafood with tomato sauce. And there’s a quote : 1 mussel, 1 squid, 2 prawns and a few pieces of fish. She had it with linguine. Very tasty though.

This one was mine : Creamy Seafood with Linguine. Still, it was delicious and it’s rare to find a nice creamy pasta dish in Kuching. Not many places know how to make great pasta dishes using cream. Although, I think the dish was slightly smaller than the Marinara so I ended up having dessert afterwards.

Ari had the Chicken Breast which came with great tasting mash potato. Strange that I’m speaking about mash potato? Hee hee… it was very tasty though. Probably the milk inside it. The Chicken was lightly grilled.

Dessert was great. I haven’t had great Tiramisu since Auntie M’s BBQ a couple of years back. And, they had sherry in it. Yummy! The tiramisu was chilled in a freezer I think as part of the cake was icy when I bit into it. Definitely will be back for coffee at night. It’s superb. Try it sometime.

Oh, and the dinner bill came up to RM144.40 (USD38). That’s not too bad for 4 people (Johnnie had a creamy seafood linguine as well).

Oregano Restaurant
Tel : 016 888 6003 (PohLo Chai)
Private Sublot 18, Lots 209 & 210, Section 54
Travilion,
KTLD Kuching,
Sarawak.

Note that this is the owner’s handphone as looks like the phonelines are not installed yet. Only for reservations.

Shots taken using the Sony Ericsson W800i so sorry if the pictures are a bit blur. Was taking it using the timer shot which is a great way to take pics on the phone when in night mode. Getting better at taking photos using it though. Note that the pictures above are edited but only the food pics had major edits. The others, not so much.

Well, while Dad was recovering from his operation, my cousin Yen pop back into Kuching for a brief holiday. He also brought along 2 of his friends from Singapore for a trip here as well. He was working very hard to get his meal just right.

As with any meal, the cutleries and placemats were laid out. Doesn’t look like a simple BBQ eh? Well, the food was great. Never turn down dinner at the Tans. Never.

We had a selection of two wines. Red and white.

The salad definitely didn’t look like an everyday salad. The cherry tomatoes were interesting though. They were brought in by Yen from Singapore. It was a very refreshing salad, that’s for sure.

This was a backup dish : some sliced Italian sausages with dragonfruit. Yummy! Somehow, pork always taste better with some fruit.

Yen baked this huge dish of Paela rice with prawns inside it. Yum. Interesting taste. And believe me, this little kitchen helper was trying very very hard not to pinch a nibble here and there.

I think this is the Middle Eastern Chicken. It was slightly spicy but not much. Also there was a touch of tumeric in there.

And this is the Moroccan Barbequed Lamb. And believe me when I said that it was utterly tasty, sweet and succulent.

Now this was a great and simple way to liven up bread. Grilled them lightly over the grill after all the meats have been BBQ-ed and you’ll get some slight BBQ flavour into the bread. Easy to do.

Divine Dessert. Home-made chocolate cake with icing. Sigh. It literally melted in your mouth. Auntie M is a great cook in the kitchen. Like I said earlier, never turn down dinners at the Tans. Never.

Oh, we also ended the dinner with this great desert wine. Brought by one of the dinner guests. It was amazing. It was one of those ice-wines i.e. grapes were harvested just before the winter really came. It was definitely chilly and sweet. Very very sweet.

And so ended a great dinner one fine day in August.

Well, I was due for a major change. And sometimes, it’s just best to keep it utterly simple.

Also trying to see how to make my way very XHTML friendly and perhaps, mobile phone friendly.

Those of you who are using 3G or the wireless broadband connections, do let me know how it works out –> Feedback is via the Comments link at the bottom. The filesizes for the pictures are less than 50kb per picture (USUALLY). I’ve limit the number of postings to 2 per page. Except the weekly archives which can be a little bit nasty so unless you have unlimited WAP/Net browing on your handphone/PDA, PLEASE DO NOT CLICK ON THE ARCHIVES LINK.

Getting rid of that pesky Tagboard. There’s too many spam stuff coming through.

The links : to be updated later. My head hurts just swimming through all the template stuff and the stat counter, etc.

: : Huge SMS billboard : :

Shall we shock from English folks? 🙂 No profanity, rascist or vulgar words, please.

There’s a public board that will display any SMS on it. Max 144 boards. Phone number is +44 7929 461727.

However, play nice folks.

And why don’t we get such interesting concepts in Malaysia? 🙁

: : Huge SMS billboard : :

Shall we shock from English folks? 🙂 No profanity, rascist or vulgar words, please.

There’s a public board that will display any SMS on it. Max 144 boards. Phone number is +44 7929 461727.

However, play nice folks.

And why don’t we get such interesting concepts in Malaysia? 🙁