MY VILLAGE BAROK: AYAM PENYET ACROSS THE RIVER

Jolynn and I took a road trip across the river to a restaurant. If you've been through the bridge you'll see the awesome scenery of the riverside, especially at night. It's a great view.

Outside the restaurant is where they barbeque the poultry and seafood. It actually looks like a long house, packed with customers and on the inside is where people sit and eat on the floor on the mats. It is actually authentic malay food with the environs as well. You would also get to wash your hands before you eat, in the Malay culture, using a teapot and a small basin.

The ayam penyet was served with a top notch spicy sweet chilli sauce. I cannot tell you how spicy it is. I have to admit my spiciness level isn't pretty high so maybe to others it's totally fine. But well for me I needed some of milk to douse the flames.

Chicken, just barbequed, charred on the top, with some cool vegetables and rice. We also ordered some umai. Umai is made from raw fish but with some citruses in it, chilli and shallots. Sarawak's local delicacy. I'm sure there's more to it but there was so much flavour in it, I'm not sure what else is in there.

Also, the lamb penyet, with its stunning flavours, was still tender and juicy. Of course, not forgetting the really spicy level in each bite.

Village Barok also serves dishes found in Seafood restaurants such as this bidin stir-fried with shrimp paste, also known as belachan. They also stir-fried this dish with big onions to add that extra flavour.

Tom Yam soup was rather cooked in Malay cuisine style, where you can get those mixed vegetables like carrots, corns, cabbage all in one bowl. Squids, prawns and slices of chicken were also added. It has an interesting tom yam flavour to it, I would say a rather localised taste. But not such a good idea to order this spicy soup as a compliment to go with the other really spicy dishes.

Grilled seafood was a specialty here as well. There were scallops, mussells and shrimps being grilled non stop at the pit. This was the griiled scallop. It was topped with a brown sauce and a good dose of sambal. The heat from the chillies was also as much as from the ayam penyet. However the sauce went really well with the soft and juicy scallops. They also tasted really fresh.

I really recommend you guys coming over to get some ayam penyet. If you're looking to experience a real Malay culture in Sarawak as authentic as possible, this is the place to go. It's a huge wooden structure at the end of the road, you won't miss it. If it's not authentic already enough for you, you can choose to take a scenic route across on the sampan. Just take it towards the food court across Waterfront.

It's open everyday from 6pm to 11pm and it's full with people at night. So it's better to get in there early or if you don't mind the wait. There's also a satay shop just outside it, if you don't mind.


My Village Barok
7, Jalan Brooke, 
Kampung Boyan, 
93050 Kuching, 
Sarawak, Malaysia.




Until next time. This is Sharon signing off, stay tune every week for more:)

CITY CAFE : KOLO MEE EPISODES

Good food is often found at popular spots, spots in which many would come to know of and can be seen just as you pass by the streets. Spots in which food can be commonly found as well. However, good food can also be found at the most unexpected areas, areas one would not go to for a satisfying meal. Sometimes, food served at these hidden gems can also taste better than well known spots in the city. Today, an adventure to one of the hidden places selling Sarawak's favourite, the kolo mee. In fact, it's located in a very old shopping mall, now mostly known for computer related gadgets, electronics and handphones. It's City Cafe located at the basement of this shopping mall, Wisma Saberkas.

This basement floor at Wisma Saberkas is surrounded with a few cafes just next to each other, with tables and chairs scattered along the walkway. During lunch hours, the whole place would be packed with the majority of the crowd from offices nearby. A popular cafe here is City Cafe, selling a tasty bowl of kolo mee.

City Cafe's kolo mee stall sells other dishes as well besides the usual kolo mee. Here's the menu.

A plated filled with freshly fried yong tau foo can also be seen placed next to the cooking station. Some prefer to have their kolo mee along with some of these freshly made yong tau foo.

Their kolo mee comes with a small bowl of clear soup as well. It is a tradition to drink the soup at the end of every kolo mee meal, as a palate cleanser and a comforting way to end the meal.

This special bowl of kolo mee comes with fishballs, processed crab meat sticks, meatballs, pork belly, prawns and vegetables. The noodle was springy and the texture was just right. It was seasoned well, and was drenched in a generous amount of gravy, so each bite of noodles wouldn't feel dry and would be coated well in sauce.

In most kolo mee shops, the clear soups served are often known to be bland and filled with hints of raw flour taste to it from the process of cooking the noodles. However, the clear soup served here was really flavourful, tasty and indeed comforting.

It had a peppery taste to it, had the right amount of saltiness and served as a great palate cleanser at the end of the meal.


Now it's your turn to give this hidden gem a try.







City cafe opens daily except Tuesdays from 8pm to 6pm

LG21C, 

Wisma Saberkas, 

Jalan Tun Abang Haji Openg, 

93000 Kuching, Sarawak, 

Malaysia.

This is Jolynn signing off this week's episode on The Makan Post. Stay tuned for more.

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The Makan Post brings to you weekly food adventures, so be sure to catch us every week for new episodes and dont forget to subscribe to us. Just click on the Follow button below. Also, check out our instagram page @themakanpost. Cheers.

themakanpost@gmail.com

SONG KHENG HAI FOOD CENTRE: TEA TIME EPISODES

Today, we're about to adventure to a few famous stalls at a well known recreational food spot, where you can find many different types of local delicacies sold. This spot is famous for their kom piahs, a popular snack consumed in Sarawak in which consists of deep fried flat buns coated with sesame seeds and filled with sweet savoury minced meat, and also famous for a stall selling quite an interesting combination of juices- coconut and sugar cane.

This popular recreational food ground is known as Song Kheng Hai Food Centre.

It is a 2 story open air centre, with the ground floor almost like a car park, but sometimes, you can see teens skateboarding or dance practices going on.

The top floor is that hot spot many people go to for delicious variety of local delicacies. The whole area is filled with food stalls, with a tiny percentage of stalls selling newspapers, groceries and sweets.  Surrounding the food stalls were fixed tables and chairs.

This well known stall selling kom piahs is called Rihga, stall no.7, located just at a corner around the back. They are known for their crispy and savoury kom piahs, with delicious flavourful filling. Also, they have many other types of fillings in their kom piahs besides the usual meat filling.

Sio bees and rojak are also sold at Rihga.

This is their kom piah.

It was freshly deep fried once again before serving to customers. It arrived fresh and hot, smelling delicious.

The meat filling was glistening as I opened it to have a look. The dough was crispy and not too tough, held it's shape very nicely. The meat filling was juicy and sweet and went very well with the fried dough. It was a really good combination and one is never enough.

Here is their rojak.

What I like about their rojak here is that they used crispy dried dough fritters, also known as dried 'iu char kueh' or 'you tiao' in their rojak, and they are always very generous in serving those. The rojak came with a heap of crushed peanuts as well.

The rojak sauce, which was the most important component of this delicacy, was a bit more towards the salty side. Personally, I think rojak sauces should be more towards the sweet side, but overall, this dish still had it's own unique flavour. The fruits used were fresh and pieces of boiled squid were also put inside.


Next, another stall here, selling a combination of sugar cane and coconut juice. It's stall no.1, Mao Zhong.

It might be a weird combination for many who heard of this for their first time, but it is quite a well known drink here.

Juices are extracted from the sugar cane, combined with coconut water, and servied with a generous amount of freshly scraped coconut flesh.

The combination made the drink refreshing and cooling. This drink is perfect for a hot weather, and also a definite thirst quencher. The coconut flesh was served in huge chunky pieces and was a great compliment to the mixture.

If you're planning to visit Song Kheng Hai Food Centre, you definitely can't miss trying out these 2 stalls here. There are also many other food stalls to try out from here, so you can get to try other local delicacies at the same time.





Opening hours:
Everyday from 7am to 6pm

Song Kheng Hai Food Centre
Lorong 15 
Jalan Song Kheng Hai off Jalan Padungan
93100 Kuching,
Sarawak.








This is Jolynn signing off this week's episode on The Makan Post. Stay tuned for more.

-

The Makan Post brings to you weekly food adventures, so be sure to catch us every week for new episodes and dont forget to subscribe to us. Just click on the Follow button below. Also, check out our instagram page @themakanpost. Cheers.

themakanpost@gmail.com

TEASE BY JASE'S TEA ROOM: CAFE EPISODES

Today in Kuching, hipster cafes seem to be popping out everywhere and can be found at almost any street. It's definitely the in-thing and also something you wouldn't want to miss when in Kuching. From the quality of their espressos, the ambience of the cafe, accompanied by  soft bossa nova music, to the cheesecakes, pies and not to forget, hipster lightings for that insta-worthy shot, cafes here are a must try.

Previously on The Makan Post, we adventured to a cafe in town called Coffee Obsession. Today, we adventure to a cafe selling interesting savoury snacks as well, previously located at 101, Jalan Tun Jugah, now at Icom Square, recently moved, it's non-other than Tease by Jase's Tea Room.

A cozy yet spacious environment in this cafe, with high ceilings, comfy sofas and high stools. Here, they have A4 sized colouring papers with colouring materials.

And yes, they would love to have your art work as well after colouring.



They even have fun props, perfect for your selfies and wefies. Each table has a few in a small cup, each with different types of them.

Known for their teas, they have a wide range of teas to choose from, and all their tea leaves are located behind the counter. After selecting your tea, the loose tea leaves are then brewed in a small pot before serving to customers.



The not to miss drinks here are definitely one of their specialities, the ice-cream and milk series. There are ice vanilla chocolate, ice chocolate, ice hazelnut chocolate and many more, all topped up with a scoop of ice cream on top.
Here's how tasty it looks.

This is the ice vanilla chocolate. Cold milk poured in a glass filled with ice cubes drizzled in chocolate syrup and topped off with vanilla ice cream on top, further drizzled with more chocolate syrup. The ice chocolate comes with chocolate ice cream instead.
It was creamy and very refreshing. The taste of the milk and chocolate was not that sweet and when eaten with the ice cream, balanced the whole thing very well. The ice hazelnut chocolate had a rich hazelnut flavour to it as well. It was a great combination with the chocolate syrup and the ice cream.

They have a wide variety of cakes here as well. One of the best selling one was the yoghurt mango cake.

It was layers of sponge cake, filled with cream and mango chunks in between each layer, and topped with generous slices of mango on top. It was delicious and light. The sponge cake was fluffy and soft, and each bite had many chunks of mango. The cream brought the whole cake together well, adding that slight creamy sweetness to every bite.

Something from their finger foods, fish tempura nuggets. This was served hot and fresh, with juicy insides and with the outside, crispy.

They have other snacks such as wings and pizzas. For those wanting something heavier, their soft shell crab man tou is something that many recommend. They also have burgers, sandwiches and many more.

Another cafe you would want to give a try in Kuching. They are open for all day dining  offering brunch as well.


Opening hours: 
Everyday from 11:00 am - 11:00 pm

Tease by Jase's Tea Room

AT110 Block A, 
Icom Square, 
Jalan Pending, 
93450 Kuching, Malaysia.

Contact no.: 0168608282 or 0168943332


Facebook page: www.facebook.com/jasestearoom/

This is Jolynn signing off this week's episode on The Makan Post. Stay tuned for more.

-

The Makan Post brings to you weekly food adventures, so be sure to catch us every week for new episodes and dont forget to subscribe to us. Just click on the Follow button below. Also, check out our instagram page @themakanpost. Cheers.

themakanpost@gmail.com

AWAH CAFE at DBNA : DAYAK CUISINES

We all have that one place we would always want to go to for some pure authentic local delicacies once in a while. Here in Sarawak, most of the time, authentic local dayak delicacies can be quite hard to find and pricey at the same time, so, The Makan Post has set out to find a decent place for some reasonable and good local Dayak cuisine!

Here we are under the building of the Dayak Bidayuh National Association (DBNA) located at Jalan Ong Tiang Swee. And underneath this building, you’ll be able to find a nice open air restaurant called Awah Café. Awah Café is one interesting eatery selling authentic Dayak cuisine with a reasonable price. It has a beautiful tribal setting with a hint of modernity but still maintaining its authenticity of the local Dayak ethnicity. One can enjoy the natural outdoor air as they’re enjoying their meal in this cozy cultural setting.

The drinks here are all served in tall glasses. They were quite cheap as well for such a huge glass, and they tasted really good too. 

I ordered a basic Milo Peng, which is basically iced Milo, and it was rich and delicious, was not too sweet and you can taste the creaminess from the milk used and the amount of iced used was just perfect as well to go along with the drink. Actually, first impressions lie in the most basic drinks too, and yes, it immediately gave me a good impression of this café.

This is their rice. They used a mixture of white rice and red rice. A typical concept whenever dining at Dayak cuisine restaurants. Either that, or purple rice.

This first dish is something you wouldn’t want to miss whenever you come here to eat. It’s one of their specialties, called the Borneo mix vege. 

Unlike your usual dish of mixed vege you order at seafood restaurants, this borneo dish compromises of veges such as buah terung (local brinjal), baby corn, bamboo shoots, dodol labu (local pumpkin), paku (wild fern), and black fungus. These are stir fried in belachan and chillies and when eaten together, it goes so well as each of these would taste great when eaten with belachan. The slight crunchiness you get from the onions gave this dish an interesting texture altogether as well. The sweetness from the dodol labu rounds everything off just nice. It had a hint of spiciness but also not overpowering so it balances out the whole dish too.

Next thing you would want to try is the common Dayak dish, pansuh. Today, we ordered pork pansuh. It was served in a large bowl and this version of it was rather soupy. The portion was big and this was the smallest size they had on the menu. Worth it indeed! They used pork belly and it was super juicy and tender. This dish was really fragrant and you could taste bits of lemongrass flower in it as well. It had a light and refreshing taste to it due to the vegetables and herbs used in this dish. I would definitely order this again during my next visit.

Next up was sup tempoyak manok. ‘Manok’ is basically chicken in the Iban language and ‘Tempoyak’ is a condiment made from fermented or preserved durian. These ingredients, combined in a soup, is what you get here.

This soup was a very comforting dish as it warms the body. It had a small kick of spiciness to it and a slight sour taste, but flavours from the tempoyak balanced it out well. The soup was slightly sweet too from the chicken and tempoyak. I would definitely have something like this to wash it all after a heavy meal on a cold rainy day. Overall, it was an interesting dish with something different in terms of its flavour. This was also my first time having ‘Tempoyak’ soup.

Lastly, we had chicken stir fried in sambal belachan. It had so many flavours going on, and you can taste the onions, chillies, ginger, garlic and sambal all in one bite. The chicken was well marinated and coated with these ingredients and it’s spiciness was just right and it left our taste buds wanting more after every bite. The spring onions and celery gave a nice crunch to this dish too and goes very well with rice.

All these portions were the smallest ones, and with 3 big eaters, all these dishes still had leftovers. Not only do you get so much with that price paid, but delicious authentic Dayak food as well. Definitely worth the buck!

Now it's your turn to give Awah Cafe a try.



Awah Cafe @DBNA
Lot 964, Block 10,
Jalan Kumpang (off Jalan Ong Tiang swee), Taman Ridgeway,
93200 Kuching, Sarawak.


Opening hours:
Monday to Saturday
11.30am to 9pm

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This is Jolynn signing off this week's episode on The Makan Post. Stay tuned for more episodes coming your way.

The Makan Post brings to you weekly food adventures, so be sure to catch us every week for new episodes and dont forget to subscribe to us. Just click on the Follow button below. Also, check out our instagram page @themakanpost. Cheers.

themakanpost@gmail.com