Oh My poor stomach!

What else do Malaysians do during the weekends but to converge in a "latest find" restaurant that may remotely serve something that is remotely similar to the food we have back home?

Last night, four couples went to the local Hong Kong restaurant because we found out that they were selling Dim Sum. Yes Dim Sum. Its amazing what sort of food one misses when one is away from home. I never did crave for Dim Sum as much when we were living in London, I guess I knew that they were available but not Halal. And I did satisfy my cravings sometimes by buying the frozen Halal ones made in Malaysia. I'd just buy a pack, bring them home, and steam them.

My craving for Dim Sum started with the "burnt pau" incident. As I was rumaging my freezer, I found 3 pieces of frozen pau which my friend had made for me a couple of months ago. I thought, why not have the pau for afternoon tea and used my microwave steamer to warm the paus. I guess I was somewhat zealous about warming up the paus that I actually burnt them! Yes folks apparently putting the paus in the microwave steamer more than 5 mins will result in the paus getting burnt! I didn't think it was possible but here's concrete proof that it can happen.



they are burnt all right!

So when another friend told us that she found a restaurant that serves Dim Sum I was all excited to go. In my mind I was imagining rows of Shiu Mai, Lo Ma Kai, Chi Kueh, you know, the whole works! So we all made arrangements to meet. Wednesday night being a weekend night was agreed upon and we met at the restaurant promptly after Magrib, to eat and talk about food. We were all missing the food back home it seems. Dim Sum at Mutiara is apparently the best, so I made a mental note that I will visit Mutiara when I next return to KL. And the Pasar Malam Bangsar comes to mind when it comes to the Char Kueh and the Ham Chin Peng. And Yong tau foo. Tau foo fa. Food that we take for granted back home but is simply impossible to find here, except to make it ourselves. Which we technically could but with much difficulty, due to lack of authentic ingredients.

The meal was for most part mediocre. The Dim Sum was for most part disappointing. The pau was filled with custard and not chicken or meat. The skin of the dumpling was thick and hard. The Siew Mai was filled with glutinous rice. And despite it being a buffet, there was limited amounts of Dim Sum to be had.

The rest of the food was passable, not the unforgetably delicious variety. Of course no char kuay teow. No Tofu. No asian green vegetables. *sigh* But we ate anyways because we enjoyed the company.

We finally left the restaurant at 11 pm. Only to arrive home with two huge stomachaches! His and mine! I tried to curl myself to sleep while the purges himself in the bathroom. We managed to catch some sleep until the early morning prayers after which I had a hard time falling asleep because I was plagued by gas. Apparently, I was giving out mini explosions of the potent kind that he could not stay in bed with me and decided to thump away at his pc, with his stomach ache.

So I sent out a couple of text messages to our dinner companions asking them if their stomachs were allright. Afterall I thought, perhaps it was just us, perhaps they are doing OK. And true enough the two replies I got confirmed that they too suffered from the same plight. Gas, stomachache and migrane. Yikess!

That is our adventure for the weekend. In our quest to look for food that resembles the sort of food we miss back home, we suffer from a bout of upset stomaches. *sigh*