Song Kah, Sungei Petani

We were in Sungei Petani on the last weekend of the recent school holidays to visit the in-laws. Almost everybody from the extended family was there. Dinner that Saturday evening was a little problem. There were 30 odd people and nobody was prepared for do the mass cooking. So it had to eaten out.

The most convenient place to be was a home restaurant which was a short walk from my parents-in-laws' place. It was a home restaurant in every sense of the word. The place was actually a single storey semi-D house in an housing sub-urb of Sungei Petani. I don't know how they managed to set up a restaurant in this locale for it was really a nice respectable housing area. I wondered if the neighbours had complained.

I have been to Song Kah on a previous trip back to S.P. a few months ago. I did not bother to write about it then. But I found the food pretty good then. So this time around, it made it to my blog.

The restaurant is apparently managed by the family living in the house. The 2 young men who took our orders and acted as waiters looked quite alike. So I guessed they were brothers. And they were apparently quite versatile people. At a corner of the restaurant was a counter, making and selling talismans.

And if you have a problem with your computer, you could come here too.

 The drinks they served were mostly home brewed. But the chrysanthemum was far too sweet.

Dinner was rice and dishes.

The first on our table was this sambal brinjal (egg plant). It was actually very tasty. The brinjal was stir fried in a rich mixture of sambal and minced dried shrimps. It was spicy. The brinjal was were cooked and was soft and smooth.

The dark sauce pork was another credible dish. It was lean pork stir fried in a dark soy sauce. The sugar in the dish made it kind of sticky and flavourful. They added in some spices and curry leaves. The final outcome was a very pleasant dish that went wonderfully with our rice.

This was chicken in a hot plate. Below the chicken was a layer of eggs, They fried the eggs on the hot plate and poured the chicken over it. The chicken was spicy but tasted good.

The curry fish was the best of the lot. The fish very fresh and there was plenty of okra, long beans and vege. The flavour of the curry was also very nice. It must had been the curry powder or curry mix they used, for the flavour was quite unlike the ordinary curry we find in most Chinese restaurants. This was more Indian in flavour. Anyway, we were scrapping the bottom for the last spoonfuls.

The fried cabbage was very ordinary.

The final dish was the mantis prawn. It was deep fried and then stir in a mixture of tau chu (豆醬 - soya paste) and other spices. I felt the mantis prawn was lost in the rich mixture. I couldn't tell it was the crustacean. The flavour was good but I felt it was a waste of nice mantis to be cooked this way.

It was simple good meal. And not that terribly expensive. It gave true meaning to a home cooked meal away from home, in a home.