You’re liable to get fat, if you eat too many of these delicious buns.
Besides Kampua Mee, Sibu is known for another favorite Foochow food: Kompia buns. These crusty baked buns are dense like a bagel but not as chewy. They come either plain or baked with sesame seeds. Kompia are made simply with wheat flour, water, salt and a little baking soda, yet they are simply addictive!
The quintessential dish of Sibu, Kampua Mee, done to perfection.
Sibu is a FooChow / Fuzhou town, meaning most of its Chinese population speaks that dialect. There are many dishes associated with FooChow cuisine, but above all, the simple, dry-noodle dish called Kampua Mee is the most famous. Our host and good friend Mike took us around to his favorite haunts in his hometown of Sibu, including his favorite Kampua Mee stall at Liang Yew Cafe, located just across the street from the Masland Methodist Church and not far away from the Sibu Central Market.
On the road to Sibu, through the verdant hills and countryside of Sarawak
I wrote earlier about taking my mom (during her recent visit from Honolulu) to the Sarawak Cultural Village here in Kuching. Chronologically though, Kuching wasn’t the first place she visited when she arrived in Malaysia. About a week before she arrived, our good friend Mike told us that he was going back to his hometown of Sibu for a few days, and invited us, including my mom, to come join him. After confirming with her, we accepted his invitation.
The only problem was, Mike requested we arrive in Sibu on Saturday night, and my mom was set to fly in to Kuching from Singapore at noon that very day. It would mean picking her up, bringing her home for a very brief stop, then heading back out in the early afternoon to make the 6 hour drive to meet Mike in Sarikei where we would have dinner before continuing on to Sibu. We left Kuching around 2 pm.
After passing on the tonkotsu ramen at the Yokohama Ramen Museum on our first day in Japan, we never got around to having ramen again until the last day in Japan. Could you blame us? We were caught up with delicious plates at Za-Watami Izakaya in Shonandai, a classy meal at Maimon in Yokohama, and an exquisite kaiseki dinner at Maru in Aoyama. We almost ran out of time!
Our last full day in Japan was the one I most looked forward to because I got to spend the whole day with my friend Yuko, someone who I knew from my school days in Hawaii. I had told Yuko I was coming and even though she was working in Korea, she happened to be back in Japan at just the right time. So we arranged to meet up on Friday.