So it might not sound very festive... but this meal at Diandin Leluk on the second day of Chinese New Year turned out to be the last one I'd have over at this outlet in Golden Mile.
At that time it didn't occur to me that I wouldn't have the time to go back for a visit again.
But that's how it was, and I'm tremendously glad that we ordered all of our favorite dishes for dinner that particular day.
One of the things we've always ordered here at Diandin Leluk is the Massaman Curry Chicken.
I don't know its heritage, I don't know from which province it comes from, but they do it very well, serving it with chunks of delicious, tender chicken chopped into bite sizes pieces, and patterned-cut mushy potatoes that go extremely well with the sweet, not-so-spicy, dry-style curry.
Another dish we always order is the tom kha, or the coconut cream soup.
At other places we've had it before, but today, after trying to make up our minds between green curry beef and tom kha, we decided the weather suitable for a pot of tasty, heartwarming soup.
It wasn't heavy.
Neither was it too salty.
There was a lot of lemongrass at the bottom of the pot.
There were also a lot of onions, cherry tomatoes and other native vegetables floating about in the pot.
What we particularly liked were the chunks of chicken bobbing around the soup which we happily ladled up and placed in our bowls.
As good as they were eaten on their own, the flavors of chicken actually went very well with the minced meat (prawn?) and the minced yam of the ngoh hiang that we'd supposedly ordered as an appetizer but since everything came almost at the same time, we had it as a main.
I'm not complaining.
The blend of textures were wonderful.
Perhaps that's one thing which strikes me most about this meal at Diandin Leluk- the combination of textures on my palate, and the way the sweet and savory came so comfortably together.
It was like this with the Massaman curry.
It was like this with the ngoh hiang.
And it was like this with the cendol at the beginning of the meal even though it wasn't planned.
We simply forgot to inform the wait staff to serve it only at the end.
So for Chinese New Year dinner we turned the order of the meal around, starting with dessert- a lovely medium sized bowl of sweet coconut cream cendol chock full with beans, atap chee, the red rubies and the green green thing.
And we ended it with a fluffy, savory omelet-covered rice which we couldn't finish and decided to dabao home for lunch next day.
