FollowYesterday, I joined my parents for dinner with our neighbours — people who have lived on the same street as us for more than 40 years.
I’ve actually known some of them since I was just a 12-year-old girl, but funny enough, I had hardly ever spoken to them back then because we seldom crossed paths. Then, at 17, I left Ipoh for the big city to pursue my studies and later my career. In what feels like the blink of an eye, 35 years have flown by.
Thankfully, now that I’m back in Ipoh, I’ve had the opportunity to reconnect with them.
Over the past decade, my parents and these neighbours have become quite a close-knit group. Once everyone retired and had more free time, they started travelling together, both locally and overseas, and going on lots of foodie trips. 😄
Now that I’m back home, my parents have started bringing me along too.
This time, our foodie outing was at Exquisite Seafood Restaurant, where we tried their RM49.90++ à la carte buffet dinner. One of our neighbours had tried it before and highly recommended it to the neighbour who usually organises all our outings, so a date was quickly fixed for everyone to go and try it together.
For RM49.90++, we could order an unlimited number of dishes from the buffet menu, with one important rule: any unfinished food or wastage would be charged at the original à la carte price. Each table is also given 1 hour 45 minutes to dine.
But honestly, 1 hour 45 minutes was more than enough time — especially for a group of oldies with our tiny appetites! 😂
My absolute favourite was the fried fish skin with salted egg yolk. The fish skin was incredibly crispy, not oily at all and seriously addictive. I ended up eating quite a lot of it, which unfortunately filled up my little stomach and left me with less room for all the other dishes.
The fried freshwater fish cooked in a claypot was also very good, as was the stir-fried prawns with celery. There were so many yummy dishes on the menu that I wished I had a bigger stomach. In the end, I could only manage about one piece of each of the meat dishes I tried. 😆
There was also a buy 10, get 2 free promotion. Since there were 11 of us, we qualified for it — yay!
For my parents and me, our total “damage” came to just RM144. Not bad at all for three people!
We enjoyed the food so much that when my brothers and daughters are back in Ipoh next week, we’re planning to bring them there too.
It’s quite special to sit around the same table with people who have been our neighbours for more than four decades, especially when I remember being that little 12-year-old girl living on the same street all those years ago.
So yesterday was a night of good food, lots of laughter and, most importantly, good bonding with our neighbours of over 40 years. ❤️
Sometimes, life really does bring you back to where you started — and gives you a chance to reconnect with people you never knew you’d become friends with.
You can watch the video on my YouTube channel or Facebook page. The two videos are slightly different on different channels.
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