saturday was cold and a tad wet. it was ash’s birthday weekend and it ended being more of a melahap weekend, instigated by yours truly. the morning began barely less than 15 minutes on arrival from st. pancras at my current favourite london makan place, nahar cafe. nasi lemak, karipap, kueh lopes (sorry, is that how you spell it?) and teh tarik. and kuih keria (eat your heart out, krispy kreme) to go. hoho.

what’s really nice on a cold wet afternoon? hot sex soup. jim and ash introduced me to this little place called C&R tucked away in rupert court, which was like one of the many back alleys in soho. it felt a little cramped, but i suppose it adds to the atmosphere. ash told me about an indonesian presence amongst the patrons and true enough, one of the bigger tables were occupied by what could’ve been the cast of 30 hari mencari cinta. the proprietor’s malaysian and i think they have they best fresh soya bean drink this side of westminster. you know how it is with some london eateries claiming to be malaysian, when all they serve appears to have been conveniently made in the yeo hiap seng cannery. well, not this place. ash had this gorgeous tom yam soup with mee hoon, and they didn’t stinge on the amount of sotong and udang one little bit. i opted for mee siam sans taugeh (that was good as it meant the meal were actually made to order) whilst jim went for the seafood nasi goreng. don’t be fooled by the anaemic nature of the pics shown below. the serving’s generous and i didn’t mind it one bit when the bill came to a few squids shy of 25. this is central london anyway.

Tom yam meehoon Mee siam Nasi goreng

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saturday was otherwise spent at the regent street apple store, where, again, i walked out empty handed. this time with a bloody good reason. i’ll tell ya more about it, say, this coming weekend? whilst in soho, neither of the larger chinese serupamarkets had any kaya in stock. shame on you! as per request, we bought some ingredients so i could make this for sunday brunch.

happy birthday!