Fidelia's Friday - Birthday Party at Kuantan Curry House

We were invited to a surprise birthday party last night at Kuantan Curry House. We enjoyed the food and the warm atmosphere there!

Here are some pictures Duncan took.

Lovely fruit punch

Beautiful view of the restaurant

Nice painting on the wall

Lauren

Lamb or beef ribs (I don't know but it was DELICIOUS)

Some kind of colourful rice

This fried chicken tasted like heaven. Lauren couldn't stop eating it!

Chili chick peas on the left and grilled glutinous rice with fish inside on the right

Some kind of vegetable salad

The birthday lady in the middle looking very surprised!

Birthday lady and Leah

Our dessert... yummy!

The cake is just gorgeous and delicious!

Our chef and the owner of the restaurant and his mother

Thanks for inviting us! 

CPB members, vote for my photos here

Kuantan Curry House

The Kuantan Curry House is located in Bukit Sekilau, Kuantan, right beneath our apartment, just off Jalan Dato' Lim Hoe Lek. It is directly opposite KCDC Hospital, situated on Lorong Sekilau 22.

When my then-fiancee told me we would be living in an apartment above a curry house, I was thrilled!

I remember walking into the Kuantan Curry House in 2006 when we first moved to Kuantan, and asking for roti canai. That was the start of a 5+ years friendship with the lovely family who own the restaurant.


A common dish at Kuantan Curry House is the banana leaf meals. For those of you who have never heard of 'banana leaf meals' it's basically rice and curry with some meat/fish and vegetables all on a banana tree leaf. One can eat with a fork and spoon or go the old traditional way and use your hands!

The Kuantan Curry House speciality dish is fried fish, flavoured with an age-old secret recipe which keeps customers coming back for more!

My personal favourite is the gorgeous fried vegetables made by Mr. Samindan :)

Here we can see the famous fried fish on the top shelf

The Private Function Room

Mr. Samindan, the owner, is seated on the right. Sitting beside him is his oldest son, Magen. Standing at left is his second son, Thina.

As of 5th December, 2012, Kuantan Curry House has opened a new vegetarian section, serving delicious vegetarian food daily.

Puraini, wife of Mr. Samindan graciously gave my family and I a free sample of the vegetarian food on 5th December. Here she is serving the food:

I enjoyed tucking in to the food. Some of it was a little spicy, a lot of it was just fine, it was a nice blend, all on a banana leaf:

It doesn't matter whether you're Indian, Chinese or Malay, (or a foreigner like me!), you've got to try this delectable food!

Downstairs and Diamond Water

"denude" - make naked or bare, strip the cover from; take all of something away from (a person)

(I found this word in a Winston Churchill speech recently)

This is a continuation of "A difficult start" in which I explained our first few months in Kuantan and the problems we were engulfed with. If you haven't read about our tough early times, you should go and read that post first.

Downstairs

Downstairs below my apartment lies a line of shops and restaurants, the most notable being the Kuantan Curry House. The Kuantan Curry House is owned and run by a lovely Indian family who helped me out a great deal in the tough early days in Kuantan. The robbery had made us feel extremely denuded. Whilst I enjoyed taking the 'roti canai' (fried bread dipped in curry) back upstairs to eat, it was the wife of the owner who began having tuition classes with me. Her name is Puraini. Even though Puraini didn't learn from me for long due to her work commitments with the Curry House, she was my very first student, which besides giving me my first small flow of income, gave me hope of finding more students in the future. Their four children have at various times, also attended my tuition classes. We remain good friends with the Kuantan Curry House to this day.

Diamond Water

Secondly, whilst looking for a job, I came across two men selling Diamond water products. They were quite helpful but couldn't get me an official visa. So I didn't really work for them for too long at all - I didn't sell a single product in the mere two weeks I went around knocking on doors advertising Diamond water filters.

In addition to promoting Diamond, I also passed on my business card and introduced myself as an English tutor searching for students.

It was for this reason that I nevertheless knocked on a door whose owner clearly had a Diamond filter in their front yard. I told her that I was an English teacher looking for students and that very same night she sent her two children, Alston and Regine, for tuition class with me. 

It was a moment of great joy as my difficult times were beginning to dissolve. From Carmen, the mother of these two children, came a flurry of referrals. Many hopeful, desperate prayers of faith were answered as I gradually built up a number of students to teach each week, in addition to a growing reputation in Kuantan.

Which people have had a big influence in your life?