Old Friends, Nagore Rd

For lunch today, we ended up at Old Friends, located on Nagore Road. I'd been here previously, a pleasant enough experience which was unfortunately not documented because camera battery decided to throw a tantrum then.

Old Friends' menu is a refreshing take on the regular contemporary kopitiam... almost like a non-halal version of Old Town. It offers a variety of rice and noodle dishes, served either as a set or just on its own. They've also got perennial kopitiam favourites, toast and eggs.

We went for the sets, which came with a choice of main meal, a drink, soup, side dish, fruit and dessert. All of us went for Lemon Tea, which came in generous glass tumblers.

Each set comes with the following - soup of the day (a hot & sour one today), finger slices (?) of banana cake, sliced green apple. Each of us also got served a runny omelette side dish halfway into our meal.
Our main meal came after a fairly short wait. I would dearly love it if restaurants took the initiative to serve everyone at the table at the same time. In this case, one meal arrived not long after we ordered, the second arrived about 5 minutes later and the third much, much later.

Stir Fried Udon with seafood. This arrived in a jiffy and it passed with flying colours. Good sized shrimps and a good sprinkling of nori to deliver it home. The truth is, it's a really hard dish to screw up.

Hot & Sour Shanghai noodles. My first go at this, and I liked it, lumpy, vinegarish broth and all. Really liked the handmade noodles. It came with plenty of preserved vegetables, mushrooms, carrots, shrimps and slices of fish. A very hearty and spicy meal.

Nasi Lemak. I didn't have a taste of this but the reaction from the diner was Ohhhkay-lah. To be fair to Old Friends, we have far too many splendid versions of nasi lemak available on every corner of the island that it's near impossible to elicit much shock value from this dish.

Second time around, no major bad points and I'm still sitting on the fence on this one. The set meal averaged about RM12.90 each, a pretty good deal. The menu's varied enough and the staff attentive, though the minimal table occupancy probably explains it. Something's missing somehow... can't put my finger on it but I'll be more than happy to return to find out exactly what.