peppers cafe

Tower Chocolate Double Cheesecake

by

tower chocolate double cheesecake

Before Secret Recipe opened up a branch in Sibu, the place to get quality cakes for birthdays and other celebrations was at Tanahmas Hotel. They have pretty good cheesecakes in Peppers Cafe (the hotel’s cafe) and I revisited the place with Anthea right before flying back.

jelly pisang sibu

I was here a couple of days ago to explore the mythical Sibu Famous Jelly Pisang. I had the exact same thing this time around. Heh! I noticed that the entire bottom is made out of jelly – probably a good 1/3 of it, and I really liked how the entire shaved ice dessert goes.

anthea goh

This time around I also ordered one of the cakes that caught my eye from the glass display counter.

tower cake

This is the Tower Chocolate Double Cheese. It’s a tiny cake about the size of two stacked Tiffany boxes – half of it contains their famous cheesecake and it’s topped with a layer of chocolate mousse. The entire shebang is then drizzled with chocolate sauce, a piece of their kitchen-made chocolate and a maraschino cherry.

chocolate mousse

It’s really quite good and reminds me of why Peppers Cafe used to be the king of cakes – if you wanted one, that’s where you go in Sibu. 🙂

Sibu Famous Jelly Pisang

by

sibu famous jelly pisang

I was having pre-dinner drinks at Peppers Cafe earlier today before finally capitulating and ordered the Sibu Famous Jelly Pisang (RM 7). It is described as “Fresh banana slices with strawberry jelly in sugar syrup topped with shaved ice, finished with Ideal milk and laced with strawberry syrup”.

I’m from Sibu and I’ve never heard of such a concoction before, much less with a “famous” tag preceding it. *squints suspiciously

tanahmas

However, it seems that there really is such a dessert despite my initial skepticism and dark thoughts about fleecing unsuspecting tourists. Eddy told me that Jelly Pisang was a very big thing back when he was a teenager – all his Malay friends would eagerly go for a bowl on a particularly hot day.

I’m not sure if it’s a Sibu thing or more of a Sarawak thing but anecdotes seem to suggest the former. This is further confirmed by Arthur’s blog post about it and a mention of it being a specialty of Ban Chuan Coffee Shop way back in the days.

jelly pisang

Jelly Pisang (banana jelly) is delicious – there is no sweetener in the iced concoction, the shaved ice only has cordial (for color) and evaporated milk.

However, when you bite into the huge mass of jelly, you get an intense sugar rush. The jelly forms 1/3 of the entire dessert and sets at the bottom. You scoop up large chunks of it like ruby red sugar icebergs when you dip your spoon down. There’s no fine dicing (a sure indicator of mass production) here, which is a good thing.

peppers cafe

The Jelly Pisang is really quite nice, as the unsweetened shaved ice contrasts nicely with the saccharine sweet in-house made jelly. The banana slices are lovely too. However, it seems that time has not been kind to this particular dessert.

It has largely fallen out of favor and is now mostly available in cafes and restaurants under “Local Desserts” as a historical ode to days gone by, instead of stalls.

Wine & Dine Promotion @ Peppers Cafe

by

wine and dine

Tanahmas Hotel is having a Wine & Dine promotion this month with steak air flown in from New Zealand paired with their Seifried wine from Nelson, NZ. Faye was in a generous mood, so she bought me dinner last night. Perhaps me helping her out tutoring had something to do with it as well. 😉

ribeye steak

I had the Grilled Ribeye Steak (RM 44.00 ++) which came with broccoli, carrot, cauliflower, young corn and mashed potato. It comes with your choice of black pepper sauce or mushroom sauce. I’m a big fan of garlic sauce, which I guess is a little unrefined, and can be hazardous to your breath, but it’s really good. Unfortunately, they don’t have that, so I went with the black pepper sauce.

ribeye steak macro

I had it medium rare and the steak came out tender and juicy. The portion is very generous too, well worth the RM 44 price tag.

grilled lamb chop

Faye had the Grilled Sizzling Lamb Chop (RM 26.50 ++) which is also part of the Western Food Promotion (also known as the Wine & Dine promotion). It comes with the same trimmings and sauce options. She went for the mushroom sauce.

fried mee mamak

We also ordered fried mee mamak (RM 13.00 ++) to share. I like Tanahmas Hotel’s (the place is really called Peppers Cafe, I don’t know why everyone calls it Tanahmas Hotel) fried mee mamak – it’s very spicy.

chimpanzee shake

This is the Chimpanzee Shake (RM 10.00 ++). It’s a peanut butter milk shake and I’ve been having cravings for the stuff ever since I had it a couple of weeks ago. It’s a thick and sinful concoction of peanut butter and ice cream and if you think you’ll like something like this, you probably would. Honestly, everyone I recommended this to came back with rave reviews.

faye present

Faye also presented me with a crudely wrapped DVD sized package as a token of appreciation for my tutoring efforts.

adata 8 gb

It’s an 8 GB USB flash drive. I’ve been wanting to get another one since the one I got earlier this month filled up. It’s the perfect gift for a blogger (or photographer). Thanks Faye! 🙂

us tanahmas

Hey, what’s with the feeding each other routine? :p

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...