Frankincense - A Family Cafe

I went for lunch at Frankincense. It is located at No. 17, Ground Floor, Block H, Lot 3, Sri Kepayan Commercial Centre. It in the older shoplots. You can't miss the new ones by the main road (Jalan Pintas). They are all very "orangey" in colour.



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The cafe served Nyonya & Kadazan dishes. The cafe is run by a couple; husband a Baba and wife a Kadazan local. Due to the varying tastes of the customers, such ethnic dishes are "buried" amongst the usual fried rice and stuff.

Nyonyas (females) and Babas (males) are those chinese, who had adopted a lot of the local malay culture (language, dress, cuisine), mainly from the old Straits Settlements of Malacca and Penang.

They had some old photographs on the walls. On one side were old photos of motorcars / motorcyclists in Malacca circa 1920s (the husband's father) and on the other side were photos of her father (a policeman) and views of Jesselton (now Kota Kinabalu).


One had a view of Jesselton in 1953. The white building at the left (just on-shore) looked very familiar to me. I realised it's the old post office, now the Sabah Tourism Board's office (see my posting of 7 February 2010). Those in Kota Kinabalu will know how far away from the sea the building is now!

The area next to the post office is now the Menara Jubilee. The next building (under construction in the above photo) would be the Hotel Jesselton (opened for business in 1954). The current view of the hotel was also in my posting of 7 February 2010.

There was one of Jesselton after its destruction in World War II.

There was an oil painting (copy? print?) of Jesselton in 1911. It should be noted that the British North Borneo Company started with its first township on Pulau Gaya, called Gantian. How many of us in KK know this?

I myself was educated on this fact by my cousin. He is a collector of philatelic postmarks. Here's one of his posting on the "rare" Gantian postmark he managed to obtain.

The Gantian township was abandoned (some said it was lack of fresh water & facilities on the island, while others said it was destroyed by our infamous Mat Salleh) and a new township built in 1899, on the mainland across from Gaya Island, called Jesselton (Jessel Town after Sir Charles Jessel, then the Vice Chairman of the British North Borneo Co.)

This ends the History lesson for the day. If you are interested, do search the WWW for more info.

Going totally off-thread, across from the cafe were the residential houses in Austral Park. See the Malaysia Custom of renovating your half of the semi-detached, with no regard to what the "whole" will look like!

In the next block of shops to the cafe, there was a very good cake-shop (Avena Cake Shop, if I remember correctly). Highly recommended for their Durian Cream Swissroll and Butter Cake. Unfortunately it was raining cats and dogs after lunch, so I forgot to take a photo of the place.