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Well I am back! Back as the guest blogger and back from this week's adventure to Sabah on the Borneo Island.
As a kid growing up in western Oklahoma, I thought seafood came from Long John Silver's or the Gorton's fisherman. As I have had the opportunity to travel around the U.S. I came to realize that this was not the case, whether it was lobsters in Maine or fresh halibut in Washington, I came to love good fresh seafood. So this week when I arrived at Sabah, and my host for the week said welcome to the Seafood Capital of Malaysia, I had to smile.
Of course he threw me a curveball right out of the gate and took me to a great restaurant called Mr. Ho's for some crispy roasted pork and deep fried pork belly, OMG! Deep fried bacon, with sweet Thai chili sauce, it don't get much better than that on the pork front, but that was the end of the pork eating. Onto seafood we went for the rest of the week.
In the course of two days, I had 3 seafood feasts from great Chinese/Seafood restaurants scattered across the Kota Kinabalu area. The first of which was a luncheon at a local strip mall. It was an interesting set up. The dining room was on one corner of the mall and the kitchen was on the other side. We had a good meal that was served in a traditional family style manner. The highlight of this meal was the ending when they brought our coconut pudding that was served straight out of a fresh coconut. I am told that this is a Sabah specialty.
That evening my host says, I am taking you to a place that has good seafood, but is known for its culture. I am thinking that this must be something like ambiance, but to my surprise it was truly about culture. We dined at Kampung Nelayan (translated Fisherman's Village). It is a very unique place. First of all, it is an open air restaurant, that sits right out over a local man made lake. The interesting thing is that you walk around the tanks with all of the live seafood in it with your chef and tell him what you want and how you want it prepared! Thank goodness we had locals with us, as this is a bit overwhelming when you walk in to seafood tanks that summed up are the length of a football field.
This was an amazing meal! We had so much food that I am sure that we could have fed the fisherman's village for several weeks, but we managed to take in most of it in one sitting. We had steamed shrimp, fish maw soup (don't let the name fool you, think chicken noodle with mushrooms), garlic roasted crab, fried softshell crab, panko encrusted prawns, and a several other dishes to round out the meal.
As good as the meal was, the entertainment that night was what really what made the evening memorable. A series of traditional cultural dances representing the various native tribes of Sabah. The costumes were great, the dancers were amazing, and even, to my great embarrassment, they encouraged audience participation (I think I was set up).
We finished up the tour of the Seafood Capital of Malaysia with a mid day meal at Gayang Seafood Restaurant on the outskirts of the KK area. This was another meal of epic proportions, some of the same items that we had encountered at the other two places, but a few things that stood out here was my introduction to Sabah vege (a local fern that is steamed and served with garlic, for you N'Easterners, think fiddlehead ferns), fried magnum prawns (I thought that they were 1.5 lbs lobster tails, but I was quickly corrected), snails, and shredded pickled mango salad.
Needless to say, I waddled my way through the KK airport and was praying that I was not going to be asked to get off the plane because we were overweight due to my indulgences of the week in Sabah. I must say that I truly enjoyed my first visit to the self proclaimed Seafood Capital of Malaysia.
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