Food in Kuching!

Recently, my blog has transformed to a travelogue. The world is so vast and i still have so many places yet to explore... the sky's the limit! Just not long ago, i had the opportunity to visit Kuching, capital of Sarawak...hence the sudden surge in blog topics about the Cat City.
Kuching is surprisingly rich in food choices, especially those of FooChow and Hakka cuisine. The first photo posted here is a scrumptious meal i enjoyed in a small Chinese village Tondong located just 30 minutes away from the capital. This heavenly meal consisted of wild boar meat, a plate of deer meat and a vegetarian-flavoured vermicelli. My verdict is, the food wasn't too bad, but the flavours certainly were too strong. I washed down the meal with a glass of icy passion fruit juice.

The following 2 photos sure looks appetising. It was the first time i tasted two of the three fantastic offerings. The dark coloured soup base bowl is a common dish that can be found in Singapore, Kway Chap. Personally, i do not enjoy kway chap much being not a great fan of our fren porky pig's internal organs...haha... The red bowl is made up of mee sua cooked with chicken and wine... i believe it is of Foochow origin....i must say they do come up with unbelievable cooking creativity. Lastly, the most special is the meal that came in the white bowl. Just the name alone baffled me...Ding Bian Hu...literally meaning something like 'propping side starch'. Didn't make much sense to me then, but who cares what it's called as long as it's tasty :P And of course, breakfast must be accompanied by milk coffee....

Next up, a seafood dinner in Topspot, an open air food court located above a multi storey car park. With a seat on a dining table under the glittering stars, surely nothing could go wrong... I ate till the seams on my pants almost burst...
This meal requires a photo walkthrough:

We had 3 different kinds of fish dish, the one on the extreme left is the Teochew style steamed fish. A very vital point about eating steamed fish is that it must be really fresh. The fish i had really hit all the right spots as it was freshly caught by Alvin while he was out fishing. The next photo is what i call the Mango Fish. I think the name said it all. And the third one is Assam fish. What made it special was that the chef added a sour vegetable which was new to me. It tasted like tomato but the texture felt like honey dew melon. I was later told that this is the local eggplant.

Now for an interesting eye-opening dish, i present you with fried oyster. I grew up thinking that fried oyster comes with eggs, spring onion and is extremely greasy. Kuching style cannot be more different than that description. I think the only similarity they share is that both contain oyster. Kuching fried oyster feels like cracker with oyster. They then sprinkle fragrant leaves before serving. Also, i had fried paku midin. I believe this dish is also popular in certain areas in Perak, but for residents of other parts of peninsular malaysia and singapore, this is a total shock! Actually, it didn't taste much different from asparagus but it just looked so cute with all the curls.

There was one more dish but there are no photos to show. This dish is not for the faint-hearted. It is called bamboo shell but it is really slimy and wormlike. Tastewise, i love it, as it reminded me of 'la-la' but lookwise, it reminded me of Fear Factor ...hohoho....

Lastly, something more common . I had carrot cake and beansprout noodle for supper in Da-light. Similar to singapore, the carrot cake is sweetened. Kinda eccentric, if you ask me.

Next up, the 'famous' kuching chicken porridge with ice lemon tea. I love porridge! And to taste one so delicious...word failed me.... :)

Moving on, the one-of-a-kind Sarawak Laksa. This is a chance of a lifetime as you won't find this anywhere out of Sarawak. The unique taste made this a must-try whenever you're in Kuching. So, anyone who's interested to visit, make sure your food list includes this special treat!