Ikan bakar at the Pilipino market revisited.

26 May 2007

"They eat the dainty food of famous chefs with the same
pleasure with which they devour gross peasant dishes, mostly composed of garlic and tomatoes, or fisherman's octopus and shrimps, fried in heavily scented olive oil on a little deserted beach."

Luigi Barzini. The Italians. 1964.

"Remember how in that communion only, beholding beauty with the eye of the mind, he will be enabled to bring forth, not images of beauty, but realities (for he has hold not of an image but of a reality), and bringing forth andnourishing true virtue to become the friend of God and be immortal, if mortal man may."

Plato, Symposium

I was recently in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah again. This time the group came at
different times and thus we often had different plans for our evenings. I was
there from Monday to Thursday with most of the evening without anything planned.
The day was occupied with the meetings that we had to attend, of course.

They placed a traditional backpack on the television cabinet in my room at the Hyatt, I wondered what they would say if I borrowed it to do some shopping in KK.

Fish and other former denizens of the sea in ice waiting to be chosen and
placed on the bareque pit. This selection was at the Sempelang Restaurant not
the Waterfront place.

On Wednesday night, I found myself alone in my hotel room at around 6pm. I had initially planned not to go anywhere, hoping to stay in and work on one of my writing projects. At around 6.30 I began to feel hungry. The choices offered by the hotel looked unimpressive to me, particularly after hearing reports from some of my colleagues who had sampled the various fares. Then I remembered the ikan bakar place behind the Pilipino market on the KK waterfront. I had been there before a few times with friends and colleagues. It was quite enjoyable, so I decided to see visit the place again alone.
Visiting such places alone can often be very revealing. I learnt this long ago. You may have been to a place several times with your company and enjoyed yourself but those visits usually do not reveal much about the place because you are mostly preoccupied with your company that you only take in very little of the actual place and experience. That got me a little excited, I was going to see and savor the place in great detail: all the tastes, smells and sounds without the distraction of having to hold conversations with anyone, except the people who are already there: part of the place.
A short shower, a cup of coffee and the news on television later, I made my way to the destination on foot. From Hyatt, I walked on the seaside past the market and on to the Pilipino market.
The trip from Hyatt to the place took me past an oyster and sushi bar, the wet market and some stalls selling local goods and produce. There were ladies on the kaki lima selling various fruits and legumes laid out on mats. When I turned the corner behind the Pilipino market I saw the barbequed place. For the first time, I actually saw the place from a distance because my previous trips here were from the other end where we entered the place from the night market. From where I stood the place seemed much less inviting than it was before. It was really rows of tables laid out under tents with the barbeque pits placed a few feet away from one end to the table rows. They laid out a multitude of ikan bakars, squids and prawns on metal grills places on metal trays. On the tables were stacks of plates filled with various condiments that you mix to make your sauce: there was various shredded seaweed, thinly sliced mangoes, fermented fish pieces and a few things that I cannot name. There were trays with chili sauce, salt, sugar, cili api, soy sauce and toothpicks. I settled for a freshly barbequed red snapper (ikan merah) that was about eight maybe ten inches long which I had with some rice and a accompanying dip I made from some cili api, seaweed, soy sauce and a few others additives. The fish was acceptable which is to say that it may not have been that fresh but it hasn’t gone bad. The rice was steaming hot and the water had ice in it.
As I ate, I observed the people going by, eating and haggling. This place has its charm. The fishes, and other stuff, were reasonably priced, especially if you asked the price before you sat down to eat and haggled a little. I wondered if I will ever go there again. It was sanitary enough but you would need to consider the yardstick you choose to measure cleanliness.
The next day, I woke up with my stomach feeling a little unwell. It would have only have been too easy to blame it on the ikan bakar but, to be fair, the restaurant where I had my lunch may have also had a hand in the matter. It is always hard to pinpoint the cause of one’s food related miseries when one is traveling because one often eat one’s meals at different places.
After my fish meal, I ventured into the night market looking for bananas. There were several stalls selling barbequed chicken wings. Chicken wings seemed very popular here; I on the other hand wondered what happened to the rest of the chickens. Closer to the water were the fish stalls where fresh fish was piled on make-shift tables and selling at relatively cheap prices. Closer to the land were the vegetable, fruit and other agricultural goods stalls. Strangely, there were piles after piles of mangoes but only two had bananas. The bananas I bought were delicious because they ripened on the tree rather than artificially ripened.
I suppose the best way to describe a place is to compare it with others of the same kind. The ikan bakar place in Kota Kinabalu does not compare favorably with the ikan bakar place in Melaka (somewhere near Pernu). The latter is more hygienic while the former offers better prices. Fish-wise, both places were roughly equal but you would need to know a little about choosing fishes.
For the more timid staying in Hyatt KK, there is a Burger King and a KFC across the road.

Dr Alias, Dr Hamzah, Dr Bustam and yours truly at the Sempelang Restaurant. A much nicer place than the Ikan Bakar place I described above. Here we are giving our order to a waitress who was uneasy about strange men taking photos at the restaurant.


Terminology for the uninitiated.
Ikan bakar – fish barbequed over charcoal or wooden fire.
Cili api – (lit) fire peppers: tiny peppers, viciously hot with a distinctive taste.
Kota Kinabalu – capital of Sabah (northern end of the Isle of Borneo – Malaysian state.
Melaka – Malay spelling, Malacca. Situated on the Peninsular Malaysia, right in the middle of the Straits of Melaka.