Sabah Ethnic Food - An Introduction

Bites Tale : Work is stressful due to last minute changes / requests. As a service provider, we wish to fulfill every guest's request as much as possible. However, situations does not permit us to do so sometimes and that's when we need guests to understand our position. Why a tour company / agent cannot change the itinerary? This is because we have considerations to go in accordance to the travel law, insurance requirement, safety and etc. That's why when last minute changes is involved, we would need guests to fill up consent form / liability release form. If there is no sufficient time to do the paperwork due to changes during tour is conducting, we are terribly sorry that we would need the guests to stick back to the original itinerary.

When it comes to food, many tourists who visits Kota Kinabalu are very adventurous in trying the local food where they can find here. The famous one would be Seafood, Bah Kut Teh, Fish Noodle, Laksa, Asam Fish Head, Roti Canai, Tuaran Mee, Tenom Mee, Tamparuli Mee (Noodle named after the name of different district) etc but these are NOT the local ethnic food of Sabah.

Even myself have not really tried all of the local ethnic food here, because even i am local - born and raise in KK and of Chinese and Murut heritage (that make me a Sino-Kadazan), i wouldn't know where to find these food except during the Kaamatan Harvest Festival where we might have the opportunity to find some from the different food stalls or sometimes we can get Bambangan (a type of fruit pickles) from the old ladies at Tamu.

I was very happy to have found a food stall at Grace Point selling some of the famous Sabah ethnic food and these are what i have tried :

Tuhau - Wild Ginger with limejuice, onion and chilies and taste like pickles.

Hinava - Local Sashimi ^_^!!! A famous Kadazan Dusun dish where they use fresh mackerel, shredded ginger, sliced shallots and chillies are mixed with lime juice... no cooking is involved. Taste really good!

Fried Milk Fish - I'm not sure this dish is from which local tribe... i always thought this is more of a Philippines cuisine.

Ambuyat - A famous dish among the Bisaya people of Sabah and also Melanau people of Sarawak. Made of sago starch therefore handling it would take some practices... when we tried we made the food looks so "Yucky" and messy. The staff from the stall taught us the way of eating it should be using a pair of chopsticks and twirl the sago gluey starch and dunk into the sauce/soup + adding the condiments like chilies, tuhau and lime.

I forgot what is this soup called (Anyone, please help?) -- they cooked with Jackfruit, Coconut Milk, Assam and fish. Taste sour but special.

These are the local ethnic food that i've tried for now and i will continue searching for more to try... It's important to preserve and learn more about our own ethnic cuisine / culinary. Hope someone can let me know where can i find a restaurant which serve these kind of food in KK.