In Sarawak, seafood restaurants can be found packed with people, regardless of age. During the night, from all to young, at almost anywhere, in shop lots, houses or in a building, you’ll be able to find many having their family dinners, gatherings, birthday parties, business meetings and so on at the tables. In fact, some seafood restaurants actually do start operating from day time as well, catering to the lunch crowd. It’s also a norm for Kuchingites to bring their friends from other countries visiting Kuching, to have a meal at a seafood restaurant.
In seafood restaurants, customers will then choose their seafood, vegetables, meat from a wide variety of the freshest catch offered, and then select the style for their chosen dishes to be cooked in, For example, it can be steamed, deep-fried, stir-fried, etc.
Today, we’ll be adventuring to a seafood restaurant located in Kuching town, which always will be packed every night with customers and your dishes might also sometimes take 30 to 40 minutes to arrive.
Whether or not you’re having family dinners, casual outings, or introducing some delicious seafood to tourists, Lok Garden Seafood located at Batu Lintang Seafood Centre offers delicious seafood at a reasonable price. Batu Lintang Seafood, an open air food hawker centre consisting of various different stalls selling seafood can be seen packed with people every night. With lots of tables from different stalls spread throughout the entire area, customers would still be waiting to get a table.
Lok Garden Seafood is also well known for their fragrant rice, and indeed it brings a really nice aroma when it gets served in front of you.
Years ago, I could still remember that they would exhibit packets of fragrant rice they would serve just next to the seafood on display. Though no longer shown today, many could still tell that Lok Garden uses good quality rice to serve to us customers.
Let’s move on to the dishes.
Many would have bidin, kangkung or manicai in their orders, either stir-fried with sambal belachan, garlic, red wine and ginger or oyster sauce. We’re gonna kick start our order with bidin stir-fry with belachan.
As you can see, they were really generous with the gravy. The gravy had a really good kick of spiciness in it and the belachan was fragrant as well. The flavours were just nice and it isn’t too salty either. The bidin was done perfectly as it had a slight crunchiness to it as well.
Moving on to the deep fried pork belly.
Ah, the glorious pork belly, crispy on the outside and juicy on the inside. This dish is marinated with red bean curd sauce as its main ingredient and then deep fried. When served, a squeeze of lime is normally added over the juicy meat to give it an extra boost of flavour. The pork belly was also really tender and not rubbery and hard.
Next up was steamed fish.
We ordered tilapia fish, and personally, I think tilapia is one affordable fish that actually tastes really good when steamed. This is what they call the clear sauce style of steaming, in which they would steam the fish with ingredients such as tomatoes, salted vegetables, chilli, garlic, ginger and sour plum.
This dish had a nice savoury and sour sauce which complimented the fish very well. The sauce was also balanced in the flavours of the ingredients making it light enough to taste the freshness of the fish. Not anything too strong that would overpower the flavours of the fish itself.
Next, this dish is a must order if you are to dine here. A pretty odd one for some, because you can’t normally find this dish at any other seafood restaurants.
This is baby corn, stir fried in sambal belachan and you’ll be able to see most tables having this dish as well. Not only do they stir fry the baby corn with sambal belachan, they added minced dried shrimps as well, to further enhance the flavour. The spicy taste from the sauce just coats the baby corn scrumptiously and when put in the mouth, gives the right amount of everything; the sweetness from the baby corns, saltiness from the gravy and a spicy kick from the chillies. A must try!
Next, a common dish whenever one goes to a seafood restaurant; the butter prawns.
Here at Lok Garden, customers can request for this dish to either be cooked with some butter gravy or dry. Personally, I prefer my butter prawns with lots of gravy. Also, I would always request for them to get rid of the shells. This way, I would get to have those prawns with a generous amount of coating all around it. The prawns were really fresh and when I took a bite, those prawns were just so springy. Also, this dish was also infused with curry leaves and a hint of chilli so you will be able to taste a slight spiciness accompanied with the flavours from the curry leaves. The sauce was rich and creamy, sweet as well. So good when eaten with those fresh springy prawns.
Now for another pork item, this is the braised pork leg.
Just look at that amount of fats surrounding the juicy meat. The skin was just so slippery and silky, coated with the generous amount of dark sauce. The pork was very tender, and it’s skins and fats were not too soft and was still firm, but could be cut through easily with a spoon. Perfect.
It had a sweet and savoury thick sauce to go along with it, full of flavour from the marination, all coating the pork leg. One satisfying dish.
Also another common dish found at any seafood restaurant. The sea cucumber soup, known as ‘hai suam teng’ in the Hokkien language.
This dish has just the right amount of thick consistency to it, and I would say it was done very well as some sea cucumber soups you get outside has too much starch in it till it’s just too thick. This soup also had generous ingredients in it such as crab meat, chicken meat, mushrooms, sea cucumber, egg and so on. It was packed full of flavour and when eaten with a dash of black vinegar, tasted just right, warm and comforting.
Lastly, this is the ‘O Jien’ also known as the oyster pancake. Usually, this dish would consist of a layer of pancake deep fried together with oysters till crispy. Just like eating crispy oyster crackers. In this case, Lok Garden is one of the seafood restaurants offering O Jien in another different version upon request.
In this style, the pancakes would be deep fried till crispy and set aside, then the oysters would be cooked with a generous amount of sauce, then poured over the crispy pancakes before serving. I personally prefer this version of the O Jien as you would be able to taste more juicy oysters along with the thick gravy.
This is one of my most favourite dish whenever I come to Lok Garden, so do give this a try.
There are many other seafood stalls as well at Batu Lintang Seafood Centre, but I definitely would recommend you foodies to give Lok Garden a try. This is quality, tasty food with a reasonable price. As for the crowd and waiting time, I would sometimes go there at about 6pm, so I would suggest going there around that time if you can't wait. That way, there would be less people and your dishes would most probably take about 10 to 15 minutes to arrive. It usually happens when I go there around 6pm. Be sure to reserve a table as well too.
This is Jolynn signing off this week's episode on The Makan Post. Stay tuned for more.
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Lok Garden
Batu Lintang Seafood Centre,
Jalan Batu Lintang,
93200 Kuching,
Sarawak.
For their specific opening hours, reservations and further details, Lok Garden can be contacted at
019 886 3683.
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