Trip to Sabah 2012 - Food at Filipino Market

In the main town of Kota Kinabalu, there is a famous place for locals and tourists alike for awesome and affordable food. Be it seafood or others, the Filipino Market has it all. Well, the people here are not Filipino's la, but I would guess that almost anyone can sell their food or goods here. Its a great place to check out and its open daily from the evenings till late night every day! So do have a look as some of the photos I managed to get. By the way, as you scroll down, you will be able to see my dinner for that night! The largest prawns I have eaten in my life!

Fried or BBQ seafood. There are various stalls selling this and the seafood is first BBQ or deep fried. Its not cooked fully and if you choose it, they will then reheat and finish the cooking for ya! Just look at those huge tiger prawns and even lobsters! 

This other stall has crabs, squid and lots of choices of fish waiting to be feasted.

Other stalls on the other hand have fresh seafood that will only be cooked when its selected

As you can see, lobsters seem to be such a common item here. There is just so many of them of various species available here.

Many fresh fish available here!

This is the stall we chose to have dinner at

A 1kg lobster at RM120. So tempted to order this but abit too much for 2 person I guess

To prove how big that tiger prawn is, that's my hand there. The prawn is about 10 inches long!

We also had fresh coconut. Nothing special with coconut but its cooling at least

This stall at the market was the only one we found that is Halal and serves seafood in a variety of ways. You pick your choice of fresh seafood and then they will recommend a few ways to cook it. Its all your choice so there is lots of variety to mix and match!

That's my prawn all cleaned and ready to be cook

Hehe, thats me with the catch. A small green lobster about 500gm and 2 tiger prawns each about 250gm too!

I read in some other blogs about people having some local seaweeds. Thus I ordered that too. There is 2 varieties here. The one below is a more springy and crunchy type that needs to be cooked and then eaten with some garnishing of lime, onions and chilli. It was nice, taste abit like crunchy agar agar.

This is surely the more unique seaweed! Its like mini green balls on a stick. This seaweed is truly unique and its eaten raw. The seaweed is just wash to remove the sand and as you bite into the bubbles, it will burst with the full flavor of fresh seawater into your mouth. Truly an interesting experience and something that should be tried.

My colleague and I decided to have the tiger prawns cooked butter style! I have to say, the chef is really skillful and the butter prawns was so delicious and he even managed to make those fluffy butter and egg strips

Needless to say, the prawn meat was fantastically fresh, sweet and succulent!

The lobster was cooked with chilli and it was nicely split in half.

Probably because of the size, the lobster was not tough at all unlike the many I have eaten. The meat was sweet and tender, and it actually rivalled the tiger prawn. But my pick is still the prawn!

And the final dish was the 7 star groupa! In chinese that is Chat Sing Pan and it was only RM50 per kg. The fish we had on that day was about 1kg in size and the flesh was just amazing. No wonder this fish commands such a high price in the restaurants especially those that are still alive will easily be about RM150 per kg. So I would say this is a good price! The fish was BBQ with sambal and at first I was worried it will be dark and burnt but to my surprise, this stall did it perfectly with no burnt parts! Excellent

My colleague with his pelled tiger prawn!

The lobster. Besides a not as juicy meat, you also pay alot for less meat as there is no flesh in the head of the lobster.

We left the night as 2 very full and satisfied diners at the Filipino Market. Total cost including the drinks was about RM170. Not too bad I guess for the good seafood.