Slipper lobsters from Sabah, oysters from Penang? Discovering Malaysia's underrated fresh seafood

When chef Marvas Ng of modern Asian restaurant Path in Singapore drove up to Kuala Lumpur for a collaboration with feted modern Malaysian restaurant Eat And Cook’s chefs Lee Zhexi and Soh Yongzhi, the journey was short in travel time, but expansive in learning and discovery.

Did you know, for instance, that there’s a part of the sea known as the Golden Triangle, bordered by Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines, in which indigenous fishermen on the coast of Sabah and Sarawak catch beautiful slipper lobsters and Asari clams that wouldn’t be out of place on the plates of a fine dining restaurant? Neither did Ng.

He already works with local suppliers who grow vegetables and process ingredients locally, but as a chef, he's always looking for ways to serve a more sustainable menu while increasing the quality of the produce.

At Eat And Cook, which opened as a six-seat restaurant in a deserted Kuala Lumpur mall during the pandemic and now holds the 79th spot on the Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants’ extended list as well as being Michelin-selected for its reimagined Malaysian cuisine, the two young chefs are enthusiastic about discovering and sharing the beauty of Malaysia’s produce, especially its wild-caught seafood.

Spending a couple of days with them, Ng got his hands on sashimi-grade slipper lobster, marble goby and fish maw, among other inspiring ingredients. And we were there in Kuala Lumpur too, the happy eater of their culinary experiments.  

“I didn't know there were so many wild-caught items from Sabah and Sarawak,” Ng told us. The slipper lobsters, for example, “are not like the ones sold in Singapore. They have harder, browner shells and algae on their bodies to help them camouflage in corals.” In the wild, these signs indicate health and fitness, and that, of course, means “you can really taste the quality… the sweetness is terrific.”

At the collaboration event, he used the slipper lobster meat in a dish of “sui gao”, encasing it in a dumpling served with a lobster bisque, dragon chives and fennel pickled in Chinese vinegar and water, and garnished with dried sole fish powder.

For the Singaporean chef, this opens up possibilities in terms of using high-quality ingredients that are not only fresh, but also do more for big-picture sustainability than importing produce from faraway parts of the globe such as Europe.

“Malaysia is only an hour or two away from Singapore. I don't see it as another region – I see it as a car ride to get really, really good products,” he said.

SUPPORTING LOCAL, BUILDING LIVELIHOODS

When it comes to local and regional produce – let’s not forget that political boundaries differ from geographical ones – there’s the issue of perceived value.

“Not many chefs speak on behalf of our local ingredients… Who doesn't like caviar and foie gras?” Lee of Eat And Cook said. “Our market used to be like, ‘Oh, local fish are cheap.’” But, “we have a strong belief that we have very good quality ingredients in Malaysia. So, when we started Eat And Cook, our vision was to utilise, repackage and highlight our Malaysian ingredients.”

With “70 to 80 per cent” of Eat And Cook's menu dedicated to fish and shellfish, “customers ask why we focus on seafood,” Soh said. The answer is simple: Malaysia has lots of coastline. Lee said: "Malaysia's seafood has always been underrated. But, we actually export a lot of seafood to other markets, like China.”

Soh said: “This is also the main reason we change our menu quite often.” After all, fishermen’s catches can’t be forced; weather and seasonality play a big part.

Some of the best produce that is wild-caught in Sabah and Sarawak are giant grouper, sea conch, Hokkigai moon shell clam, Asari clam and, of course, slipper lobster. And they are caught by fishermen from indigenous ethnic groups like the Kadazan, Dusun and Dayak.

In the chain of supply, one key person the chefs work with is Ken Lai, who has been in the sourcing trade for 15 years. “We started by going to Sabah and looking for the local fishermen, and talking to the penghulu (chiefs),” he said. He then had to figure out how to transport their catches to the capital city without compromising their freshness, which involved “a lot of challenges, especially in terms of logistics.”

But Lai doesn’t just buy fish from the fishermen; he also supports them in the upkeep of their boats and equipment. “It’s hard for them to maintain their boats. If you come on a fishing trip with us, I don’t know whether you will last three hours,” he quipped.

Lee, who often makes trips to learn about his produce at its source, told us, “I spent nine days on a fishing boat in Sandakan, and I lost 17 kilos. It’s hard. Seasickness is the most challenging thing.”

Additionally, Lai also brings fishermen to Kuala Lumpur so that they can experience how their seafood is being used.

“If we have an established relationship and established partners, we can build livelihoods at the same time,” Lai said. “Chefs like Lee understand what the whole chain entails. It’s a lot of work. Otherwise, the middleman will start earning all the money, and they don't care about the fishermen. Nobody cares about them.”

Lai also works with local farmers who are successfully farming fish like marble goby and tilapia under ideal conditions. For example, the tilapia is farmed indoors, “taking away pollutants and antibiotics” and leaving “less of a carbon footprint”. “Sometimes, we only earn one ringgit per fish, but we support the local farmers.”

There are also astonishingly sweet, crisp oysters being cultivated in Penang, where scientists have worked for decades to calibrate the exact environment and diet the oysters need to be at their peak. These oysters begin their lives indoors, are fed with brown algae, and then live in the sea until they are ready for harvesting, at which point they undergo ultraviolet depurification.

Lee and Soh used the oysters in a course for the collaboration event that took the street food dish of fried oyster omelette as its inspiration. The plump oysters were served on a base of hollandaise made with tapioca starch and oyster water, along with a biscuit and a traditional chilli sauce blended with cognac.

“When we have good ingredients, we can cook better, which is what we love. That's the main reason we use local ingredients, which are as fresh as we can get,” Lee said. “And because of technology, in terms of temperature control and handling techniques, getting better seafood in Malaysia is now easier.” For example, Lai has imported a German-made machine that can scan seafood for bacteria and parasites.

Of his work sourcing and supplying produce to restaurants, Lai said, “It’s a very difficult journey.” But his aim is “for more people to appreciate” the seafood that can be found in the region. “Our local stuff won’t lose to Japan’s,” he asserted. For example, “Many people don't know that we have very good prawns from Pulau Ketam.”

One challenge is that “every other chef comes to me and says, ‘Why can’t you supply this tomorrow?’ You know, the things I do are very different. That’s why we need people like Lee, who are engaged.”

FISHY WONDERLAND

Lee, whose father is a Telok Intan farmer cultivating chiku, guava, passionfruit and oil palm, prioritises making the time to deepen his understanding of produce.

“If we find out about a farm one day, we drive there the next morning, even if it’s four hours away,” he said. “We once went to Sarawak for nine days to learn about the rice wine culture there and how they use fermentation." The glutinous rice liquor, called tuak, is made by indigenous women, he explained. "We were drunk for six of those days." And when they returned, “We did a rice wine infused dessert in our restaurant – a rum baba with tuak. All these things help us create new dishes.”

Meanwhile, Ng had a field day experimenting with Malaysian seafood. “Chefs Lee and Yongzhi brought me some dried threadfin fish maw. It was my first time using fish maw from Malaysia,” he said. “After we soaked and steamed it, it was still chewy, so we pressure cooked it for 10 minutes. It still had resistance but was delicious. So, we then tried barbecuing it. It was really nice. It had the taste of fish maw but with the texture of braised, fried pork skin.”

Ng served the fish maw with a dish of marble goby at the collaboration with Eat And Cook, with the marble goby being yet another Malaysian product. “Chef Lee brought us this marble goby that was 2kg. It was so big, like a steak. When we steamed it, the flesh was so smooth and silky. It was really out of this world,” Ng said.

Another dish he made using Malaysian seafood was a parcel of sashimi-grade tilapia aged for seven days and tossed with quinoa, shallots and chives, wrapped up in spinach leaf and topped with jambu and Russian hybrid caviar, and served with a chicken rice sauce made by simmering shallots, chicken fat, ginger, garlic and chicken oil.

“To me, sustainability is not only important, it also benefits us chefs,” Ng said. “When the product travels far, it’s not just about the carbon footprint; it also degrades its quality. The tilapia, fish maw, marble goby and slipper lobster came in alive, flipping and kicking. So, the quality, compared to products we receive from Europe (packed) one week ago, is really very different.”

At his restaurant Path, he continued, “we try to use regional products because of the quality. It's not because of the pricing – small artisan suppliers and fisheries in Singapore sell their products at prices similar to those from Europe. So, what we are buying is quality and also the skills, time and effort it takes to source those products.”

Since returning to Singapore, he’s already started ordering marble goby and sea cucumber from Malaysia, and these will be on his new menu launching in October.

There are still challenges, of course. The Penang oysters and wild-caught slipper lobsters, which he has his eye on, will be prohibitively expensive to bring in until there is enough bulk in orders.

But the possibilities are there, and they are delicious.

CNA Lifestyle was in Kuala Lumpur at the invitation of Path x Eat And Cook.