Gerai Mei Wah, Tawau

I believe many people heard of Crispy Fried Noodle "Heong Dai Mai Fun". It was done by firstly deep fried the rice noodle until crispy and then poured on with delicious gravy.

What so special about Gerai Mei Wah's Crispy Fried Noodle is that the noodle is deep fried covered with eggs to make tastier. Not only that, the gravy was slowly cooked until you can see small pieces of meat floss in the gravy.

Gerai Mei Wah is located at the Sabindo food strips next to the Tawau-Kota Kinabalu bus station in Tawau. However, there are other stalls that sell similar noodle with different styles of cooking. I still prefer Gerai Mei Wah which is situated at the corner nearest to the bus station. Give it a try and leave you comment. Enjoy!

Kedai Kopi Ching Fong, Tawau

There is a special dish that one should try in Tawau is the Baked Crab. It is very special and affordable. The way they do it is like "Yong Tau Foo", but not nothing to do with bean curd. What they did is chopped and mixed the crab meat with other ingredients like prawn and herbs. Then, put the mixture onto the crab shell and covered it with something like bread crumps. Then baked it until well-done.

Previously, its only available 3 days a week. But due to popular demand, its available daily but supply is limited. So better be fast as it is selling hot.

You can get this in Kedai Kopi Ching Fong situated just beside MAS office in Fajar, Tawau. Their stall opens only for lunch and closes sharply at 2.00pm. So better be early.

Other than its Baked Crab, they are very popular with their Chicken Rice too. The chicken they served is very tendered and portion reasonable. They are not using the normal soya sauce based gravy; rather its oyster sauce based.

When talking about Chicken Rice, we usually cannot eat without ginger and chili paste or sauce. Well, their ginger and chili paste is very thick and special. Not only the texture is thick, the taste also thick and can be addicted (at least for me).

Kedai Kopi Len Sheng, Tawau

Kedai Kopi Len Sheng, situated along Chester Road, Tawau; near the popular old Kuong Ming Book Store, serves the most popular Seafood Noodle in Tawau. One you entered the restaurant, there are 2 popular food stalls in front. The left is selling the Tawau's most popular Mongolian Chicken Rice and the right hand side is the most popular seafood noodle.

The Seafood Noodle comes with 2 styles; dry or soup. You can either choose rice noodle (beehon), rice stick (koew teow) or egg noodle (mee).

Not only there are options for the style of cooking, you can choose the ingredients you wanted to be in your soup too. All are very fresh; anyway fresh seafood is the trademark of Tawau. If you got no preference, you can just have a sit and order through the waitress by asking them to mixed all "campur-campur". If you like to choose your ingredient, you have to go to the stall yourself and they will show your the fridge that keeps all the fresh seafood.

You can choose from fish slice, fish ball, fist cake, prawn, fish maw, fish stomach, fish head, sea cucumber, 8 claw clam (don't know the exact name), fish egg (sometimes), squid, scallop, cuttle fish, dumpling (wonton), many types of shell fish and many more....

However, when you have choose your ingredients, we must stress that we don't want it to be mixed with other ingredients. Else, they will like to add in other cheaper or less demanded ingredients like wonton.

For me, the taste is good and special due to the fresh seafood. However, the standard is not consistence. Sometime too salty and sometimes too much MSG. Anyhow, its still Tawau's all time favourite. Give it a try and let me know your comments!

Kedai Kopi Ingat, Tawau

If you ask any salesperson who use to travel to Tawau frequently, most of them will know Ingat. This double story restaurant is located in Fajar just opposite Heritage Hotel in town. They open for breakfast, lunch and dinner; but more popular at night.

Their signature dish is the Assam Fish Head. Honestly, so far I have tried many Assam Fish Head and I think Ingat still serve the best. Not only the gravy is thick and strong in flavour, the fish head is also fresh; as you can taste it and from its meat texture. Anyway, Tawau is well-known for its cheap and fresh seafood.

It is serve together with other veggies like egg plant, ladies finger, tomato, chili and etc. making it a complete meal. The smallest portion can serve 2 person.

Another one of my favourite dishes is the Deep Fried Prawn with Salted Eggs Sauce. Fresh prawn are deep fried and mixed with a special sauce; made by mixing salted egg yolk with milk. Some salted egg white is added to enhance the flavour. Among all this dish I have tried elsewhere, Ingat's Deep Fried Prawn with Salted Egg Sauce is the heaviest in flavour. Some places' cooking....well you can barely taste the salted egg yolk. May be it's expensive.

The next dish one can try is the Fried Cabbage with Egg. They gave more eggs compared to other places. Almost like Fried Egg with Cabbage rather than Fried Cabbage with Egg. Taste?...Quite good.