we are in Kuching with Sarawak Tourism, Sarawak is a state on Malaysian Borneo
and today we're exploring the charming village of Siniawan for their weekend
night market, we are gonna have some incredible street food, I'm Thomas and
I'm Sheena and we're Chasing a Plate, we hope you're hungry, let's eat!
we've come to Siniawan night market which is in Siniawan village for a street food
tour, this village is so charming it's a traditional Chinese village and it's
retained a lot of its original shop fronts and buildings from the 1920s
it is absolutely beautiful and there is a tonne of food to sample so
let's go and eat
even though it's peeing it down with the rain all the food
vendors are out in full force so we have got our first snack. It's a traditional
Pedayu kueh. Kueh is a Malaysian snack or sweet and Pedayu are a tribe this
is the most interesting kueh, I've ever seen so it's sticky rice and it's
actually been stuffed into a catcher plant so the catcher plant sits exactly like I'm
holding it and then it's a vegetarian plant so it's filled with water from
rain and whatnot and then leaves drop into it and then it eats the mulch
it's so fascinating, so what you do is you peel away the plant to reveal that
sticky or glutinous rice it's got white sticky rice and also red grains and
I've just revealed a peanut, let's give this a go
Wow it's actually really soft, so the consistency of the sticky rice
is not very dense it's just a really soft, moist- moist stickiness I'm gonna give
this another bite and try that peanut that
peanut as well is really soft, it's just a really subtle flavour that's so
tasty
when you see wafts of smoke coming up off a grill it often means satay when
you're in Malaysia so we've got a little bag here and in this case it's pork
satay so I'm gonna grab a skewer it's a quite a thin little skewer and I have a
tub of satay sauce here, it has a little bit of oil on like might have some spice
in it you can just see a little bit of red but let's get straight in there it's
quite a runny sauce ohhhh but really chunky peanuts
wow the pork is really soft but quite dry it's not fatty at all and the sauce
packs so much flavour because the peanuts are cut really rough there's very big
bits of peanuts in there it's got a real peanut taste not a not like a cooked
chilli taste, it just actually tastes like eating the peanuts, slide that to
the end we'll get it back and look at the texture of that sauce you can see it's
much more runny than than you'd expect or what it normally is whoa look at that
huge peanuts on top lets have this last bit
oh really really good so once again no fat so there was no fat on that skewer
it was all just meat and then that sauce is really nice it has a tiny, tiny chilli
spice those chunky peanuts are amazing and then I love that runniness that is an
awesome dish and I'm glad there's more sticks of satay in the bag cos I'm
gonna wolf these down it was really good and lives up to the beautiful way it
looked on the grill here- the smoke billowing up pouring into the street
really really nice
so this is the whole of Siniawan village just this one
street and it is so atmospheric, the lanterns are all lit up, the sun is going
down and there's a real hustle and bustle and liveliness with people just
coming out and having a meal let's go and find our next thing to snack on
when you're in Sarawak you have to try gula apong which is the sugar made from
the nipah palm and we have found it in our next snack or drink rather and it's
in the form of a three layered tea so you've got the layer of tea up the top
there, then there's a layer of milk and then right at the bottom there's that
dark, brown, thick gula apong what I'm gonna do is just give it a big old mix
up and really get that thick syrup mixed in with the tea and the milk, wow look at
the colour changing, you can tell it's a really thick because it's sort of stuck
to the bottom a bit, give it a big old stir
I'm just gonna go for the sample it's just looking way too good
the gula apong is really sweet, it's almost caramel-y tasting, a little bit
smoky and then it's just combined with that tea and the milk to make for a
really delicious, refreshing drink this is a a must try when in Sarawak
this street is so, so charming the last light of the evening is just fading away
you can see all these beautiful lanterns they've got lined up the sky's got a
real purple tinge all of these wooden shop fronts are just sort of shimmering
in that purple light the people are starting to come out now cos the rain
has stopped, this is a really really fun place to just wander it's very casual
normally a street like this would just be packed with people but this is a much
quieter place, there's not too many people around you can wander freely everyone's
got a big smile I'm loving this so far and we've spotted the next thing that
we're gonna eat so let's go and taste it
we couldn't resist the charcoal barbecues
which have these gleaming pieces of char siew or barbecue pork resting on top
of them gleaming is the right word, they're glistening with that sticky glaze and
we have got a plate of it right here to dig into, the meat is just beautiful so
you can see layers of fat, then layers of meat, then layers of fat, there's a little
bit of cucumber on the side here and also some chilli and lime but you know
what I'm just gonna go original like just pork and nothing else let's get a
piece of this, look at that, wow I can see the fat just
glistening
the meat has much flavour you get that really sweet glaze punctuating each bite
the meat is quite well not chewy in a bad way but it's still got a lot of
texture because it's been chopped quite thickly I've got to go for another piece
and this time I'm gonna dip it in that chilli sauce or sambal, see what that does
to it, all right
adds a little bit of a fiery kick to it, that's really really good let's give
this cucumber a go, the perfect accompaniment , cuts through any fattiness
in the char siew because that's a pickled cucumber
so its vinegary, it's fresh, it's crunchy this plate is just going to
disappear in minutes
as well as standing up to eat you can sit down and have many
different dishes here which is really cool and now that the rain's stopped
there's all these tables being lined up out in the street so you can sit right
in the middle of the road and get your food delivered to you so we've sat down
with a drink which you can also get here which is great and this plate of crispy
mee so mee is noodles and this is crispy noodles because it's been
deep-fried so you can see the thin, thin noodle, wheat noodle has been deep-fried
so it's really crispy and then there is an array on top you've got some chicken
you've got some char siew pork we've got some greens, some spring onions some
fish balls, there's a whole bunch of fried shallots and then that is all
sitting on this quite thin, tomato sauce which looks kind of like it's probably a
sweet tomato sauce this, this is oh I don't really know how to tackle it because it's
really crispy like a nest almost all right let's just try and not make a huge
mess so I'm gonna get some noodles oh the ones down the bottom are all soggy
because they're, they're sitting in that sauce let's just go
sort of half crispy noodles, half soggy noodles
the texture's really weird because that mouthful was half crispy which is
kind of got stuck around my lips but half soft which has gone down easily the
tomato sauce I guess it's more like a tomato gravy actually because it's not a
tomato sauce from a squeezy plastic bottle so it's more like a thin gravy
and it's kind of like a sweet tomato sauce so, lets it try by itself to get more of
that flavour it was hard to taste on the noodles it doesn't have a whole lot of flavour it's
got a tiny bit of tomato flavour and really just a quite a sweetness but
that coats the noodles really well let's try some of the chicken it's just
like a poached piece of chicken it's also quite simple and I'm gonna take it
this char siew or pork is also quite simple so really it's a whole lot of
simple things being put together to make this crazy dish, let's get some of these
crispy noodles
it's like eating little noodle snacks like you'd have with a happy hour drink
they're just kind of crunchy and nice but like I talked about before then you've
got all these soggyy noodles underneath
it's really good, it's a really simple dish, it just is what it is
I think even just from looking at it you kind of know what it's gonna taste
like so it's a great dish to fill you up, different textures it's kind of a fun
dish I like it
our tummies are totally full this has been a really good place
to explore and eat some street food really fun and really filled us up after an
action-packed day with Sarawak Tourism we went to the orangutan this morning
and saw the most incredible sights we saw about ten
orangutan, can you hear that karaoke that is wild, we saw her about 10 orangutan
swinging through the trees, then we went kayaking through the jungle and now
we're here and this was the perfect day after all that action to be here eating,
it was so so good, thank you so much to Sarawak Tourism for making this
experience possible if you're in Sarawak make sure you visit Siniawan
night market on a Friday, Saturday or Sunday it is probably the most atmospheric
night market we have ever visited, thank you so much for watching, we hope we
inspired you to eat and explore like a traveler, not a tourist, remember to give
this video a huge thumbs up if you enjoyed it, hit subscribe for more food
adventures and we'll see you next time, jumpa lagi, jumpa lagi