Filipino food is ranked pretty low on the index of cuisine that gets most of you excited. Perhaps your experience is limited to the popular but now defunct Filipino restaurant at Bandar Utama Centrepoint named Cagayan.
That being said, it is always important to keep an open mind, so if the opportunity arises to eat at Tambayan in Kainang Filipino, Kota Kinabalu for lunch or dinner you should not miss it. Chances are you may be a convert after eating.
Tambayan at Kainang Filipino is located at Api Api Centre, a commercial area in the capital city of Sabah, just a short walk away from the Marriott and Promenade hotels. The restaurant itself isn’t particularly fancy and usually not overly crowded.
The menu is pretty extensive for a restaurant of this size. There are set meals, noodles, pasta, rice dishes as well as various cook-to-order dishes separated into different categories of pork, soup, beef, vegetable, seafood, and so on.
Do try their pork adobo, sinigang shrimp, lechon kawali (crispy pork), pinakbet (mixed vegetables), ampalaya con carne (stir fried bitter gourd and tortang talong (eggplant omelette).
The adobo is quite flavourful, with the sauce carrying a bit of a sourish taste that is also rather savoury, vegetable dishes comes with a strong dose of fish sauce and are generally quite well cooked. You are sure to enjoy these.
As for the crispy pork, this is less crunchy and perhaps not seasoned with as much sodium as compared to the Chinese siu yok.
However, the dish that stood out is the awesome eggplant omelette. It is just your basic purple coloured eggplant sliced and engulfed with a fried egg but it tastes really good
So if you’re in Kota Kinabalu, do keep an open mind and try food that’s not so popular in Malaysia. Head to Tambayan in Kainang Filipino. You may like it or you may not, but it’ll be a different gastronomical journey nonetheless.
Tambayan At Kainang Filipino
Block 3, Ground Floor, Api-api Centre
88000 Kota Kinabalu, Sabah
GPS: 5.975185, 116.070327
Tel: 016-818 2008
Business hours: 12.00pm – 12.00am
The article first appeared in www.KYSpeaks.com
Trying to influence your cravings since 2005, Kar Yeong was Guest Judge on Versus 1001 Rasa Baba’s 2018, R.AGE Food Fight Judge 2015 and NTV7 Foodie Blogger 2014. To read more about Kar Yeong’s food journeys, visit his blog at www.KYSpeaks.com