Nasi Warung – meaning ’stall rice’, is a very popular lunch dish in Malaysia and consists of a huge variety of curries, meat, fish and vegetables. It’s like a buffet, but isn’t an ‘all-you-can-eat’ setting. You get a plate of hot rice, and your choice of side dishes. Each side dish is priced differently depending on how much you pile onto your plate! Nasi Warung can be found in street corners, coffee shops and even in shopping malls.

The term ’stall rice’ means food that is usually sold from a street food vendor at their food stall. In the above picture I can pick out beef liver curry, deep fried fish heads, tuna curry, prawn sambal, eggplant sambal and stir-fried water spinach in garlic.

The Centrepoint Shopping Mall in Kota Kinabalu has a food basement level with a few Nasi Warung eateries. All dishes are prepared in the morning and kept hot throughout lunchtime. It’s one of my favourite meals to have because of the variety and flavours you can get just on one plate. Sometimes when dining with friends or family, it becomes a competition on who can pile the most food on their plate (and finish it).

More choices at a neighbouring stall – Pumpkin curry, spicy fish cakes and crispy skin prawns are amongst the food on display here.

There are literally HUNDREDS of different dishes to choose from, and one can never get tired of eating Nasi Warung on a daily basis. It will probably take many years to actually try ALL the Nasi Warung dishes in Malaysia. Many of these dishes are traditionally Malay, but there are also alot of Indonesian-inspired cooking styles as well. Chillies and curry spices make up the majority of flavours in most dishes as well as an abundant use of coconut milk in the curries.

Stir-fried beansprouts, fried cucumbers, grilled fish and vegetable curries cooked in aromatic spices and coconut milk.

Nasi Warung is a smorgasbord of bizarre and rare ingredients – Animal parts and strange plants aren’t spared either, everything from chicken hearts, chicken feet, beef liver, giblets, squid ink, fish roe, banana heart, ferns and pumpkin shoots are used to create an array of sensational dishes. One is always spoilt for choice when it comes to selecting food that will only fit on one plate! Sometimes I linger too long around the food deciding what to eat, much to the annoyance of other patrons in line.

Help! Where does one even begin? Check out the large dish of steamed Okra and Angle Beans.

There are around 5-6 different Nasi Warung restaurants in the basement of Centrepoint Shopping Mall. Picking one to eat in is a task in itself, let alone deciding what food to have. If you want to experience good Malay cuisine, paying one of these eateries a visit is a must. You’ll be blown away by the array of food and cooking styles – Also, you’ll get to savour many types of dishes providing you bring a few people along so you can share your meals.

A closer inspection at my lunch above: Clockwise from left: Beef Rendang, stir-fried cakur manis with garlic, spicy green beans, a piece of grilled stingray, ferns in sambal and spicy bamboo shoot cooked in coconut milk. The greyish-looking plant matter in the picture below is banana heart.

My plate of Nasi Warung which had 6 different servings of food cost a measly RM6, which comes up to around $2. For that amount of food for so little money, it’s definitely a bang for your buck especially if you’re travelling on a shoe-string budget. This really is a satisfying meal plus you get your daily intake of meat, carbs and vegetables all at once!

The Malaysian holiday experience is not complete with a trip down to the local pasar or produce markets to acquire some traditional narcotics. The thought of a quick and cheap high made Otto jump at the chance to try some Betel Nuts. We were at a small town in Sabah called Sipitang where my father grew up and still lives in. So one fine morning after a hefty breakfast at the local coffee-shop, we took to the pasar for Otto’s first (and last) Betel Nut experience.

The Betel Nut is from the Areca Palm, and is actually called an Areca Nut. I believe the leaves are called the ‘Betel’. But for some reason the name ‘Betel Nut’ just stuck with me while growing up. I remember the old village ladies always had a supply in their waist-pouches. They were terrifying creatures with yellow teeth – something which the Betel Nut does to you. As you chew, it excretes a bright-orange sap which, well, makes you look like the old village womenfolk – while giving you a head rush as though you’ve smoked 15 cigarettes in one sitting.

The Betel Nut ‘Kits’ are widely available at the local produce markets all over Sabah and this kit usually consists of the Betel leaves, a few grams of ground limestone chalk, tobacco and that other weird brown thing in the pictures which I cannot describe. These ingredients are then folded with the Betel leaf into a small parcel, placed under your gums and chewed slowly. Before you get excited, I can tell you now that the combination of ingredients does not taste great – a symphony of bitter musk and cat sweat will assault your senses in more ways than one.

The one thing that we all forgot to mention to Otto was that he actually needed to spit out the fluid remnants from the first chew – the result was a heavy head-rush, a sharp grip on my shoulder followed by left-footed stumbling on Otto’s part. The effect for first time users is quite similar to having lots of cigarettes in one hit – that ever-familiar head-rush a morning smoke gives you but tenfold. Needless to say, the oral contents were abruptly spat out in utter disgust followed by some incomprehensible muttering of sorts and cheers from the market crowd.

The funniest thing for me about this experience was that all the locals in the market dropped what they were doing and just stood and watched while Otto had a go at the Betel Nuts. Because Sipitang is quite a remote village, not many tourists actually venture out there. It must have been a field day for the locals to witness a Mat-Salleh trying Betel Nut at their local market. There was alot of giggling, wide-eyed staring and pure astonishment that day. Unfortunately for Otto, he suffered a bad headache after his experience and had to be carted home for a long nap in an air-conditioned room.