ABC Seafood @ Topspot Seafood, Kuching

ABC Seafood (also known as Ah Seng Seafood) is arguably the most popular seafood restaurant at Topspot Seafood, which is a whole level dedicated to produce from the sea, located at the top of a car park. ABC Seafood Restaurant is Stall #10, but you can't miss it - it's the biggest stall in the place with garish neon lights that makes sure you can't miss it. ;)

There are a lot of choices to make the "main dish", which would be pickings from this large display of items. I usually head here first.

It has a large fish display, which we choose a fillet from. ABC Seafood is popular due to their fresh seafood. There's a large range of fish on display, from small to big, whole to filleted.

There is also a wide range of large lobsters and prawns to choose from...

Of course, bamboo clams are aplenty over here. You can't miss out on this if you're visiting Kuching - it's only available fresh from the mudflats of Kuching.

The best thing I like about eating here is the memorable ritual of choosing what you want for the obligatory "vegetable" dish. There are crab sticks, various fishballs, quail eggs (my favorite!), baby corn to "sweeten up" the dish, peas in a pod, carrots and non-magical mushrooms.

This is the dish that we had. You basically grab whatever you want to eat and everyone does the same and piles it into the same dish. It gets cooked by the cook and is the first one to be served. I remember doing this even when I was little, while visiting Kuching. Nostalgic.

Here is what the mixed dish looks like after it's cooked. There's quail eggs (of course), crab balls, crab sticks, sea cucumber, prawns, pod peas, broccoli, baby corn etc. The restaurant always sprinkles cashew nuts on top of the dish before it's served. This imparts a nice crunchy texture to the dish and a sweet aftertaste.

The second dish to be served is the acclaimed bamboo clam. Bamboo clams tastes like mussels, and it's usually cooked in curry powder. This stuff is great, I tell you...

Next up, came the fish. We chose to have the fillet deep fried and cooked in sweet and sour sauce.

The butter prawns came next and I just love this stuff. ABC Seafood's butter prawns come with chilies, which adds a nice spicy-sweet aftertaste. I must shake the hand of the person who thought of deep frying prawns with butter. There's this sweetness to the "butter scrapings" that is just so memorable that I salivate just thinking about dinner last night...

Of course, no seafood dinner is complete without "O-Chien" or oyster pancake.

It's a great meal, but I wish we had enough room for that gigantic fish head. It looks radioactive blue and I bet it would be good in a radioactive curry fish head dish...