World Top Gourmet Award · 2023
★★★★★
A five-star culinary recognition for the restaurant's steam-cooked seafood.
Our story.
Trained in Hong Kong, cooking in Sabah since 1992: the road from a roasting workshop apprenticeship to Sabah's first steam hot pot restaurant.
Trained in Hong Kong.
Cooking in Sabah since 1992.
The first to arrive at the workshop, and the last to leave.
In 1992, Alan Voo set out to chase his culinary dreams. He sought out Chef Yan, a respected Hong Kong roasting master, and talked his way into the workshop. Determined to make himself impossible to ignore, he made a habit of being the first to arrive each morning and the last to leave each night.
The dedication paid off. Master Yan noticed, and in time opened up the secret techniques and recipes behind his roast duck and wonton noodles: knowledge not handed to just anyone who walked through the door.
Voo later travelled to Hong Kong with Master Yan to study the cuisine properly, learning it at the source before bringing what he'd learned back home to Kota Kinabalu.
He went on to found Fish Market Restaurant on a simple idea: source the finest live seafood from local Sabah waters. It became the first Steam Hot Pot restaurant in Kota Kinabalu, steam chosen deliberately as the cooking method because it preserves the seafood's natural flavours rather than masking them.
How the steam works.
The method Chef Alan built the restaurant around. A boiling pot cooks seafood in water, and the flavour leaves with it; a steam tier cooks it in vapour instead.
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The catch arrives live
Prawns, clams, crab and reef fish from local Sabah waters, kept live until the table orders.
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Steam rises through the tiers
Each tier lifts off in sequence, so every item cooks for exactly as long as it should, and not a minute more.
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The pot below becomes congee
Everything that drips through collects in the rice base below. The last course is made by the first.
Recognised for it.
Two milestones the restaurant carries: a national first, and a five-star culinary award.
Sabah's First Sauna Steamboat
The first steam hot pot restaurant to open in Kota Kinabalu, the method that gave the restaurant its name.
Taste it yourself.
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