Sabah is one of our favorite restaurants.  As some of you probably know, my ex-wife is Malaysian Chinese, from Kuala Lumpur, and she made it a mission to try every Malaysian restaurant she could find in Hong Kong.  She rated Sabah as the best, even though to a certain extent they’ve adjusted their recipes for HK tastes (meaning less spicy).  I continue to go there at least once a month and my gf likes it as well and has recommended it to all of her friends.

This place is nothing fancy.  The service can be spotty.  The food will probably never find its way into a Michelin guide and truthfully has sometimes varied in quality from visit to visit.  But it’s generally quite tasty and satisfying and we usually get away with dinner for two for under $300.  The place is very popular and if you go at peak times, you will be waiting outside for a table.

And that was the case tonight.  Normally I don’t like to wait for a table in restaurants – if one is busy, there are so many other choices so close by.  But tonight I was really in the mood for this.  After waiting around 10 minutes, the manager came outside and asked if we were okay to eat “upstairs” – that we could be seated immediately, otherwise we might have a long wait ahead of us.  So we agreed.

He walked us and two other waiting couples into the apartment building and we took the elevator up to the fourth floor.  It seems they rented a one bedroom flat in the building and converted it into a dining room!  The room could seat around 26 people and one corner of the room had been turned into a bar and service area.   With just 10 other people dining at the time, it had a real “private kitchen” feel to it.

Of course one of the downsides of this arrangement is that when the food was ready, a waiter had to pick up the tray, exit the restaurant, enter the building, wait for the elevator and ride up to the 4th floor with the food.  The food was more than warm but certainly less hot than when we usually dine downstairs.   One waiter remains upstairs at all times, mobile phone in hand to call down orders and requests.  Actually, when we were ready for the bill, they had to call downstairs and have someone bring that up as well!

Since I hadn’t had a “good” meal since our dinner at Abé last Wednesday, I ordered our perennial favorites – beef rendang, dry fried chicken curry and roti, with two mang0-coconut shakes.  We basically wiped the plates clean.  Sorry, no photos but there are 215 photos at their Open Rice page.

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