It’s been a while since a new restaurant in Kota Kinabalu has received so much attention from the food loving public, but the new Sailors’ Café is making a name for itself for good reasons.

Set the Mood

Many restaurants in Kota Kinabalu are food focused, which is why often restaurants are shoved into the stark-white squares where service is dim in comparison to the bright neon lighting.

So it was then that the first thing to strike us about the Sailors Café was the restaurant’s décor.

From the quality tiles on the floor, to the textured detailing on the walls and the kitchen counter, right up to the wooden beams against the ceiling and the soft golden lighting highlighting detailed pictures and other collectables on the walls; the mood was set for a feast.

Quick Service with a Smile

The second thing to impress us about the Sailors’ Café was the service and staff.

At once friendly and attentive, we took it for granted when we were the 2nd of 2 tables in the restaurant.
However, when the service was maintained 20 minutes later as the restaurant filled up, we noticed, and were suitably impressed, that the staff didn’t waiver.

Now Feed Me!

Of course the ambience and service is just half the battle won and the final test is the food itself.

Sailors’ Café’s menu is somewhat flexible, the Chef told us, as you sometimes have to improvise with what’s available at the market on any given morning.

However, the menu always features fresh western inspired dishes, which are varied enough to cater to most palates.
The food is served quickly and in relatively quick succession, which means that the entire table will be eating together in a short span of time.

Upon SabahBah.com’s visit we had enough people at our table to sample 11 dishes and overall the food is not just good looking (well presented, interesting garnish), but it’s also very reasonably priced and surprisingly good sized portions.

The Sailors’ Café gets a big thumbs-up. And not just from us, so perhaps it’s better to phone ahead to make sure they’re not booked out.

For more info, check out SabahBah’s Sailors’ Café listing.

SabahBah just recently returned from a holiday to Bali and you know, Sabah isn’t Bali. That’s a good thing.

Kota Kinabalu, bless its slow beating heart, is a city of constants. Although tourism is a corner stone of the economy here, in case of a dip in tourism things like local shops and eateries would survive, because it caters for locals as well, who ultimately floats most businesses.

Although that probably points to an inherent problem with the city and state’s approach to tourism, the nett effect of this is just one season year round.

Hotels aside, prices rarely fluctuate across seasons here in Sabah, and what is true for food, transportation and drinking costs in the low season, remain true in the high season.

Bali High (Prices)

Inflation or the return of tourists? Whatever the reason, Bali is not as cheap as it was a year ago. Large Bintangs varied from 20,000rp in the convience stores, to 45,000rp in slightly more expensive restaurants.

That’s the equivalent of RM7 – RM15 per big bottle of beer. Large bottles of beer in Sabah vary between RM8 and RM15. Suddenly Sabah’s alcohol doesn’t seem as expensive as you thought.

Where’s the local food

In Sabah, a wide variety of cheap local food is available, in plain sight, right next to more expensive, western restaurants. A basic, local meal in Kota Kinabalu, arguably more expensive than what rural Sabah is, would cost anywhere from RM5 – RM10 including a drink. Locals and non locals alike pay the same price.

In Bali you have to know somebody to point out a truly local eatery where perhaps you will get a meal at the same price as a local. Otherwise you’ll only find local-food-for-tourists everywhere, where tourists pay tourist prices and locals pay local prices.

The cheapest meal on this trip was a great bowl of Bakso soup off the back of a motorbike stall at a temple for 5,000rp (bargained down from the for-tourists price of 10,000rp), which is less than RM2. Also had was the famous Babi Guling (Suckling Pig) in Ubud, at the for-tourists price of 35,000rp (RM12). I heard locals can get the same for a low as 10,000rp.

In Sabah it’s 1 item, 1 price. This excludes tourist attractions and national parks where locals usually pay less.

Haggle Me Silly – Not in Sabah

Something almost ominously absent from Sabah’s tourism scene are touts and hagglers. Markets, restaurants, tailors, souvenir shops – you can walk past any of these in Kota Kinabalu, and the rest of Sabah, without anybody saying anything more than “hi, how are you?”.

From an economic point of view this is possibly a flawed approach, but ask any tourist about how much they like touts or being haggled everywhere they go, and I’m pretty sure you’ll get “not at all” or “very little” as a reply every time.

The only exceptions are KK’s Waterfront where haggling is fast gaining on smelly sewerage outlets as the No.1 reason not to go to the KK Waterfront often, and Taxi drivers who occasionally, in a non-obtrusive way, will ask if you need a taxi.

In conclusion

Being constantly on guard makes for a tiring holiday, but Sabah, being a hassle free destination, allows you to drop your guard in that respect.

You can bargain in the markets and even in some shops, but most often you can go around Sabah knowing that the price you’re paying is the price of the product / service.

It’s good to be in Sabah.

TwoTribez is coming – check it out at the events page.

The Kota Kinabalu Jazz Festival (KKJF) is on this 18 & 19 June 2010 Sutera Harbour Resort right here in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah.

“One of the striking differences of KK Jazz Festival”, mused Jack Ong, this year’s Organising Chairman, “when compared to the other jazz festivals in the region, is that the KK Jazz Fesitval has more local bands performing”.

If you doubt whether or not that’s a good thing, head on down to the KK Jazz Festival this weekend and judge for yourself. Aside from promoting jazz as a popular music genre in KK, the festival is also a fine opportunity for up and coming young musicians to get exposure to national and international artists.

Two-day passes to the event are RM80 and this year there is no reserved seating, so it’s on a first come first served basis. You can grab your ticket from any Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf outlet in Sabah & Sarawak until 17 June, otherwise buy them at the gate.

Tweet about cans of Carlsberg for less than RM10 and other exciting KK Jazz Festival news by using the hashtag #kkjf – then visitors to the Official KK Jazz Festival page on SabahBah.com can follow the excitement.

At the start of the last decade Kota Kinabalu was but a blip on the cinema entertainment map. Back then it featured the already old, but not so dilapidated 3 screens of the Golden Screen Cinema complex in the centre of town.

Today, as we enter the new decade, Kota Kinabalu has cinema screens galore. There’s the Cathay Cineplex in the town centre, Growball in Centrepoint and the newest of them all, the GSC in 1Borneo. Another GSC is taking shape in the freshly completed Suria KK Shopping Centre near Jessleton Point and will be coming online in a month or so.

With all this competition the old city GSC just couldn’t attract enough of a crowd with it’s run-down facilities to sustain it, and were closed down.

The fact that a cinema was closed down at all should really make operators of other cinema’s sit up and take notice. If there were no competition, that old GSC would have been able to do business in perpetuity.

Where’s the Movie Magic?

Growball’s no.8 theatre is arguably the best in Kota Kinabalu. Huge auditorium, big screen, every seat a winner and state-of-the-art sound.

However, the other Growball theatres are old and creaky with equipment that is starting to fail. Their only attraction seems to be the sheer volume of titles to chose from on any given night.

But more and more regularly a reminder to the projectionist (who switches on the film and goes outside) is required to either fine tune the focus, the aspect ratio or the sound.

Last night, during a showing of Tooth Fairy in Growballs theatre 3 it was obvious that a particular sound channel had something wrong with it. The actors’ voices were distant, shallow and tinny. A complaint to the projectionist uncovered an apology, but at the same time was added that it couldn’t be fix as a hardware part was being awaited from Singapore.

After a visit to the supervisor’s office a refund was offered, but some members of the author’s contingent didn’t mind the imperfect sound and so we all suffered the poor quality movie experience together.

It’s strange that, in light of the growing competition, Growball doesn’t mind running poor quality shows. The part responsible for the sound failure was on order and obviously it wasn’t just this one show that suffered as the problem was known and yet they ignored it.

To add insult to injury, the hammering outside on tiles being replaced could be felt though the whole show and heard during the quieter parts. Thumbs down for Growball on this occasion.

5 Senses

The reason people visit cinemas, as opposed to watching DVDs (pirated or otherwise) at home, is to experience a movie rather than just watch it. You smell the popcorn, you feel the vibrations of the sound in your feat, you see the larger-than-life actors on the big screen, and you taste the anticipation of a good thriller on your tongue.

If any of these senses are compromised, punters will first consider alternative cinemas and then wonder why they should pay RM7 per person to watch a movie instead of buying that pirate DVD with 4 movies for RM10.

Can you really afford for your theatres to smell like urine, Cathay, for your visuals and audio to be less than perfect Growball, or to freeze your customers in their seats, GSC?

Isn’t its time that customers get what they pay for and speak with their feet if businesses don’t deliver?

Join the discussion and share a bit about your highs and lows in the cinemas of Kota Kinabalu…