Sarawak is a rich vein for writers, bloggers, videographers, filmmakers and photographers. Enjoy our selection of some of the great gastronomy coverage on Sarawak from at home and around the world.
The remote village of Long Banga is emerging from the shadows thanks to local coffee farmers striving to put Malaysian Liberica beans on the world map of coffee growing regions
Rice is the cornerstone of Sarawak’s rural heritage. It is embedded in traditional cosmology, in ritual, in practice and in pantang (taboos). The organisation of most of Sarawak’s traditional communities is based on it, through both the creation of status and through their spiritual systems. In such communities, it is the centrepiece of every table, the heart of hospitality and the main course of indigenous gastronomy.
Colonialism was born from the greed for spices and led to today’s globalised world. I know because it’s my family’s story
Tuak is a drink that is so firmly placed in my understanding of being Iban, of being Sarawakian, that I have no idea when I first tried it, or when it entered my consciousness. Tuak was there from the beginning.
Tuak is brewed from rice, and it is crucial to all celebrations for the Indigenous peoples of Sarawak, Malaysia, such as the Iban. Its flavor, strength, sweetness, and ingredients vary from family to family, making it hard to define in any concrete terms. But wherever it is made, it’s vested with ritual and memory.
When you think of countries with an exciting drinking culture worth exploring, you probably don’t think of Malaysia. Malaysia’s Bornean states are an exception. According to Ernesto Kalum, an amateur anthropologist, Dayak (indigenous) peoples in Sabah and Sarawak have long histories of brewing up a number of wickedly unpredictable concoctions from ingredients found in their gardens and jungles.
I was broken hearted and at a crossroads in my life when I first went up the Skrang River in Sarawak Borneo. The people I met there, ten years ago, who hosted me and my crew in their longhouse, who fed us and looked after us, treated me with great kindness. When the Chiefs invited me back for their yearly harvest festival, GAWAI, I said I would come.
