Grilled Fish at Ikan Bakar

Food is one of the best reasons to travel, and the grilled fish is a reason you should travel to Melaka. Malaysia’s people are wonderful already, but one area they specifically excel in is taking care of large grills full of fish. Some local eaters at the restaurant even claimed, this is “the Best Seafood restaurant in all of Malaysia.” In short, Ikan Bakar Hj Musa is one restaurant in Melaka you just can’t afford to miss.

One of the most fun parts of eating local food in Malaysia, is the wonderful attitude they have here towards ‘self-service.’ Whether its the rice, a simple sauce, or even an entire giant fish still swimming in its pen, aside from the actual cooking, you pick and choose pretty much every part of every meal yourself. Ikan Bakar Hj Musa is no different, and part of the meal experience here is to start by approaching the mountain of fish in front. Really take your time to pick out the fish you want, and when you’re done, hand it all over to the chef, and watch him go to work. A giant and daily selection of freshly caught seafood, Ikan Bakar Hj Musa is most famous for their grilled fish. In total they have a dozen types of fish, and other types other seafood as well, just waiting for you to choose.

From the various tubs and ice trays piled high, you can inspect each fish by hand before tossing it in your personal plastic lunchbox of seafood. Note: Because the fish are caught fresh each day, there may be some variety in selection. Each fish may not be there every day, but in my mind that’s another way you know that these fish really are coming straight from the local fisherman. The items they should have daily, are in a list on the black menu board. The prices are given by 100 gram weights, and you simply line up your picks next to the scale, they record the numbers on your bill, and you move right along to the next step. If there’s no one else in line in front of you, it might not be obvious at first – but there is a huge benefit to serving food like this (besides the abundance of delicious fresh seafood of course). I’ll just tell you straight away – the local way to eat here is to choose not one, but several different seafoods, and you can also try an assortment of cooking styles as well (for which there is no charge, but we will get to that in a minute). Therefore, don’t be at all surprised to see a trio of innocent looking young ladies, delicately selecting fish… but then far outdoing you in the size of their order (it happened to us… twice!). This is a place where you can really let your seafood passions flourish. Go for your favorite fish, and pick out a huge one, pairing it with a few small side orders, or go the other way and taste the whole selection with an order of ‘one of everything, please.’ Note**: While waiting for your own fish to grill, walk about 100 meters out and past the restaurant to look at all the colorful fishing boats lining up at anchor, all the fisherman relaxing after a hard morning’s work.

Grilled, Fried, or Deep Fried

 After filling your basket (several baskets more like it), move to the second step of your seafood feast – picking your style of how your fish will cook. I will list the individual orders in detail down below, but first I’ll give a general idea of how the choosing/grilling process may look. Our first selection of shrimp came out to a half kilo (I think it was a half-dozen shrimp), and we asked for them just salted and then grilled. Our bigger fish (a medium-size Indian Mackarel) we wanted on a banana leaf with sambal, then also grilled as well. Hotels in Melaka State Next came a single large squid, sliced up and deep fried, which is also something that comes with its own sweet and spicy dark soy dipping sauce.