MCO delivery: Hit up Subang Jaya's N3 Indigenous Flavours for delicious, authentic Sarawak dishes

SUBANG JAYA, May 19 — It's not often you get to taste home-cooked Sarawak dishes like ayam pansuh or ayam kacangma in the Klang Valley.

Enter N3 Indigenous Flavours that prides itself for serving authentic flavours from Borneo. Prior to the pandemic, they ran a food stall at NZX Commercial Centre, Ara Damansara. In February this year, they decided to operate from their home location at Subang Jaya.

Each day, they offer a daily menu for lunch or dinner. You order from their menu posted a day before. The cut off time for orders is 7pm.

For weekdays, there's a very reasonably priced bento set. You get one main item, vegetables and rice for RM10. There will be a choice of three dishes for the main and two choices for the vegetable dish.

For weekends, you order the items in larger portions of 250 grams, 500 grams and one kilogram that is ideal for sharing. They also offer Nuba Layak which is a Kelabit dish of soft, mashed rice wrapped in isip leaf. A minimum order of 10 pieces is needed, which is RM25.

Once in a while, they also come up with various specials. Like for Easter, they served a Kelabit dish known as Kikid Kulat. It is essentially a mushroom and minced pork porridge. Or for Christmas, they make a cheesy shepherd's pie with a choice of beef, lamb or wild boar.

Each day, the food is ready by noon. You can either self pick up the items from a designated pick up point, or arrange for it to be delivered to your doorstep via a third party.

The choices for main dishes include wild boar cooked in several ways. There's wild boar pansuh which I tried and liked for the aromatic bamboo it is cooked in. They also offer it cooked as a curry, peratal or rendang. You can also have it stir fried with basil leaves or dry chillies and soy sauce.

Other dishes I sampled included their ayam kacangma. Apparently this is a confinement dish which is unique to the Hakkas in Sarawak. It's an acquired taste as the use of the motherwort herb gives this a slight bitter edge. I actually enjoyed it a lot as I found the sauce that also has lots of ginger and rice wine was packed with flavour.

The other item which went well with rice was their fish egg masala. You get pieces of fish egg cooked in a creamy, mild tasting curry.

My favourite items are their vegetable dishes. The daun ubi tumbuk may sound simple but the pounded wok fried vegetables are so delicious, I could have eaten one big bowl of it.

Even the pucuk paku belacan was well executed. The fern tops that were tender are paired with fragrant belacan and just a touch of chillies. Usually these dishes tend to be super spicy where your taste buds only get the spiciness but the restraint for heat makes this a more balanced dish.

Sadly I wasn't able to try the highly recommended bunga kantan kerabu as the timing wasn't right for me. Maybe next time as I reckon I would love it since I'm a big fan of the torch ginger flower.

N3 Indigenous Flavours, Subang Jaya, Selangor. For orders, you can WhatsApp them at 012-6464086. Facebook: N3-Indigenous-Flavours-112264427243978