Friday Seafood Fiesta

Neow Kok Meng, Chef De Cuisine at Harbour Café
presents his signature rock salt baked whole salmon

At the end of the work week, you deserve a treat with a leisurely dinner of seafood specialties at the Harbour Café in Traders Hotel, Puteri Harbour. Selecting your food choice from a spread of scrumptious seafood after a busy week will shift the focus from work to good food to celebrate the start of your weekend. This was what Chef Neow Kok Meng had in mind when he created the Friday Seafood Fiesta at the Harbour Café.

From 6.30pm every Friday, the Harbour Café is transformed into a seafood centre where a range of fresh crabs, mussels, prawns, yabbies, squid and fish are served to please the discerning palates of seafood lovers. Unlike most dinner buffets that only serve ready-to-eat items, chefs are stationed at various sections of this buffet to meet your request and prepare your pick of seafood to your preference. This gives guests the flexibility to ask and if the ingredients are available, it will take just a few minutes to serve up a freshly cooked seafood item in your favourite flavor!

Pick your seafood choices from the Chilled station

On the other hand if you are a fan of raw seafood, then ask the chefs for your choice of sashimi items from fish, squid and eel specialties at the Japanese station. Otherwise, take your pick of sushi from the prepared selection and savour your choices with a dash of wasabi and soya sauces. A range of appetizing Japanese pickles and chilled soba noodles are also available.

To whet your appetite, you can start from the Appetiser Station where a range of seafood is used extensively in the preparation of a colourful choice of appetisers. Among the items are seafood potato salad, Thai-style marinated squid with slivers of mango and dried shrimps, dill marinated Japanese cucumber with octopus and even a peanut crusted tuna salad. It’s important that you do not get distracted by the choices here because there are plenty more to pick from the other sections of the buffet.

Select your choice of sashimi items at the Japanese station

Seafood purists can take your pick from the Chilled station where boiled prawns, mussels, scallops and other shell fish are kept chilled on a bed of ice to eat with a twist of lime juice. 

At the Indian station, fish, prawns and squid are freshly baked from the tandoor oven and you can ask for fluffy cheese naan to savour with your seafood.

In the adjacent Barbecue station, your choice of seafood can be enjoyed with a range of interesting sauces from tomato-based non-spicy flavours to the cut red chillie with onion slivers in dark sauce type of sauce!

Freshly baked fish, prawns and squid
from the tandoor oven!

Meat-lovers at the seafood buffet will be delighted that there is also a delectable beef roast to enjoy with a choice of sauces while fans of noodles and dim sum can assemble their own bowls of soupy or curry noodles topped by fish balls and other seafood items. 

If you prefer to pick from ready-to-eat items, then the Asian station offers choices like steamed grouper with black bean sauce, wok fried cereal prawns and mock shark’s fin soup with crab meat. As you finish your meal sweetly with a array of delectable desserts and hot coffee or tea, you will agree that this is a fine way to celebrate your weekend after a busy work week.

Harbour Café is located at level 1 of Traders Hotel Puteri Harbour in Nusajaya. The seafood buffet, priced at RM108++ per adult and RM54++ per child under age 12, is served every Friday from 6.30pm to 10pm. For reservations, Tel: 07 – 560 8888 and 012 – 260 7294 or email: restaurantreservations.thph@tradershotels.com



Mud crabs freshly cooked in rich chilli sauce; Don't forget to get some bread to mop up all that yummy gravy!

Guests helping themselves to the buffet at Harbour Cafe's Friday Seafood Fiesta

A version of this article was published in The New Straits Times, Streets Johor on 27 March 2014