KY eats – Mawilla (Seafood) Yacht Club Restaurant , Labuan

For many who visits Labuan, the default go-to for dinner would be a place that serves seafood. For this purpose, Mawilla Yacht Club, or Mawilla Seaofod Restaurant is often a destination of choice.

Mawilla Seafood Restaurant, Labuan

The restaurant is situated just 1.5km away from Grand Dorsett Labuan, and really isn’t crazy to say that one can leisurely stroll there in 20 minutes or so.

While the name “Yatch Club” suggests a luxurious setting with beautiful jetty and multi-million yachts, the reality is much more modest – a somewhat tired looking building straight out of the 90s, with stilts, wooden flooring, and plastic chairs you’d find at any housing area “kenduri”. Seating area is mostly al-fresco, and does get a bit warm when the sea breeze isn’t blowing.

dinner for 3, prices clear stated

Ordering at Mawilla can be done even before you are seated. There’s a fresh seafood stall with the fresh catch of the day for your picking, with prices clearly stated on a board above – crab for RM 5.00, squid for RM 10.00, silver fish at RM 15 per 100 gram, and so forth.

You can physically pick the exact fish/squid you wish to be cooked, and choose the preferred cooking method too. There’s no live (swimming) seafood here, however.

butter prawn, silver fish, bitter gourd

For the three of us, we ordered 5 dishes altogether to go with some steamed rice for dinner.

Butter prawn was creamy and flavorful. The prawns were certainly very fresh as well, having its skin still sticking to the body.

The deep fried silver fish somewhat of a specialty here. We ordered ours to be flavored with salted egg yolk. It was a mix of crunchy and creaminess, and I believe would make for an excellent beer food in something like an izakaya or a pub setting.

We also had fried bitter gourd with salted egg yolk (perhaps a stupid decision to have repeating flavor). It went will with steamed rice and let us have an illusion of a more balanced meal.

deep fried squid, steamed garupa fish

My favorite dish of the night was the deep fried squid. A simple dish that relies solely on the quality of fresh squid and prefect execution. The batter was light and crunchy, and the seafood moist, tender, and retaining its original flavor. This was spot on.

Steamed grouper in superior soy sauce was another dish that they did well though not particularly exceptional. The fish was properly flayed and not overly steamed, however, there were minimal additional ingredients other than a bit of fried shallots and cilantro. It was decent, but could have been better.

Overall, the bill came to be RM 240 including drinks, averaging RM 80 per pax, fair price I supposed.

Address:
Mawilla Seafood Restaurant
Jalan Tanjung Batu,
80696 Labuan
GPS:5.27693, 115.25953
Tel: 087-423 888