Written by @Lan & Edited by @joehairie
(Photos by curiostraveller.com team members)

“Restaurants are a wonderful escape for me..and are for a lot of people.”-Gay Talese

There’s one recent prestigious event, The Sabah Food Awards 2016 which was organized by SabahEats (Link to their Blog). The event was held on December 10, 2016 (Saturday) at Azure Pool Bar & Cafe, Le Meridien Hotel Kota Kinabalu. Apart from the winners, YB Datuk Kamarlin Hj Ombi (Assistant Minister for the Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Environment Sabah), bloggers, friends and instagramers attended the event. The event is about giving recognition to the winners of each category and winners were voted by the public (mass) via SabahEats blog from October 12, 2016 to November 15,2016.

The event started with speech by Adam Lai of SabahEats and he explained in details about the event, the objectives and the meaning. We were made to understand that Sabah Food Awards 2016 is the 2nd for SabahEats. Congratulations! The emcees for the event were @beebey66 of Era.fm sabah and @farhanxcx of Hitz.Fm Sabah.

The event was then officiated by YB Datuk Kamarlin Hj Ombi (Assistant Minister for the Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Environment Sabah), representing YB Datuk Masidi Manjun, Minister of of Tourism, Culture and Environment Sabah. He congratulated SabahEats for successfully organizing the event and hope that such event will be held in the future. He also congratulated all the winners.

More than 80 people attended the event and everyone were excited to know that there are prizes to be won in impromptu quiz and the best post in Instagram.

We were given the final list of the winners and we somehow agreed with the overall result, determined by public votes. There were 14 categories actually, the other 2 not listed in the pic above was the Heritage (Food) Award.

Among the winners receiving their certificates and recognition from YB Datuk Kamarlin Hj Ombi (Assistant Minister for the Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Environment Sabah) witnessed by Joanne Lee of SabahEats.

Best Malay/Malaysia Restaurant
Lucy's Kitchen

Best Chinese Restaurant
Super Tanker

Best Indian Food
Krishna Fish Head Curry

Best Western Restaurant
Shoney's Dining & Bar

Best Italian (Standalone)
Little Italy

Best Italian (Hotel)
Peppino, Shangri-La's Tanjung Aru Resort

Best Chinese/Indian/International Restaurant
Tanjung Ria Kitchen, Hyatt Regency Kinabalu

Best Dine & Wine Restaurant
Vino Vino Bistro

Best Cafe
October Coffee

Best Coffee Shop (Kopitiam)
Fook Yuen

Best Kota Kinabalu City Food
Welcome Seafood Restaurant

Best Dessert
ABC-Bukit Padang

Joanne Lee and Adam Lai of SabahEats with YB Datuk Kamarlin Hj Ombi (Assistant Minister for the Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Environment Sabah).

Adam Lai, SabahEats (Center) in a memento with the Chief Editor of curiostraveller.com, @joehairie (right) and writer,@Lan.

Media friends, Bloggers and Instagrammers with Joanne Lee (SabahEats).

We would like to take this opportunity to congratulate SabahEats for their success in organizing such a great event for the 2nd year. It is indeed important to acknowledged the best restaurants/food outlets as voted by the mass so that all of us will have useful guide in ‘food hunting’. Congrats to the winners as well, in all 14 categories. We hope to see more tougher competition in the future so that the quality of the food presented to the public are of high standard. Thank you SabahEats for inviting curiostraveller.com team members and we do hope that SabahEats is ably to discover more exciting restaurants especially in Sabah!.

“Part of the secret of a success in life is to eat what you like and let the food fight it out inside.”-Mark Twain