Sarawak laksa is a breakfast noodle soup built on a spice-and-shrimp paste, thinned with a little coconut milk and a lot of stock, poured over rice vermicelli and topped with shredded chicken, prawns, egg strips, beansprouts, and a wedge of lime. It is sour, savoury, faintly nutty, and lightly spiced, and it tastes nothing like the bright orange curry laksa you get in Kuala Lumpur or the fish-and-tamarind assam laksa from Penang. Anthony Bourdain ate it on his 2015 visit and praised it on camera, and that clip has followed the dish around ever since.
In Kuching you eat it at a kopitiam in the morning, usually for RM7 to RM12 a bowl. Most stalls sell out before noon. It is the dish I tell first-timers to lead with in our guide to what to eat in Kuching.
TL;DR
- Sarawak laksa is a spiced shrimp-paste broth softened with coconut milk, served over rice vermicelli (bee hoon), not egg noodles.
- Standard toppings: shredded chicken, prawns, thin omelette strips, beansprouts, coriander, lime, and a dollop of sambal on the side.
- It is a breakfast and brunch dish here. Many stalls open at 6:30am and close by 11am or when the pot runs out.
- Typical price in Kuching: RM7 to RM12, more if you add extra prawns or want the “special”.
- It is different from kolo mee, which is a dry egg-noodle dish, not a soup.
- Mild to medium heat as served. The sambal on the side is where the real spice lives, so you control it.
- Most versions are not halal because the broth and sambal often use belacan and sometimes the stock is mixed; halal-certified options exist but you have to look.
What exactly is in a bowl of Sarawak laksa?
The base is the paste, called laksa paste or sambal laksa. It carries dried shrimp, belacan (fermented shrimp paste), galangal, lemongrass, candlenut, chilli, and a long list of other aromatics. Cooks fry that paste, then build a broth with chicken stock and coconut milk. The result is reddish-brown, not the vivid orange of a curry laksa, and the coconut sits in the background rather than coating everything.
Over rice vermicelli they pile shredded poached chicken, halved prawns, ribbons of fried egg, raw beansprouts, and coriander. A lime wedge comes on the side, along with a small mound of sambal belacan. You squeeze the lime in, stir the sambal to taste, and eat it while it is hot.
The texture is the part I did not expect the first time. Because it uses thin rice vermicelli rather than wheat noodles, it is softer and lighter than a Penang or KL laksa. You are drinking the broth as much as eating the noodles.
How is Sarawak laksa different from kolo mee?
They get confused constantly because both are Kuching breakfast staples sold at the same kopitiams, but they are not the same kind of dish at all.
| Sarawak laksa | Kolo mee | |
|---|---|---|
| Form | Noodle soup | Dry, tossed noodles |
| Noodle | Rice vermicelli (bee hoon) | Springy egg noodles |
| Flavour base | Spiced shrimp-and-coconut broth | Pork lard, shallot oil, soy, vinegar |
| Toppings | Chicken, prawns, egg, beansprouts | Char siu, minced pork, sometimes wontons |
| Heat | Mild, sambal on the side | None by default |
| Price (Kuching, 2026) | RM7 to RM12 | RM4 to RM7 |
If you order kolo mee expecting soup, you get a plate of dry noodles with a tiny bowl of clear soup on the side. If you order laksa expecting the dry stuff, you get the soup. Both are worth eating. They just answer different cravings, and most locals rotate between them across the week.
Where do locals actually eat Sarawak laksa in Kuching?
Here are the places I send people, with what to expect. Prices are May 2026.
Choon Hui Cafe (Jalan Ban Hock). This is the one most “best of” lists name, partly because of the Bourdain connection. The laksa stall inside the kopitiam does a clean, balanced bowl for around RM10, RM13 for the special with extra prawns. It is genuinely good. It is also the most touristed laksa in the city, so by 9am on a weekend you may queue 20 minutes and share a table. Cash is king here, and they close mid-morning.
Madam Tang (multiple outlets, including Jalan Song area). A more polished, slightly pricier sit-down version, easy to find and consistent, around RM11 to RM14. Good if you want air-con and a parking spot rather than a plastic-stool kopitiam.
Golden Arch / morning kopitiam stalls around Padungan and BDC. Plenty of unnamed stalls inside coffee shops do a RM8 bowl that locals eat on the way to work. Quality varies stall to stall, which is the honest truth of it, but the median is fine and the price is right.
For the packaged, sit-down branded version, King Laksa has counters at iCom Square and Metrocity (Matang) and is worth knowing about for a different reason, which I get to below. A bowl there runs roughly RM10 to RM13.
A quick orientation note for visitors: laksa is a morning thing. Walk into most of these places at 2pm and the laksa pot is gone, even if the kopitiam is still open for other food.
Where can I buy Sarawak laksa paste or packets to take home?
This is the info-gain part, because a lot of people who try the dish here want to take it with them, and you can.
Swallow and Barrett’s are the two paste brands most locals and homesick Sarawakians reach for, both long-running Kuching labels sold as souvenirs. Each is a thick laksa paste in a tub or pouch that you fry off and extend with stock and coconut milk at home. You find them in Kuching supermarkets (Ta Kiong, Everrise, some Choice Daily outlets), at the Main Bazaar souvenir shops, and at the airport for last-minute gifts, usually somewhere around RM7 to RM15 depending on brand and size. Check the airport price against the supermarket price, because the airport markup is real.
King Laksa sells retail paste and meal packs alongside its dine-in counters at iCom Square and Metrocity, which makes it a convenient one-stop if you are already there. Of the two souvenir pastes, Swallow tends to be the cheaper, sometimes under RM10; I find it a little more one-dimensional than Barrett’s, but it does the job.
One practical note for travellers: laksa paste is a wet shrimp-based product, so it goes in checked luggage, not your carry-on, and some countries (Australia, for one) will ask about it at biosecurity. Declare it.
Is Sarawak laksa spicy? Is it halal?
On heat: as it arrives, it is mild to medium. The broth itself is more savoury and sour than hot. The kick lives in the sambal belacan on the side, so you decide how far to push it. If you cannot take chilli, ask for the sambal separately and add a little at a time.
On halal: most kopitiam versions are not halal-certified. The broth leans heavily on belacan and dried shrimp, the sambal often contains belacan too, and in mixed Chinese coffee shops you cannot assume the kitchen is pork-free elsewhere. There are Malay-run and halal-certified laksa stalls in Kuching, and some branded outlets state their status, but you have to check rather than assume. If halal matters to you, ask directly or look for the official halal cert on display before ordering.
The overrated part nobody puts in the listicles
Here is the honest beat. The most famous bowl in Kuching is not reliably the best one you can get, and the Bourdain quote has done some damage. Choon Hui is good, but on a busy weekend morning the bowls come out faster and thinner than on a quiet weekday, the broth tastes more diluted, and you are paying a small premium and a real time cost in the queue for a name. I have had a RM8 bowl at a no-name BDC kopitiam that was mint, as we’d say back in Manchester, meaning genuinely excellent, and it beat the famous version on a bad day flat out, no asterisk.
And the dish itself will not land for everyone. The coconut-and-shrimp-paste combination is an acquired thing. The first time my sister-in-law from England tried it, she found the belacan funk off-putting and could not finish the bowl. It is a fermented-seafood flavour, and if that is not your world, no amount of calling it a local icon is going to fix the taste in your mouth. Some people just do not like it, and that is a fair reaction to a strong, funky broth that I am not going to talk you out of.
One more honest flag, with no softening attached. The famous stalls get crowded and slow on weekend mornings, the queues are real, and the bowls thin out as the pot empties. If you only have a Sunday at 10am to spare, skip the tourist-famous stall and eat at the busiest neighbourhood kopitiam you can find instead. The line is not worth it that morning.
So what should you order, and where?
If it is your first bowl and you want the reference version, go to Choon Hui early on a weekday, order the special, RM13 or so, and eat it before 9am. If you want the everyday Kuching experience, walk into any busy kopitiam in Padungan or BDC at 7:30am, point at the laksa, pay your RM8, and watch what the table next to you ordered. If you want to take the flavour home, grab a tub of Swallow or Barrett’s paste from Ta Kiong rather than the airport, and put it in your checked bag.
The thing I notice every time I take a visitor for laksa: they spend the first three spoonfuls trying to place the flavour against something they already know, fail, and then just eat. That gap, the moment the comparison stops working, is the dish doing its job.
Last updated: June 2026. Stall prices and brand availability checked in Kuching, May 2026. Halal status varies by stall, so confirm at the counter.