Abang Johari Tun Openg
KUCHING: Deputy Chief Minister Datuk Amar Abang Johari Tun Openg has called a shopping mall’s Malaysia Book of Records attempt to make the biggest bowl of Sarawak Laksa on Friday an effort to promote the local delicacy.
The Minister of Tourism, Arts and Culture said the throwing out of the equivalent of 1,500 bowls of the dish later that night was not necessarily a waste of food.
“Depends on how you look at it. If they have a noble objective of promoting our food, why not?” he said when asked to comment on the throwing out of some 600kg of food used to achieve the record.
“They look at it from their own perspective, and the one who complained to The Borneo Post (had his) own perspective. The question is nobody can judge it. The same with the longest ketupat, it is a waste,” he said.
According to him, the people should consider the cost-benefit analysis for the event.
“The cost is waste but benefit could be more. So you must balance it, cost and benefit,” he said.
“If the cost is say RM100,000, but the benefit from it, you get RM150,000, you still gain RM50,000, correct or not?”
According to him, viewing the record attempt from this perspective would change the people’s response to it.
“Somebody may not know this cost-benefit analysis, when they say it is just a waste. But you must study from that angle,” said Abang Johari.
To achieve the record, 15 cooks took 18 hours to prepare the dish with ingredients including 100kg of Sarawak Laksa paste; 225kg of beehoon; 90kg of prawns; 1,008 eggs; 90kg of bean sprouts; and 80kg of chicken to fill a 1.3-metre deep and 3.1-metre wide custom-made ‘bowl’.
The whole lot was thrown out as the shopping mall said the record-setting dish was ‘unhealthy for human consumption.’