Brunei

Bruneian cuisine echoes Malay traditions, built on rice, seafood, and the distinctive sago-starch ambuyat eaten with a sour dip. Rich, spiced, and coconut-laced, it reflects a small, food-loving sultanate.

Ambuyat is deliberately bland, which is the point: sago starch stirred with boiling water into a translucent glue that carries whatever it is dipped in. It is eaten with chandas, a linked pair of bamboo sticks used like a two-pronged fork to twirl it, and the dips do the work, sambal tempoyak from fermented durian, cincalok, or sour binjai fruit.

The dish is not Brunei's alone. The same sago paste is eaten across northern Borneo in Sarawak, Sabah and Labuan, where it is called linut or pinantung, so the sultanate shares it with its neighbours. Sago itself comes from the pith of a palm rather than from a grain, which is why it grows where rice paddies will not.

Soft steamed rice-flour cakes lightly spiced and faintly sweet, a Bruneian teatime and breakfast bite.