KUALA LUMPUR • A shopping centre in Sarawak is facing public anger after throwing away a huge bowl of laksa made with 600kg of ingredients and which broke a Malaysian record for popular street food, according to local media.

The Plaza Merdeka mall threw away, among other items, 100kg of laksa paste, 225kg of rice noodles, 90kg of prawns, 1,008 eggs, 90kg of bean sprouts and 80kg of chicken, online newspaper The Malay Mail Online reported yesterday.

The giant custom-made bowl of laksa, measuring 1.3m deep and 3.1m wide, was part of a successful attempt to be entered as "The Biggest Bowl of Laksa Sarawak" in the Malaysia Book of Records on Friday.

The huge bowl is equivalent to 1,500 bowls of Sarawak laksa.

Organiser Debra Sim told local daily The Borneo Post that "it will all be thrown away because it is unhealthy for human consumption".

It took 18 hours and 15 cooks to prepare the dish, the newspaper said.

Mr Michael Law, a secondary school teacher, reportedly called The Borneo Post to complain about the food wastage.

"I saw the function on the Facebook page and called to confirm whether the enormous amount of food was being wasted just to enter the book of records. When it was confirmed, I felt very sad."

A Justin Lim wrote on Plaza Merdeka's website: "To the organiser who threw away few hundred kilos of meat, prawns, vege and over a thousand eggs, please google 'famine' first and then after that live in shame for the rest of your life."

The mall's general manager, Mr Cheah Kheng Mun, was quoted by The Borneo Post as saying that the food was cooked on Friday morning and started to emit a foul odour at around 7pm, indicating that the coconut milk-based gravy had gone bad.