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 recently.

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.

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

Cheah Kheng Mun, the shopping centre's general manager, told reporters they could not "simply give away" the laksa because they had been advised to maintain the soup gravy at a certain temperature.

He also revealed that the giant bowl of laksa had started to give off an odour.

After being flooded with angry comments on its Facebook page, the shopping mall issued an apology.

"We are very grateful to the public for pointing out the issue of food wastage. We would not try to justify ourselves in this respect. We apologize for the oversight and misjudgement," it said.

(Excerpts from straitstimes.com & BBC.com)