Ikan bakar is genuinely one of the better things you can eat at a warung, and 300 calories for a full piece of grilled fish with sambal is not bad at all. The fish itself is doing a lot of the heavy lifting here, around 175 calories for 175g of lean white or semi-oily fish flesh, and you're walking away with 38g of protein. The sambal coating adds about 55 calories and the grilling oil adds another 70. To be honest, these are ballpark estimates because there's almost no hard nutritional data on Malaysian hawker ikan bakar specifically, the fish species varies, the marinade recipe is different at every stall, and how much oil gets absorbed depends on the grill. Treat these numbers as a reasonable middle ground, not gospel. But directionally, this is a lean high-protein dish and you should be eating it more often.
What actually moves the numbers is the sauce and the fish type. Plain ikan kembung bakar with just turmeric and no sambal? That's closer to 200 calories. The moment you go percik style with santan in the sauce, you're looking at 380 calories for the same-ish portion, that coconut milk adds up fast. Petai on the side only bumps you 30-50 calories extra which is nothing. The oil absorbed during grilling is the silent killer that people forget, a heavily basted fish can absorb significantly more than the 8g we're estimating here. So the practical move is ask for less sambal paste, skip the percik if you're cutting, and pair it with plain rice and ulam instead of nasi lemak. You keep the protein, lose the unnecessary calories.