Understanding Malaysia: part one of ?

‘The (Malay)Asian Friend’

I think this will be a series of essays, a disgruntled thread that may take a lifetime to untangle. The continued misunderstanding of a complex nation, where borders and boundaries come from flux, where the jungle makes lines in the earth an impossibility and yet politics, nationalism, colonial lens and the exotic touristic eye compete to limit and define a nation built on migration and the movement of people. (and I realise that this could refer to not just Malaysia!)

My original gripe comes from the limitation of how Malaysia food, and therefore Malaysians, gets represented in London. I write in my book (out in a year’s time) that we are boiled down to a few dishes - “roti canai, beef rendang, nasi lemak, nasi goreng, maybe sambal, and now laksa.” The request for these dishes is like a checklist of if a restaurant is ‘authentically’ Malaysia, or someone is authentically Malaysian if they know/like/eat them. 

You don’t crave nasi lemak, are you really Malaysian!?

This limiting of identity, this need to squeeze a nationality into a food-shaped box, is a form of policing and yet I think it actually comes from a place of wanting to be inclusive, or wanting community and finding connection. It comes from people within this national identity, from those outside, and those adjacent. There is a growing desire to understand the multiplicity of food cultures that London has to offer, and this is not something I want to discourage or even dampen. I don’t want people to be scared they’ll get it wrong, by trying something new. But equally, the need to fully understand something - to nail it to a board, or as Counting Crows sang about girl called Anna “Snap her up in a butterfly net and just pin her down on a photograph album”, seems to be a part of this quest instead of embracing the unknown. 

In diaspora, the set up of a restaurant is a completely different context to ‘home’ - a tropical place with space for outdoor cooking, for example. And it is one that is created for a different audience. The history of East and South East Asian restaurants in the UK is linked of course to migration, and in the post WWII space these restaurants - which were predominantly southern Chinese - began to cater for the European, and non-ESEA, palate. Therefore we now have restaurants that are multi-purpose - they are for those seeking touches of home, memories to place on our lips and to roll around our mouths - but they are also restaurants that cater for second/third/fourth generation diaspora, for people who don’t have connections to Asia, and for people who went to Asia for holidays. 

And so they become spaces for multiple agendas and desires. In the more traditional British Malaysia restaurants, such as the ones in and around Bayswater, they tend to focus on key dishes that are popular and most will find familiar. (Bayswater is nicknamed balik Bayswater - a play on the term balik kampung, meaning your home village (sort of), because of its concentration of Malaysians, and/or Malaysian eating spots. But from my perspective this is a very West Malaysian identity, and feels somewhat alien to my understanding of Malaysia.) But I don’t want to talk about the history of Malaysian migration, or the groups of Malaysians that migrated, and how that, along with the expats, therefore set up the expectations of what Malaysian foods were. I want to talk about how we talk about Malaysian foods now. 

To understand Malaysian food in London now, I actually think we can skip historical context (to an extent) - this is way off brand for me, I know. I think we can go into understanding Malaysian food by directly looking at Malaysia, Malaysia as a modern nation, the contemporary Malaysia. Malaysia has strong links with the UK because of colonialism, of course. One of those outcomes was Malaysians coming over in the 70s and 80s to work in the NHS. But now, this link to Malaysia is one of travel and tourism, which goes both ways - mixed-race kids going to visit grandparents for holidays, those without links to Malaysia travelling to visit beaches, jungles, orangutans… And Malaysians coming to London through various international routes - to study, or via other global north countries. The understanding of what and who a Malaysian is, is just so diverse. 

Malaysia is a land of movement. Chinese and Tamil migrants, indigenous peoples migrating within the borders… And it is this movement that makes up the flavours of Malaysia. Therefore the movement across the globe is part of the continued idea of authenticity. It seems impossible to label any London Malaysian food as ‘authentic’ in a traditional sense - to mean authentic to the space of Malaysia - the context of how it is served in this country is inauthentic to Malaysia; they are restaurant space as opposed to the specialist one-or-two-dish kopitiam stall… (I am not even going to go into the fact that every town, city, state has a different version of each of the well known Malaysian dishes!) 

Every Malaysian restaurant in London is authentic and also is inauthentic. Academic Xiao Ma references Cohen (1988) when she writes that “authenticity is a projection of opinions, ideologies, contexts and imaginations rather than an innate quality possessed in an object”. Each restaurant is a project and a projection of what their Malaysia is, their combination of Malaysia in the space of London. But for some reason Malaysian food isn’t given the space to be uniquely authentic, to be creative in that expression of authenticity. The thing is, there are restaurants in Malaysia, and they aren’t selling roti canai or nasi lemak and that is the thing. It feels like a form of infantilization and exoticism to place these everyday kopitiam dishes as the definition of Malaysian, served up in a formal restaurant setting of London. Not because the stall foods are infant, but rather it gives the idea that ‘grown up’ restaurant spaces of Malaysia don’t exist and therefore we only have hawker dishes to be served (in a restaurant) in London. Therefore we aren’t seeing Malaysian London foods with the question of: is this interesting and good from the perspective of London restaurants, or from the perspective of Malaysian restaurants? We’re caught up in some sort of projected nostalgia. 

It is extremely weird when you see well meaning people review or discuss Malaysian food and, through trying to do research and be understanding, simply put boxes and defined boundaries of what the food should be - there is clout chasing in being well researched that only shrinks the possibilities of the cooks, the people, the chefs, the eaters… 

This shrinking happens because there is a look at Malaysia from a historical perspective. This is an issue with diaspora; the taste of home, in diaspora people, can be one that is static because it is built on memory (to be expanded in another essay!) And it is an issue when a space is understood so completely from a colonial lens. I have been surprised at how many (very well informed people) don’t know that Malay is not a shortening for Malaysian - and so a Malaysian restaurant cannot also be called a Malay restaurant (unless of course it is a Malay restaurant; Malay being a cultural and racial groups of peoples who are from predominantly Singapore, Malaysia, Brunei, Indonesia). This naming comes from the colonial understanding of ‘Malaya’ - the space that is now Western Malaysia. 

Which brings me back to looking at Malaysian food from a contemporary outlook. 

Recently an incredibly favourable review was written about Abby Lee and her restaurant Mambow. On Mambo’s instagram page it says “Malaysian heat and juicy wines” - we aren’t sold any idea of traditional or ‘authentic’. In fact, it seems to scream creativity and fluidity - there are no boundaries of what can happen! But the Independent review introduces the restaurant as a “new authentic Malaysian eatery” - without defining what is meant by ‘authentic’. The writer brings along her friend who is half Malay and half (white, I assume, because whiteness is always the fucking default, isn’t it!?) British, whose Malay heritage is from Singapore. Nearer the end of the review we’re told that Chef Lee comes from Nonya heritage, which is explained as being a blending of Malay cooking techniques and Chinese ingredients which isn’t quite true, but isn't exactly wrong. But what frustrates me is that there is a conflation throughout the review of what is Malay, what is Malaysian, what is the food that they are supposed to be eating, and the heritage of Lee is completely erased, but the ‘Asian friend’ is given a detailed history so as to give legitimacy of the reviewer. 

Lee is Chinese Malaysian, her father is from Sibu, which is a river town in Sarawak. This particular area of Sarawak has a lot of Foochow people which brings its own specificity to Chinese cooking, as well as indigenous peoples - particularly Iban. Nynong cooking and those of the culture or cooking, is a heritage that is really quite old and has traversed and developed. The Sarawak heritage of Lee is relevant to the restaurant, and yet is left out, bar a mention of a Sarawakian-inspired dish. A Malay Singaporean talking about Sarawakian food is like an Italian talking about French foods - sure, there are regional similarities, but there are so many nuances, and expertise is not a given. The ‘Asian friend’ ends by saying (according to the review) with ““Well that wasn’t exactly like it is in Malaysia” or “I can see what she was trying to do there”” - but Lee isn’t recreating a Malaysian restaurant, how could she possibly do that, she is in London? And she isn’t ‘trying’ anything, she is actively doing. This is a restaurant being viewed through colonial nostalgia, diaspora nostalgia, and a flattening of what Malaysia actually is - culturally, socially, spatially, ethnically. 

What struck me the most with this review is: why was Lee was being squeezed into a set of perceived ideas of what Malaysian is? When I compare the way Thai food and restaurants have been given the space to roam, explore, experiment… No one is questioning if they are trying, or the authenticity of Singburi, Som Saa, Kiln, AngloThai... In fact, I think what John Chantarasak is doing is very similar to what Lee is all about; deep research, creative expression, personal heritage explored, using exceptional ingredients. Oh shit, maybe it's also gendered?

And so the issue with this review, and is relevant to all those trying to grapple with foods unknown to them, is that it flattens everyone’s identity. The friend gets brought in as a stand in for limp research and has to hold the pressure of legitimacy on their shoulders, no context is allowed to be explored and ‘authenticity’ is a concept that becomes reductive. 

That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t bring someone knowledgeable of a food culture or region to a review or even just a new restaurant. One instance this was excellent was the Sunday Times review by Marina O’Loughlin, of Ikoyi, with Elieen Tuwm - Elieen is extremely intelligent and was able to context, deep and is generous in her outlook to food and culture, and O’Loughlin is an extremely talented writer that allowed for complexity in the analysis, bringing in a sense of multiplicity. 

Don’t bring your Asian friend unless you can give empathic framing and context, to everyone.