Ina Pickle

Fermentation is at the forefront of Pickle Dining, located within the heart of Chinatown

- Katelyn Tan 

“There are primitive ways to impart flavour into food that are lost in modern times,” smiles Danial Thorlby, the head chef and co-founder of Pickle Dining. He refers to cooking techniques such as cooking over wood fire, smoking, pickling, lacto-fermentation, dry-ageing, and others commonly seen in restaurant dishes. “Such preservation methods and techniques have a strong human element and are not as common in this day and age,” he continues.

To be able to serve guests in this manner excites the Malay-English chef. “All these techniques date back to the beginning of time and come from different cultures.” Age-old methods and the history of the world have always interested Thorlby, who tells me that his other career option was to become an archaeologist.

However, he instead completed a culinary course at Taylor’s Culinary Institute and bought a one-way ticket to London, landing himself a job at Ladurée. Beginning his career in French techniques, and with a desire to see the world, he moved to Paris after two years, before stints in New York and Singapore, and becoming head chef at The Study in Singapore, at the young age of 25.

“Before I knew it, I had achieved my 10-year goals, which were to travel and become head chef, and I needed to figure out what came next,” he explains. As such, Thorlby moved back to Kuala Lumpur in 2018, but the pandemic struck soon after.

While the majority of restaurants were shut down or operating minimally during this period, Thorlby worked with Feeka Coffee Roasters and grew the business from two to eight outlets in just three years. “This gave me the confidence I needed to open my own restaurant,” he says.