Why Are Diners Resistant To Paying Top Dollar For Nyonya Cooking!

Nyonya cooking is a labour intensive process and there are no easy shortcuts to perfect this complex cuisine. So why are diners resistant to paying top dollar for it, asks Destin Tay.

I’ll admit. It wasn’t until I stumbled into the culinary world through a part time job during my polytechnic years that I began to look at food with a level of reverence. Back then, as a sheltered middle class Chinese kid glued to my Game Boy Colour, I barely paid any attention to my grandmother toiling away in the kitchen, pounding ingredients to make rempah for rendang and braising turnips for popiah, during our monthly family gatherings. Food was quite the afterthought for eight-year-old me.

Life has a funny way of turning things on their head.

Through a part-time job as a cook in a café, I developed a new-found interest in food, and enrolled myself into the Culinary Institute of America in Singapore. As part of the program I had to secure a restaurant for my internship. While my classmates scored prestigious restaurant internships in America and Europe, I was hoping to complete mine with Malcolm Lee at Candlenut, the world’s first Michelin-starred Peranakan restaurant, perhaps as a way to reconnect with my culinary heritage. What followed next was a deep dive into a whole new world of spice and flavour.