THE TASTE - Team Anthony..Guan
Cover Chua on Channel 4's The Taste (Photo: The Taste)

London-based Guan Chua shares insider tips on his must-go dining spots when he returns to Kuala Lumpur

Through regular supper cubs and pop-ups in London specialising in Nyonya cuisine, Le Cordon Bleu-trained chef Guan Chua expresses his passion for Malaysian food. While Chua has always loved the food he grew up with, he only started cooking professionally later on in life; Chua was a former finance analyst before he applied for culinary school.

Coinciding with the time, Chua was scouted for Channel 4’s The Taste, a cooking reality TV show programme in the UK, during which he was mentored by late food writer and television personality Anthony Bourdain. Other than hosting supper clubs, Chua is also active on his Instagram and blog theboywhoatetheworld.com where he writes about his food and travels. 

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Tatler Asia
THE TASTE - Team Anthony..Barryleft to right:.Justin, Dixie, Mentor Anthony, Guan and Barry
Above Chua with Team Bourdain (Photo: The Taste)

What do you miss most about being away from Malaysia?

Although London’s food scene is becoming increasingly diverse, Malaysian food is still rather under-represented. For me, nothing beats the sheer abundance, variety and 24/7 availability of food in Malaysia, especially when it comes to street food and hawker favourites. Few cuisines in the world are as multi-cultural and steeped in heritage. Where else can one find a Hainanese chicken rice shop, mamak curry fish head stall, Nyonya restaurant and nasi lemak specialist all side-by-side on the same road? There is zero chance in London of enjoying a fully loaded bowl of curry laksa with cockles at seven in the morning or a roti canai at midnight when you fancy some supper.

What is the first dish you eat when you return to Malaysia and where do you go for it?

One of the first dishes I always crave as soon as I step off the plane and into KLIA is Kak Nik’s ikan patin tempoyak, which is catfish cooked with fermented durian in Pantai Dalam. I must admit, I’m actually not the biggest durian fan as I find it too rich on its own. However, when it is fermented and cooked with local spices like at Kak Nik’s, the end result is a beautifully subtle, tangy and balanced gravy that I could lap up an entire bucket’s worth of with steamed rice. Their meaty ikan patin, sourced from the river waters of Termeloh, have a really clean-tasting flavour too. They poach the fish so well the flesh is still moist and meltingly tender, sponging up all that lovely tempoyak gravy. The hospitality and warm welcome at this family-run restaurant is always fantastic too.

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Do you have a favourite restaurant in Malaysia?

Xi Gong in Kepong. This Cantonese-style tai chow seafood restaurant is one of my reliable go-to eateries for family reunions and friends’ gatherings. It serves up the most incredible dishes. Their signature crab claypot rice is one of my ultimate favourite dishes in the Klang Valley—the crab juices when combined with the dark soy, ginger and rice wine sauce takes the claypot rice to a whole new level!

Another fantastic signature of theirs are the prawns cooked in coconut juice—the dish has a unique lightness and balance about it compared to other richer, coconut-milk based prawn curries. Other Cantonese and Malaysian-Chinese staples like their butter prawns and sambal belachan sei dai tin wong (Four Heavenly Kings' vegetable medley) are excellent and well executed too. 

If you have guests visiting from abroad, where would you take them to give them a real taste of Malaysia?

I normally take visiting friends on a food crawl around the Klang Valley so they can experience the full breadth of Malay, Chinese and Indian influences in Malaysian food. I’d start the morning in the hustle and bustle of the Pudu wet market, followed by breakfast at Taste of Foo Chow for their signature red wine chicken mee sua noodles.

I’d follow up with lunch in Brickfields for banana leaf rice at Vishal’s or Moorthy’s so they can experience Little India. For dinner, I’d bring them to Nasi Lemak Wanjo for their light, fluffy, coconut rice with sambal sotong and paru rendang. Then to cap a proper day’s eating in KL off, I’d finish the crawl at Zaini Satay in Ampang for their scrumptious chargrilled satay fresh off the hot coals.

Where would you go to catch up with friends?

For me, there is no better way to catch up with friends than over a shared family-style feast. In addition to Xi Gong, we also love going to Fatt Hei Len in Cheras (also known as Fat Helen’s as it is affectionately nicknamed!) for their delicious chef specialties such as their buttermilk squid yam basket and signature claypot roasted rice porridge with giant shrimp. Another meal format I absolutely is sharing a big plate of fried hokkien mee in the centre of the table. Tong Lian Kee in Jalan Sarawak or Lao Ping in Sea Park are my favourite spots with maximum wok hei.

For drinks, I enjoy the cocktail scene in KL, especially at bars which celebrate local ingredients like bunga kantan, lemongrass, calamansi and the like in their creations. A few of my favourite cocktail bars we’ve frequented over the years are PS150, Pahit and Coley. It is also exciting to see the natural, low intervention wine scene pick up in KL with natural wine bars like Puro at RexKL and Unwined at APW Bangsar opening up in recent years.

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Do you stock up on any Malaysian ingredients before flying back to the UK?

I always make it a point to stock up on some key essentials that are hard to find in the UK. The most important of these is belacan! My mum helps me source some fantastic belacan from her home town of Penang which we pre-roast before bringing it back here (this preserves it and stops the belacan stinking up my small flat in London when I cook with it).

We also often go to various friends’ and aunties' houses to forage bunga kantan (which we then dry or freeze to transport). Other essentials I pack in the suitcase to bring back here include dried bunga telang, gula melaka, Nestum (very important for cereal prawns and some of my signature desserts) as well as local Malaysian Milo (which I will maintain tastes better than other Milo produced around the globe!). 

Where do you go to find authentic flavours of home in London?

My absolute favourite spot in London for Malaysian food is Dapur in Holborn. Their Malay-style lauk dishes taste just like home. They cook up a wide range of excellent Malaysian staples such as rendang, ayam kicap berempah and pajeri nanas amongst other dishes. They also occasionally have delicious Southern specialties from Johor like ayam ros and mee bandung too which are rarities in London. 

For mamak food such as roti canai and mee goreng, there’s Roti King in Euston as well as Hawker’s Kitchen in King’s Cross to quell the cravings. For laksa and other Malaysian-Chinese favourites, we frequent Sambal Shiok and Laksamania for our fix. 

When it comes to Malaysian ingredients for home cooking, most of the Chinese and Vietnamese grocers around London, such as Longdan, London Star Night, New Loon Moon, See Woo and Loon Fung also stock a decent range of South East Asian essentials.

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What inspired you to start a supper club celebrating Nyonya cuisine?

Proper Nyonya and Peranakan food is still a rarity in London and it’s been a long-standing dream of mine to put Nyonya food on the map here. After attending various events in London as well as on my travels in places like New York and Hong Kong in the early days of the supper club movement, I was inspired to start up my own supper club here. It initially started as a small 10-seater in my cosy East London flat.

These days, however, we now host in slightly larger venues outside my home such as friends’ restaurants on their off days or community centre dining halls. The supper club gives diners an informal environment to sample and share in the joy of the dishes I would have grown up eating around the family dinner table in Malaysia. For me, the combination of Chinese and Malay influences in Nyonya cuisine result in a complexity and deliciousness like no other.

What is your favourite dish to serve during your supper club?

I feel that a Nyonya style feast is about more than just a singular dish. Often, the best mouthful involves several things mixed together in the same bite—for instance some nasi bunga telang (blue pea flower rice) topped with tau yew bak (braised pork belly in soy caramel) and wok-fried sambal petai four angle bean is my idea of a heavenly spoonful! Other signatures we serve up are kari kapitan (chicken curry), ikan masak nanas lemak (mackerel and pineapple curry) and daging pongteh (beef short ribs braised in bean paste and gula melaka).

What is your favourite part of hosting a supper club?

In eight years of hosting supper clubs, it has been wonderful to witness first hand the power of food and the communal dining experience in bringing people from all ages, backgrounds and walks of life together. Attendees at the supper club range from Malaysians hunting for a taste of home, to regulars-turned-friends, to complete strangers who found out about the supper club through my Instagram, blog or TV stint with Anthony Bourdain. To hear diners share their own personal food stories as well as talk about their own food heritage is always a joy as a supper club host. It’s been a truly rewarding and exciting journey seeing like-minded food-lovers and gourmands enjoying my cooking and it is something I hope to continue for many years to come.

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