One sweeping glance of the kitchen cupboards prove that Jun’s brand loyalty goes beyond sliced cheese, extending to potato chips (Thins or Red Rock Salt), instant noodles (Mamee Chef ), and biscuits (Tim Tams, and only the double-coated ones) — comfort foods that don’t require consuming with one’s brains in gear. Given the chef ’s never-ending experiments with new flavours and ingredients at Kikubari, her affinity for ‘fast food’ make sense. Besides a bottle of gin, I spot little evidence of the Jun I’ve gotten to know from dining at Kikubari, that is, until I spot something funky in her fridge.

“I’m afraid to say how old that is, but you’re looking at home-aged soy sauce,” she says. “A year, possibly. Soy sauce is like champagne in a sense—you need a bit of the old batch to keep it going. Every now and then I top up the contents with more mirin. You push aside the garlic and kombu (a type of seaweed) and just use the sauce as a seasoning.”