Masters of their Kitchens
Trained in Western cooking, a growing number of chefs across Southeast Asia are redefining the fine dining experience on their cultural terms.
A meal at Fiz in Singapore is a parade of indigenous ingredients, where dishes are kissed by a flame lit by bakau wood. Then comes the Hidang, a traditional dining format where rice is served with multiple dishes to symbolise the harmony of the Malay culinary universe.
Over at Nusara in Bangkok, its signature crab curry is presented with a crispy betel leaf and horseshoe crab roe. The delicacy is extracted from a creature that looks more like a prehistoric fossil than a luscious, tender-fleshed crustacean.
In Hanoi where motorcycles swarm the streets like bees around a hive, chef Sam Tran of Gia serves up a snack where cà cuống essence — a pheromone drawn from a tiny sac on the back of the rare waterbug — flavours an amuse bouche.
Fiz, Nusara, and Gia are just three names at the forefront of Southeast Asia’s gastronomic explosion. In the past decade, more chefs across the region have pulled native culinary ideas, techniques, and ingredients into the fine dining realm. Some of these concepts are feted street food dishes, while others invoke ancient culinary landscapes and royal archives.
This number has surged in the past three years, shattering perceptions that diners would only splurge on European and Japanese cuisines. Take a look across the region: In the Philippines, chef Stephan Duhesme of Metiz champions local ingredients, honouring his Filipino roots. In Singapore, Malcolm Lee has distilled Straits Cuisine’s communal nature into a degustation format at Pangium. Shortly after, Kevin Wong opened Seroja, which expresses the culinary intricacies of the Malay Archipelago.
Bangkok, meanwhile, is flush with contemporary Thai restaurants like Sorn and Baan Tepa. Of them, Le Du topped Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants list and placed 15th in the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list this year. Further south, August in Jakarta joins Ubud’s Locavore in weaving Indonesia’s heritage into gourmet experiences.
These restaurants may be different, yet they stand with a proud posture in defining gastronomy on their own cultural terms, giving new respect to heritage cuisines.
So what spurred this growing confidence? Does it allude to the way
Southeast Asia sees itself, and what would it take to export these ideas the way European and Japanese chefs have successfully done?
EMBRACING AN IDENTITY
The common thread across these restaurants is that chefs who trained in European kitchens are now burnishing their heritage.
“People who spent time in traditional fine dining restaurants are now applying the work ethic, organisation, and aesthetic to a cuisine they feel strongly about,” says Darren Teoh who worked for five years in Les Amis before staging in Noma and Amador. He went on to open Michelinstarred Dewakan in 2015 and pioneered morphing indigenous ingredients like kulim (a native fruit with the strong aroma of garlic and truffle) and breadfruit into dishes for tables perched in one of Kuala Lumpur’s glittering towers.
“It’s about embracing who we are,” explains Johanne Siy, who was named Asia’s Best Female Chef 2023.
She worked under Daniel Boulud, Eric Ripert, and Andre Chiang before taking over Lolla three years ago and going on to express her Filipino heritage on contemporary degustation menus. Diners can now expect dishes like crab relleno (stuffed crab) lathered over with aligue sauce — a sauce made from crab tomalley. “We need to embrace our own identity and not let the Western world define and give us credibility.”
Yet some of the greatest Western culinary names, too, sharpened their knives in a very specific cultural context: French restaurants. Rene Redzepi of Noma trained at Le Jardin des Sens at age 19. Even Gordon Ramsay, the poster boy of television chefs, trained under Guy Savoy and Joël Robuchon.
It begs the question: why are the roots of fine dining restaurants culturally French?
LIBERTY, EQUALITY, GASTRONOMY
France forms the axis of the culinary world for a simple reason — restaurants were created in 18th century Paris by chefs who needed to make ends meet after the noble families, which employed them, were disposed of.
It also explains why Southeast Asia’s legacy restaurants were predominantly French. While Singapore has Les Amis, Bangkok has Le Normandie, and Kuala Lumpur has Cilantro. Meanwhile, Southeast Asia’s cuisines were relegated to humble mom-and-pop eateries. Diners were simply not ready to pay a premium for elevated forms of other cuisines — until the 2010s, when a crop of talented Southeast Asian chefs came of age and opened their own restaurants.
“Everybody’s done just about everything, so to compete in a very stratified environment, you must bring something new to the table,” says Teoh. “That’s what the diner is looking for, so
“Our region has seen exponential economic growth in the past five to six decades. People got richer faster, and now they travel frequently — if the truly wealthy wanted to go to a fancy French restaurant, they could always fly to Paris.” DEWAKAN’S CHEF DARREN TEOH
you have to cater to that changing value proposition and perception. That’s not a monetary one, but a psychographic one.”
THE GROUND MOVES
These changing psychographic preferences across the region reveal shifting beliefs, values, and goals, buoyed by rising incomes.
Says Teoh, “Our region has seen exponential economic growth in the past five to six decades. People got richer faster, and now they travel frequently — if the truly wealthy wanted to go to a fancy French restaurant, they could always fly to Paris.”
Teoh adds that this growing affluence and desire for new experiences go hand in hand with a sense of nationalism and cultural pride as the region begins to see the value of their heritage.
Yet it isn’t always smooth. Chefs who pioneered the movement in their own countries report having to painstakingly educate each diner.
“When we started 10 years ago, people were complaining that it was so much more expensive than street food,” explains Le Du’s chef Thitid “Ton” Tassanakajohn. “When they give us a chance, they realise that what we offer is different and not inferior to French or European cuisine.”
Chef Sam Tran, who opened Gia, which serves innovative Vietnamese cuisine in 2020, adds: “Hanoi is still quite traditional, and it’s hard to convince people to come to a nice restaurant to have small portions of food instead of sharing everything,” she says. “But as more people visit us, they realise that the Vietnamese flavour is still there while experiencing it in a new way.”
The arrival of the Michelin Guide and the Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants awards has helped to garner support from diners, both local and international. All the chefs The Peak spoke to state that these rankings have afforded them visibility while lending credence and gravitas to their work.
“The [Michelin Guide] trademark is valued at a global level, and tourists trust this guide,” explains chef Ton. “They’d come not just for the beach or the street food but also for the
gastronomic experience.”
The ranking systems also place their restaurants, and by extension, the cuisines that they represent, in the same league as those on other continents.
“The good thing is that these lists are trying to circumnavigate their own Eurocentrism,” says Teoh.
One Michelin-starred Seroja, for instance, is now on par with La Tour d’Argent, one of Paris’ oldest restaurants. It places the contemporary interpretation of the Malay Archipelago’s cuisine on par with that of France. The same can be said about Tam Vi in Hanoi, a traditional Vietnamese tea house, as well as Auntie Gaik Lean’s Old School Eatery, a Peranakan restaurant in Penang — both of which also received stars.
Being pioneers also had its logistical drawbacks; Southeast Asia’s massive tapestry of indigenous produce is uncommon outside rural communities, and chefs report that procuring ingredients at the start was a predicament.
Menus across these restaurants sport ingredients that define their cuisine: Andaliman pepper, cà cuống essence, ant larvae, sintunis (a green citrus native to the Philippines), and kulim are just some examples, and establishing a consistent supply took time and patience.
Yet as the Southeast Asian fine dining scene matures, it raises the spectre of an expanding global footprint. Restaurants with global ambitions would need to look to export these ingredients and educate a different set of diners — can it possibly be done?
GOING GLOBAL
Bangkok’s chef Ton paved the way and opened Niras in Hong Kong in June this year, after 10 trailblazing years of running Le Du. It’s an extension of his quest to advance Thai gastronomy within and beyond the kingdom.
While his menu in Le Du features seasonal ingredients like ant larvae, the
“To create strong global acceptance for Southeast Asian cuisine, you must have the support of your local people first.” LE DU’S CHEF THITID “TON” TASSANAKAJOHN
Hong Kong venue starts cautiously on the produce front, highlighting luscious river prawns from the Thai province of Songkhla, which the team ships in twice a week.
Chef Ton’s choice of Hong Kong was a huge strategic consideration, as the city’s diners are cosmopolitan and familiar with the intricacies of Thai cuisine. Other cities may not be ready to embrace such a concept.
“Hong Kong is one of the most amazing gastronomic cities in the world,” says the chef. “It’s where you will find all types of cuisines in different forms as compared to Europe, where it will be mostly French and European restaurants.”
For chef Ton, this growing global footprint is only possible with the support of people back home. “To create strong global acceptance, Thai people have to accept it first,” he says with conviction. “You must have the support of your local people.”
Siy also believes better infrastructural support is needed to ease the availability of ingredients and more platforms to create familiarity with Filipino food culture. After all, France has Marché de Rungis and Japan has Toyosu Market — both of which house thousands of agricultural and fisheries businesses which export ingredients internationally.
“Korean cuisine, for example, is everywhere,” says Siy. “And that’s a deliberate effort by the Korean government, which invests in promoting it. Creating that familiarity matters because without it, you’d be very hesitant to pay $200 for Filipino food.”
Despite the difficulties, Teoh believes that the region is on the cusp of growth. “To really see success, we need more restaurants like these across the region that can provide frequency for the diner.”
The aim is for it to stop being a novelty and become part of an established culinary landscape. Agreeing, Siy says, “The more restaurants take this approach, the more we can break the stereotypes.”
Chef Ton adds that as more restaurants elevating cuisines across Southeast Asia and the world emerge, the mission must come from the heart and not because it’s trendy.
“It’s about creating something meaningful to inspire people,” he says. “It’s not about me, my restaurant, or winning awards. We do it to introduce our ingredients and techniques so the world can better understand our culture.”