Keeping the flame alive
A new generation of Hainanese is all fired up to carry on the clan’s tradition of fine cuisine.
STEPPING into the antiquated Yut Kee Restaurant in Jalan Dang Wangi, Kuala Lumpur, is like walking into a time capsule. It’s quaint, beautifully vintage, of concrete and wood.
The scenes there play out to a good, old soundtrack – waiters zipping around taking orders and serving, the proprietor hollering orders to the kitchen. It’s a noisy, bustling, heady atmosphere that you don’t get anymore, especially not in one of those modern coffeeshops in upmarket areas and shopping malls.
Just approach its entrance, and you’ll be greeted with a big, friendly smile and a loud “Welcome!” by an elderly gentleman there. Later, I was very much surprised to find out who that gentleman is.
You’d expect the proprietor of an old-style kopitiam to be an old, wrinkly man in a white T-shirt, shorts and sandals. But lo, Yut Kee’s owner is a young gentleman in a sporty T-shirt with a sling bag over his shoulder.
Yut Kee Restaurant is a decades-old, Hainanese family-owned outlet, and is still located in the same row of shops where it first opened for business 84 years ago in 1928. Mervyn Lee, 32, is the third-generation proprietor who inherited it from his father, Jack, 67.
Jack was the stocky gentleman who greeted me when I first got there. When I asked to meet the owner, he introduced me to his son who was at the cash register.
“You’ve really passed the business over to him, eh?” I remarked later, to which he just laughed.
The Hainanese are famous for their coffee and cuisine such as Hainanese chicken chop, Hainanese chicken rice, mee Hailam, butter and kaya toast, coffee and even marble cake. In the old days, most, if not all, kopitiams were run by Hainanese chefs and their families. Today, there are not many left. Yut Kee is one of the very few exceptions.
The Hainanese have moved on to restau- rants specialising in Western cuisine, modern bakeries, or a more contemporary setting for their businesses. But even in more modern surroundings, the origins of the cuisine can still be traced to humble beginnings – to colonial times when Hainanese cooks were employed by the British. Having to satisfy their employers’ yearning for a taste of home, they fused Western and local cooking and became masters of mixing and matching, of innovative culinary skills.
At first glance, the future looks bleak for this unique Hainanese tradition. The gradually disappearing kopitiams, the younger generation who would rather have a profes- sional career than spend time in a kitchen, the changing tastes of the masses, all spell doom for the continuation of this heritage. Or do they?
One place where Hainanese food and culinary expertise have remained largely unchanged is located 1,500m above sea level in quiet and serene surroundings amid cool temperatures.
Sumptuous spread
The photographer Azlina Abdullah and I arrived at Fraser’s Hill at lunchtime, and caught the sounds of cooking and a whiff of something delicious from the kitchen of Highland Resthouse Holdings’ Jerantut Bungalow.
Caretakers Tan Lee Tu, 65, and her brother Jee Ai, 71, were busy preparing a meal. Lee Tu politely requested that we stay out of the kitchen, probably a practice left over from the colonial days when the kitchen was not a place for guests.
A little while later, three other caretakers – siblings Lim Siew Lan, 71, and Swee Hong, 74; and Jang Lai Hoon, 72 – arrived in a silver Proton Waja to join us for lunch and a chat.
The lunch spread was sumptuous – the prawn fritters had just enough batter, not the
lumpy type you usually get; the fish baked in cheese was quite something else. There was also fish curry and stir-fried vegetables. The table had been laid out western-style, with the plate in the middle and the utensils spread out the sides. Again, remnants of the colonial era.
The atmosphere was jovial, and the dining table conversations were a mix of Mandarin, Hokkien, English, Malay and of course, Hainanese. All the caretakers of Fraser’s Hill are Hainanese (except for the Tans, who said they were the only Hokkien family there).
Except for Jang, who came to Malaya from China when he was 17, the rest of them practically grew up in Fraser’s Hill and even had their education there.
Sisters Siew Lan and Swee Hong were born in Fraser’s Hill, and started work as caretakers when they were in their teens, taking over from their parents who had worked for the British before Independence. They have never held any other jobs. Some of the guests became their friends, said Siew Lan.
All of them learned cooking from observing others, from books, and also through trial and error, and experiments.
“The British only ate Western food,” Lee Tu recalled. “Sometimes, they would request some local dishes. For instance, once a week, they would have chicken curry.”
“Back in those days, we didn’t have higher education. So when a job came along, we just took it. Till today, we’re still doing the same job,” Swee Hong laughed.
The running joke is that if you’re looking for pretty girls in Fraser’s Hill, then you’re wasting your time. There are only old ladies with white hair riding around on their bicycles, said the women, laughing.
“Up here, there are only us old folks,” said Jee Ai. “All our children are working elsewhere. A lot of our young people have moved to Kuala Lumpur; they are not interested in this line of work.”
For these old-timers, their place is up there in the cool, quiet hills. An air of poignancy hangs over the silver crowns of these folk who go about stoically upholding an almost century-old tradition. After them, Fraser’s Hill will probably not be the same anymore.
Up north
There are few old-style kopitiams in the Klang Valley. But head over to Penang in the north, and you’ll find a kopitiam on almost every street. There are also roadside stalls such as Toh Soon Cafe (at Campbell Street Mall) which is famous for its coffee and roti
bakar. A lot of these businesses are owned and operated by the Hainanese, although the exact number is unknown.
At the junction of Penang Road and Burmah Road, there used to be a very famous Hainanese restaurant called Loke Thye Kee. It was where Bok Jee Seem’s father, Bok Pin Kee, worked and trained as a chef.
The Boks are a Hainanese family. Like all young people of the time, the elder Bok, or Ah Kee as he is affectionately known, paid his dues as a kitchen helper before being given the chance to handle a wok. In the 1960s, he started work as a bungalow caretaker and cook in Penang Hill. Now in his 80s and retired, he still lives there.
“He doesn’t want to come down here,” said Jee Seem, 48. “He’s very comfortable there with the cool weather.”
Today, Jee Seem and his wife, April Yeoh, run Hai Nan Town Restaurant located at Weld Quay on the island, right next to the harbour. The eatery boasts a mouth-watering selection of authentic Hainanese and Nyonya dishes, from mutton stew and ikan rempah (spice fish) to assam prawns and choon piah (spring roll). He takes care of the operations, while his wife cooks.
“We modified some of the Hainanese dishes that my father used to cook,” said Jee Seem. “The curry or gravy used to be more watery, but we made it thicker.”
His grandfather once owned a small coffeeshop at the spot where Prangin Mall now stands. It was set up like a bar, with a counter where people sat to drink coffee. When he was a child, he used to hang out there with his father.
It is a common story: the Hainanese eatery owners and cooks often have a long family history involving food and cooking or coffeeshops.
Charles and J.P. Wong, brothers who run Hainanese Delights in 1926 Heritage Hotel on Burmah Road, are the sons of a chef.
“Our father didn’t want his children to follow in his footsteps,” said Charles. “Those of his generation didn’t have very high education. So naturally they wanted their children to study hard and become professionals.”
In 2009, when the hotel was looking for somebody to run a restaurant at its premises, the brothers jumped at the chance; it was J.P.’S ambition to be in the food business.
Their chef, Ong See Sun, has almost 30 years’ experience working for hotels specialising in Hainanese cuisine. Ong comes from a family of Hainanese cooks.
The Federation of Hainan Association Malaysia’s professionals and entrepreneurs panel chairman, Peter Phang, said his grandfather used to have a famous shop in Raub, Pahang.
“My grandfather was very good at cooking in those days,” Phang recalled. “Everybody thought his coffee was the best. Attention to detail made a big difference. The cups were kept submerged in hot water, so that when coffee was poured into them, the heat retained the aroma and taste. Coffee poured into a cold cup would not taste the same.”
Ask any of the cooks, and they’ll tell you they learned how to cook by observing others. Ask them for a recipe, and they’ll tell you to use a pinch of this and that. For them, it’s not an exact science, but a skill acquired through hard work and experience, trial and error. It’s not something for which you can just Google.
Each cook may have his own take on a signature Hainanese dish. For instance, the choon piah or spring rolls are a little different at Hai Nan Town and Hainanese Delights, especially the texture of the wraps, but are tasty just the same.
Some cooks, like Joe Hoo and Tan Teik Chai of Ping Wah Restaurant in Paramount Garden, Petaling Jaya, Selangor, innovate and create their own signature dishes by using some Thai recipes that they have learned, such as the three-flavoured black pomfret.
Hoo, 28, told me how he, too, paid his dues through boot-camp-type training by Tan before he picked up cooking skills.
“If you are not grilled every day, how are you ever going to learn from your mistakes?” said Hoo.
“You need to build up your confidence in order to cook,” said Mervyn of Yut Kee. “It started when I was a kid helping to prepare the chicken chop plates, putting potatoes on one side and mixed vegetables on the other. If you do something routinely, sooner or later you’ll pick up the skill.”
Culinary journey
When something evokes nostalgia, it means times have changed and something has been lost.
On the first page of Hainanese Delights’ menu, you can find these words: “Eating should not be just an act of filling an empty stomach. So we are delighted to reintroduce some long-forgotten recipes created by our forefathers, simple yet gratifying, a culinary journey through the realms of Hainanese Cuisine.”
Charles and his brother saw how authentic Hainanese cuisine was losing ground these days, unlike the old days when people flocked to places such as the Tanjung Bungah area and Lone Pine Hotel in Penang for Hainanese food. They started Hainanese Delights because of that.
“A lot of young people are interested in learning how to cook, but they learn mostly Western dishes, not Hainanese cuisine,” said Charles. “You could say it is a dying trend; you won’t find courses on Hainanese cooking in colleges.”
Phang said 60%-70% of Hainanese coffeeshops in the Klang Valley had folded up, as rental of shoplots had shot up from about RM200 a month to RM2,500 over the years.
However, Jee Seem believes Hainanese cuisine will always be around as there is demand for it. “Everyone knows the Hainanese are famous for their coffeeshops and their cooking,” he said. “So if it’s a Hainanese restaurant, we can safely say the food there must be of quality.”
If anything, Mervyn and Hoo are rare examples of young people who are still willing to carry on the family tradition. Mervyn has a degree in computer engineering, while Hoo is an accountancy graduate. Both have their reasons for running an eatery.
Mervyn used to help out at the shop when he was a boy, and has been running the shop full-time for the last nine years.
“I like interacting with people,” he said. “At the end of the day, you don’t have to deal with bureaucracy. It’s people meeting people and my goal is always to provide food and good service.”
For Hoo, “it’s all about the passion. It’s better to run your own business than to work for others.”
We often hear of the long hours put in by kopitiam owners, but Hoo believes a professional in an air-conditioned office works longer hours.
Hoo, who was a club deejay before turning his sights on the food business, saw two of his restaurants fail before finally finding his footing with Ping Wah. The restaurant is a no-frills shop with hardly any special decor, but it gets a good stream of customers on any day.
“(The tradition) will still be passed down,” said Hoo. “We will train someone who is close to us. No way will we let it die out. Currently, my sister’s fiance, who is British, is a chef, so when he comes over, I will teach him. It will be a very surprising sight, a Caucasian handling a wok on a big flame!”
Mervyn’s father, Jack, English-educated and a big rugby fan, said: “For any business, after one or two generations, no one will continue running it. If my son had not wanted to continue the business, I wouldn’t have blamed him.
“But he saw how much blood, sweat and tears went into it, and this is the place where you really make friends. During our parents’ time, this was the meeting place, the port of call, for all those who came from their homeland.”
“This is a family institution and this is family pride,” added Mervyn.