Toi-ling in the kitchen
World-famous fashion designer Zang Toi is a great cook, too, true to his Hainanese roots.
I MET Toi See Luon at his brother Zang Toi’s outlet in Pavilion KL, and he laid a surprise on me when I told him I was working on a story about Hainanese chefs and cuisine. “My family is Hainanese, too!” Toi told me. Toi runs a catering business and also the Zang Toi Cafe. The cafe has its roots in the Hainanese food tradition, and is proof that no matter where the Hainanese go, good food is never too far away.
“The Zang Toi Cafe concept came about because when my brother first went to New York, he was so poor he could only afford to show off his designs in a showroom,” said Toi. “He had to attract the media to come, so he cooked curry and made punch. The people there found it so exotic. Season after season, they kept coming back.
“Early in my brother’s career, the media always wrote about his curry chicken and popiah and creme caramel, which is made with coconut milk for a Malaysian flavour.”
Toi has been in the food business for almost 30 years. He started a cafe in Old Klang Road, KL, called Banana Cafe which mostly catered to a nearby college there. Later he branched into outdoor catering.
“A lot of the outdoor caterers are Hainanese,” said Toi. “It’s in our blood. When we were growing up, my grandfather owned the best coffeeshop in my hometown (Kuala Krai, Kelantan) which served chicken chop, cream puffs, and cakes.”
Today the coffeeshop is still there, and Toi’s cousin runs it.
Toi, in his own business, serves Hainanese dishes such as herbal braised lamb, chicken chop and salted fishhead with tofu.
While other dialect groups had rich traditions of food and cooking, the Hainanese, being poor islanders, had nothing and started with a clean slate. Toi believes this is why the Hainanese were able to develop their unique cooking skills quickly and effectively.
“Once, I went to Koh Samui and stumbled upon a coffeeshop there,” he recalled. “I ordered what I wanted and to my surprise, I heard the woman proprietor speaking Hainanese. I spoke to her in Hainanese and got extra helpings of everything I ordered!”
Zang, who is as adept at cooking as he is at creating world-famous fashion designs, recently threw a black-and-white tea party, and dressed up all his models in black-andwhite outfits. All the food served was also black and white; Zang had ingeniously used caviar and bread to get the colours.