“Every time I go back to Singapore or anyone that I know goes back to Singapore, I’m like, go to Phoon Huat. Get five litres of pandan extract, please,” she chuckled.
Other ingredients are surprisingly accessible. Growers in Puebla supply Asian vegetables, including bok choy, bitter gourd and the varieties of aubergine she needs. Asian grocery shops provide coconut milk and tapioca pearls for her sago dessert. For char kway teow, she uses clams in place of the cockles she would find in Singapore, alongside prawns and lap cheong.
These decisions are part of running a restaurant, but they also require her to work out which aspects of a dish carry its identity – especially in being the only Singaporean restaurant in all of Latin America. She wants the classics to be approachable for Mexico’s diners, while preserving the wider food culture that Singaporeans grow up with.
“Singapore is such an international city and you can go and eat good Vietnamese or really good Thai food,” she said. “It just made me feel that I needed to show that diversity.”
One dish she introduced was a tom yum fried rice named after Golden Mile, the former Singapore complex long known for its Thai eateries. To her, the reference made perfect sense: Thai food, and the places Singaporeans go to eat it, are part of her experience of home too.
“What is Singaporean food, or what can it be? What can it mean?” she said of the ongoing conversation with Malvaez.
MAINTAINING A CONNECTION TO HOME
Dining and Cooking