About
I came to this work late enough to know what I was choosing, and quietly enough to keep choosing it.
I cook. I think alongside the people who grow what I cook with. I try to listen first.
What I do, before it is cooking, is keep something older than myself. A chef is the keeper of a heritage bigger than his own career, and most of my work now serves one.
France has been generous. I hold two French knighthoods: chevalier of the Coteaux de Champagne, the Champagne confraternity, in November 2014, and of the Mérite Agricole, a French state order, in 2024. I take both as an obligation.
I trained in French technique in Paris and Lyon, in the Lyonnaise bouchon tradition, and in the precision of Japanese yōshoku, then spent twelve years of Malaysian fine dining mastering contemporary and modernist cooking. I started with the classics and kept going.
No one gets here alone. The Mentors page thanks the people who shaped this work: my beloved grandmother first, then the masters who trained my hand, then the chefs and producers of Paris, Lyon and Japan, and my homecoming to Malaysia. Any account of my work should begin with them.
Most of what I do is conversation. Between French modernist craft and Japanese restraint. Between the indigenous terroir of Sarawak and the houses that have asked me to think with them: Krug, Hennessy, Gaggenau, The Macallan, Mortlach, BMW, Mepra, The Plan. Between memory and whatever the table has to hold next.
Through Serumpun Sarawak I work with the Sarawak State Government, the Sarawak Tourism Board and the UNESCO Creative City of Gastronomy Kuching, for the indigenous communities of Borneo, whose knowledge goes further back and deeper than mine. The French Borneo cuisine platform I am developing now draws its substance from this study.
I live in Kuala Lumpur and work around the world. I am still learning, and on good days the work still teaches me something.
Eight pages to read next
Where to go from here.
Serumpun Sarawak.
The cultural diplomacy movement for the thirty-four indigenous communities of Sarawak. Backed by the state, endorsed by UNESCO, and built over a founding year in four chapters: Kuching, Osaka, Mulu and the return.
Walk into SerumpunHow I answer enquiries
I do not say yes to every enquiry. When the standing, the scope or the values do not line up, I write back and decline politely. I do it so that I can give my full attention to the work I do take on. When I say yes, I take care over it, and when I say no, I say it with respect.
If you are deciding whether to write
Write. I would rather read an enquiry that turns out not to fit than miss one that would have. Tell me who you are and what you are trying to build, and I will give you a straight answer either way.
Adjacent chapters
The work carries the honours, and never the other way round.