Discover Rarity

JW for Johnnie Walker. JW for James Won. The maison's brief and my initials shared the same two letters, and the menu took its name from the maison's own word for it: Discover Rarity. From 29 November 2019 to 31 March 2020, at Enfin in Menara Hap Seng, I cooked French Borneo food to go with Blue Label, as a guided tasting in the Bothy, our version of the Scottish mountain shelter, reimagined as a small, intimate room. This is where it started for me. It was the first spark of the curiosity that later took me into the Borneo jungle to find what its people had kept for centuries.

Blue Label is usually poured as a man’s drink: heavy, smoky, the last glass of a long evening. The maison’s Discover Rarity brief let me read it another way. Blue Label is the rare of the rare, a blend built from single-malt stocks aged across the maison’s reserves, kept at the centre of the bottle rather than on the surface. Blue Label keeps what would otherwise stay hidden inside its foundation. I wanted my table to work the same way.

For the menu I went to indigenous Malaysian sources, with Borneo at the centre. Tropical sturgeon caviar from T’lur in Tanjung Malim, Perak. Bario heirloom rice from the Kelabit highlands of Sarawak, sourced through Langit Collective. Semai single-origin cocoa from the indigenous Semai community in Pahang and Perak. Job’s tears (dale kerukub) from Sarawak. A house-fermented Bario wine sauce, also from Sarawak. The Borneo ingredients (the Bario rice, the Bario wine, the Job’s tears) pulled at me hardest. They led towards an older pharmacy: generations of indigenous knowledge about which roots, grains, ferments, fruits and rices have kept the forest’s people well. The menu needed layered umami and amami, savoury and sweet in the same mouthful.

It was the first menu where I let Borneo lead. I have been following where it led ever since.

The Bothy

In the Scottish Highlands a bothy is a plain mountain shelter, a stone hut a walker reaches at dusk after a day on the hill. It is small and simple, and it is warm without any fuss.

I wanted the room at Enfin to feel like that. There were ten covers at most, a guided pour and a kitchen that took its time. The whisky came neat, or with iced water to clear the palate, and each course arrived when it was ready. The format suited the bottle. Blue Label was a guest the room had walked out to meet, and nobody put it on display.

The Discover Rarity menu

The amuse opens the meal and the entrée brings salt. The fish course adds heat and brightness, the main course gives depth, and the dessert picks up the floral and chocolate notes at the end of the blend.

iAmuse · Triumphant Triothree openings, side by side

Aloe vera nigiri, Borneo heirloom rice, tropical sturgeon caviar · Like The Egg, Parmesan tofu white and sea-urchin yolk, mandarin curry · Cress pot, scallop chip, hazelnut, Szechuan pepper.

iiEntréesalt, structure

Malaysian tropical Amur sturgeon caviar by T’lur, daikon and kombu dashi purée, lemon butter, wild celery oil.

iiiFish courseheat, brightness, lift

Roasted Hokkaido scallop, yam bean purée, pickled turnip, jalapeño granita, wasabi and yuzu dressing, chive and dill oil, black garlic oil.

ivPlat principaldepth, ferment, char

Fish truffle meunière, house-fermented Bario wine sauce, charred leeks, seasonal truffles.

vDesserta floral finish, chocolate

Semai single-origin cocoa from Pahang and Perak, Job’s tears (dale kerukub) from Sarawak, Johnnie Walker Blue Label savoiardi, coconut crème tuile, pea-flower dust.

Sourcing: the Malaysian ingredients behind the menu

Everything under the whisky was Malaysian. It took months of sourcing, through people I had been getting to know since the early Enfin years.

• Borneo heirloom rice. Adan, Keladi and Rumie varieties, sourced through Langit Collective, the Malaysian social enterprise that works with smallholder farmers in East Malaysia.
• Tropical sturgeon caviar. From sturgeon raised in the freshwater highlands of Tanjung Malim, Perak, under the local label T’lur.
• Semai single-origin cocoa. From the indigenous Semai community in Pahang and Perak. Its sweetness is lighter, and it sat against the smoky finish of the blend without clashing.
• Job’s tears (dale kerukub). From Sarawak. You rarely see this grain on Malaysian fine-dining menus. It finishes earthier than rice, and it carried the dessert to the end.

A Highland blend met Malaysian ingredients at the table. That was the whole idea of the menu.

What it started: the Borneo search

The Bothy ran from late November 2019 to the end of March 2020. Tatler Asia, Prestige, Robb Report, Tim Chew, Kameatwithme, Luxurious Magazine and Sin Chew (March 2020) all wrote about the menu.

It left me with more than press cuttings. Discover Rarity opened a box I have never closed: the question of what keeps Borneo’s people strong and alive today. Each ingredient was a thread to pull. The caviar took me to Tanjung Malim, the rice and the Bario wine to the Kelabit highlands, the cocoa to the Semai, and the Job’s tears to Sarawak. The threads ran further than one menu could follow. Serumpun Sarawak, my French Borneo cooking and the conservation work in Sarawak that takes up my time today all began with questions I first asked in this Bothy.

Walk on to Serumpun Sarawak · French Borneo cooking