When chef Leow Shi Chao had his first taste of Hakka cuisine at the age of 26, he wasn’t impressed.
At the same time, he instantly knew that the dishes he had tasted had the potential to be much, much better, if made with more care, skilled techniques and better ingredients.
Was it the Hakka blood in him instinctively recognising the cuisine of his ancestors? Perhaps.
But, why did it take this Hakka 26 years to taste his own dialect group’s food for the first time?
Leow, now 29, was raised in the home of family friends and grew up eating their Hinghwa food.
When he decided to become a chef, he trained at now-defunct fine dining restaurant Pollen, where he also got to work with international names like Gianni D’Amato and Joris Bijdendijk when they came to do collaborations.
It was an eye-opening experience. At 19, he even did a stage with D’Amato in Reggio Emilia, Italy. “It widened my perspective of what food was. In Singapore, you don’t see anything fresh – everything is in plastic bags, vacuum-packed. There, I saw eggplants (that were still) on the plant and insects on the vegetables. That gave me the idea that this industry is more than just cooking; there’s a lot to explore.”
But, even as he cooked and plated up European dishes, he began to realise that he would never become his own chef until he developed a sense of his own identity.
