Three weeks ago, I was back in Singapore at my Aunty Jenny’s home feasting on her home-cooked Nyonya food.
When my mum was alive - she’s just the best cook - my home was where friends and relatives would come ever so regularly for her Nyonya dishes.
Since moving to New Zealand, I’ve never gotten over not having these Peranakan meals regularly, and they’re always a highlight and what I look forward most to each time I travel home.
Biting into the curry ayam kapitan, chap chye, and sambal okra at SO/ Auckland, nostalgia flooded my mind, and they carried me down memory lane to my mum’s kitchen.
The hotel is hosting Wellington’s Little Penang in a dining collaboration offering an à la carte menu blending Little Penang’s fragrant and unique take on Nyonya-style Peranakan at its 15th-floor restaurant, Harbour Society.
The menu includes the distinct Nyonya curry, Ayam Kapitan, Encik Kabin, a Penang Nyonya-style fried chicken, Otak Otak, spiced fish custard wrapped in banana leaf, Sambal Okra, Assam Prawns and Rendang Tok, a rich, dry-style beef rendang.
A highlight for me was the Nyonya Chap Chye, a Peranakan cuisine classic of mixed vegetables that my mum used to make.
For the uninitiated, the Baba and Nyonya community, of which I belong to, are descended from Chinese immigrants who settled in the Malay Archipelago (including what is Singapore and Malaysia today) and intermarried with local Malay women, creating a unique race.
They are also known as Peranakans or Straits Chinese, who, despite assimilating with the Malay way of life from speech, dressing and cooking, still preserve their ancestral Chinese traditions.
Nyonya cuisine is also called Lauk Embok Embok, a marriage of Chinese cooking style with Malay ingredients and condiments, utilising a variety of unique spices, assam (tamarind), and belacan, a type of fermented shrimp paste.
SO/Auckland’s Director of Culinary Chef Roy Giam, who is originally from Perak in Malaysia, said the Little Penang collab was “more than a takeover, it’s personal”.
He described Aunty Bee, the matriarch behind Little Penang’s dishes, to be “like my New Zealand mum”.
“Having Aunty Bee, who I regard as one of the best Nyonya chefs in New Zealand in our kitchen , is incredibly special,” Giam said.
Nyonya ladies are fiercely proud of their culinary heritage, and 80-year-old Aunty Bee typifies that. She is seen in the hotel’s kitchen making sure the dishes are prepared to perfection.
Aunty Bee’s younger sister, Tee Phee, who owns Little Penang, says the takeover was an excellent opportunity to share their Peranakan heritage and culture through food from recipes that had been handed down through generations.
There is a distinct difference between Penang and Melaka Nyonya cuisine, where my roots can be traced back to, and I had a little friendly banter with Tee about which is better.
Wearing her Nyonya attire called the kebaya, an elegant blouse with intricate embroidery, with a sarong, Tee shares tales behind each dish that we were served.
As the stories go, Curry Ayam Kapitan got its name when a Dutch sea captain asked one of his Malay crew what’s for dinner, and the answer was “curry, Kapitan”. The name Inche Kabin originated from the practice of cooks in ships calling sailors from the cabin for a meal, with “Inche” being a Malay term to Mr, and Kabin referring to the cabin.
Tee said growing up in the British Colonial era, Bee - her eldest sister - learned her cooking from their mother, grandmother, and aunts, and still believes in painstakingly making everything from scratch in the kitchen.
“From the belacan we use to the dried shrimp for the sambal, we only still use just a specific type that we bring in from Penang,” Tee said.
The sambal that was used with the okra captured the exact essence of my mum’s sambal with the perfect level of spice and flavour from the belacan and dried shrimps.
As the second youngest of 10 siblings, Tee said she was discouraged from getting into the kitchen, so it was ironic that she now owns a restaurant.
To wrap up the Peranakan culinary adventure, there’s a selection of Nyonya kuih and bubur cha cha, a delicious and colourful dessert made of sweet potato and yam cubes cooked with thick coconut milk, sugar, pandan leaves, and sago pearls.
Aunty Bee’s kuih bingka ubi kayu, a traditional Nyonya kuih made with grated cassava and coconut milk, just hits the spot.
The SO/Auckland x Little Penang Takeover will take place from the 3rd to the 5th of July 2025 at SO/ Auckland’s 15th-floor restaurant, Harbour Society.
TO BOOK https://www.harbour-society.co.nz/little-penang-so-auckland
LINCOLN TAN is a co-founder of Chow Luck Club and a former senior journalist for the New Zealand Herald. He won “Best General Reporter” in the 2016 Canon Media Awards and has covered some of the biggest global events over his 30 years in journalism, both here and in Singapore. He was invited as a guest of SO/Auckland to preview the Little Penang kitchen takeover dinner.
