They were the pillars of South-east Asia’s restaurant business really. It was a Hainanese who invented the original Singapore Sling and it was this clan that gave us Hainanese Chicken Rice as well as fusion food such as Chicken Maryland and Chicken Chop, the way they serve it at establishments such as The Ship (found in Singapore, Penang and Kuala Lumpur).

As an aside, I found out that Dennis Foo, the man who’s just won the Lifetime Achievement for Outstanding Contribution to Tourism in Singapore, also comes from similar roots – his twin uncles founded The Ship and his grand-father ran a café serving the kind of food my father cooked. (His story will be covered in another post)

Like Foo’s grand-father, my father used to cook for the old British colonial bosses and so learnt to fuse east with west. And though I didn’t speak a word of English till I was seven, I sure learnt a lot about British food – which wasn’t very inspiring those days until Gordon Ramsay put the F word into it.

What my father and other Hainanese cooks did was to blend Malaysian with Chinese and English to create a style of cuisine all their own. It kind of spoils you for the original items.

I remember my first visit to Haikou, Hainan, and ordering chicken rice and being hugely disappointed because it didn’t come with the chilli sauce that, to me, makes or breaks that dish. On my first visit to London, I ordered pork chops and found it so bland because it didn’t come with that tangy, sweet sauce I was used to. And I also committed a big cultural faux pais when I asked for Yorkshire pudding with roast duck at Simpson’s On The Strand. We like to mix up things, we Asians.

Anyway, real Hainanese food is becoming increasingly hard to find in its original, fused form. Which is why when I heard that a new place had opened in Penang called Hainanese Delights, I had to check it out.

Located within Hotel 1926, a heritage hotel that never quite made it for reasons it’d be too long and convoluted for me to get into here, the restaurant was opened about a year ago by three brothers who, having retired, decided to bring back the food of their father, who used to be a cook.

The Wong brothers all bring different skills to the new family business. Charles was with Cathay Pacific in sales; one brother worked in logistics and the other in advertising. The night we were there, the restaurant was packed. We had to sit in at the only table left, which was rather cramped and small for the food we knew we were about to order.

But the brothers looked after us well. The food was even better. Perhaps it was the nostalgia but every dish we we had tasted great and even better, always brought the conversation round to my father.

“This is as good as your father’s,” said my mum of the noodles.

“Dad’s was darker – the sambal is as good as yours,” my sister said, laughing, to my mother.

“Dad never made macaroni pie, I wonder why?” I asked.

“Too Western,” my sis said.

The biggest wave of nostalgia came with the dessert and I learnt something new that night about my parents. It’s a special Hainanese pudding called “ee pua” literally translated as “jade pudding”.

It’s a square, sticky rice dumpling filled with coconut and brown sugar. Making the rice dumpling is an art and apparently when I was growing up, my mum and dad were one of only two suppliers in the whole of Penang to make them. Now there’s only one supplier in Penang who makes these dumplings which is why they are served only on Saturdays and Sundays at this restaurant.

“I used to have to wake up at 5am to help dad mill the rice,” said my sister, looking at me with a glint. “You never helped.”

“She was too young,” my mother said. My sister glared at me even harder. She knew how this argument always ended. The youngest child always wins, even if it’s just by a year.

This, to me, is what good food does. It tastes as sweet as the memories it brings back.

From top, macaroni pie, choon phiah (spring rolls), inche kabin (deep fried chicken), duck and yam soup, and finally, “ee pua”.