Beyond the Palate

Sweet, salty, sour, bitter or the elusive umami, are the five-basic tastes that your palate can identify. To top it off, an excellent plating or a perfect latte art will further elevate your dining experience. However, a good meal shouldn’t just adhere to the above criteria. It should also invoke memories and emotions. Working long hours in KL gave me the excuse to not eat well. I confuse hipster décor and high prices with proper food quality. I trusted Burpple ratings over my palate. I masked every food with an excess of hot chilli padi. Food is just sustenance to me. At most, I used it as social reason to meet friends. But I wasn’t always like this. I know this because I can differentiate a good food stall in Ipoh from the mainstream favourites. I can describe how a good piping bowl of noodle in Ipoh should taste like. I am also able to share stories about how my folks sneaked in my favourite pork noodle when I was in the National Service camp. Food wasn’t just sustenance for me back then, it was life. Hence I can recommend you places to eat in Ipoh, but not so much in KL. My view on food changed when I met Mun Yee. Her principles and happiness are directly related to how and what she eats. She scrapes off the fillings of Kueh Ketayap (Brown Sugar Coconut Crepes) not only because she only likes the crepes, but because her grandmother used to scrape off the coconut fillings for her when she was a young girl. Or how she likes to cook and eat hand torn Pan Mee (homemade noodles) the same way her grandmother taught her. The feeling of love and significance should be tied to every food that you enjoy. It improves the standard of the food you eat and it's quality.

I will never forget this sight of my dining table during Chinese New Year Reunion. Where my mother cooked the whole day, just to fill up the entire dining table with food. It was tiring for her, but she never complained a single bit. I knew it when I saw her smiling, while tossing the Prosperity Prawns on the wok. My job was to eat everything, which is a breeze as the dining experience fulfilled all three: taste, sight and experience. I will still eat rubbish in the shopping mall to survive, only to make it to the next epic meal.