‘It’s Malaysia’s time next’: Penang food festival is a good sign for culinary travel, but how will the industry fare amid climate breakdown?
- Penang’s Kita Food Festival signals a revival of gastronomic tourism amid an explosion of young avant-garde chefs in Malaysia exploring their culinary heritage
- But will global food tourism roar back at full force, buoyed by top chefs and Michelin-star restaurants, or will trends veer towards increased sustainability?
We are halfway through a three-hour dinner at the opening night of the Kita Food Festival, held in October in George Town, the colonial capital of Malaysia’s Penang island, when the chefs serve a novel curry.
“It’s the first goat curry I’ve ever made,” explains Andrew Martin, the Canadian chef from 80/20, a one-Michelin-star restaurant in Thailand’s capital Bangkok.
Martin is collaborating on a six-course feast with Johnson Wong, a Malaysian-Chinese chef whose Gen restaurant is a sensation in George Town.
They seem an unlikely pair: Martin, tall and boyish, fell in love with Thai food on a holiday, he says, and has been concocting adventurous, acclaimed fusion dishes ever since.
Wong is a slight, thoughtful chef not given to the impulses of his larger pal. On a trip around Penang, Wong points out nutmeg, and Martin immediately scales a tree for a closer look. In a market, Martin finds goat meat and blurts out: “Why not? I’ll try it!”
Marinated overnight, the goat curry is a succulent treat in a menu of surprises, such as a course consisting entirely of green beans – bean custard enlivened by green bean broth – a lowly vegetable rarely seen in fine dining.