Adrianna Tan
I always say i find it hilarious that anyone thinks i am ‘very into food’ when random uncles back home have elaborate blogs like this: https://johorkaki.blogspot.com/
To be clear, most of my family would also have blogs like this if they bothered to write things down.
This dude’s blog is what I hope I will be doing when I’ve retired (traveling around the region, eating. He’s even in.. Bhutan?!)
Adrianna Tan
Thanks for uncle Tony I now know that there is excellent Burmese food near where my family lives. It will be a good option for when I’m too lazy to go downtown (Mandalay Style is my fave Burmese restaurant there)
https://johorkaki.blogspot.com/2025/09/podcast-tony-boey-johor-kaki-with-susan.html
Adrianna Tan
@onekind it’s partly your fault I have a new project now
Daniel Reeders
@skinnylatte you are very thoughtful about food and eating though and I love it. I will now start following this guy as well!
Adrianna Tan
@loke it’s everyone’s default hobby / passion
Elias Mårtenson
@skinnylatte and the number of food vloggers here in Singapore (and in Malaysia). It's wild.
I mean, sure, some of them are influencer type people, but it's an indication of something that I don't think exists to the same extent in other places.
Adrianna Tan
I find that younger food bloggers have a ‘national boundary’ of thinking Singapore vs Malaysia vs Indonesia food. Maybe the national lines were much more obvious.
But like this uncle, I have a far more porous view. My family is just as much Johorean as they are Singaporean. It’s impossible to split down the middle. So much of the food and culture is the same.
I was very intrigued when my mother in law told me she barely ate any Indonesian food, growing up in the north of Malaysia, whereas the south of Malaysia - Singapore - Sumatra - Java feels like an archipelago of delicious things that have all intersected. I feel so incredibly lucky to got to spend most of my life in that part of the world.
Adrianna Tan
And then how that archipelago then intersects with south India and Yemen.. is even more interesting to me. I enjoyed learning that nasi mandi is basically the Yemeni dish.. mandi. I’ve spent the early parts of my life obsessively learning about all of those places and their foods and migration stories.
If there’s one book I can recommend, it’s ’The food of the Singapore Malays’. It’s a giant tome. You can injure yourself if you drop it. What a work of art.
Adrianna Tan
Lately, there’s been some important work done by some folks there to celebrate the Indigenous foods of the Malay world.
Here’s a wonderful page on the food of the orang laut (the sea people): https://oranglaut.sg/our-food/
And here’s a page about the food culture of the Dayaks of West Kalimantan: https://www.slowfood.com/blog-and-news/the-unwritten-recipe-of-dayak-peoples/
https://dayakchillthoughts.wordpress.com/2014/12/08/dayak-tribe-of-borneo-food-edition-part-1/
Adrianna Tan
@ubi true! Yeah it’s so porous.
ubi
@skinnylatte It depends on what is considered 'Indonesian' isn't it? Because there is a lot of Achehnese influence in the Northern Malay states due to migration. But because it's so integrated, it's just considered 'Malay food'. The borders are more recent than the cuisine.
North of Malaysia is an intersection Thai-Acheh-Hokkien-Hainan-Tamil-Old Kedah food.
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