The New Nusantaran Diet : where is it?

Fine dining - this week I've had to revisit the concept a bit, and here are some brief thoughts about fine dining in Malaysia today. Hm. All monetary figures in USD for convenience. And nothing in this article refers to Malaysia alone, as the case is the same elsewhere also.

I was first presented with the concept of "fine dining" around 2006, when I was working in Kuala Lumpur - and I had to try very hard not to laugh. While my colleagues from the consulting firm ordered food, I ordered a cup of tea. I really wasn't going to pay $ 11 for spaghetti when I made a gross of $ 453 per month. I did enjoy the company of my peers, though they probably enjoyed my company a little less that evening - they made only a little more than I did, and I spent most of the evening smirking at their idiocy.

Many expensive dining experiences in Kuala Lumpur are exotic, and yet by and large they fail tests of finesse. When people in Malaysia say "fine dining", they also have a tendency to refer to "fine dining as it exists in other countries" - and this mistake is the first and last reason why "fine" dining in Kuala Lumpur, with few exceptions, tends to be shit.

To be clear, the high prices are often justified by bringing in ingredients from outside the region using grossly polluting methods ( air freight ), and then sold with minimal preparation as "naked". I kid you not - I don't understand people who don't think this is funny - they basically express a lifestyle which says, "I'm too cheap to go to this other place, so I'll fly their indigenous food over here, and that's how you know, I'm fine". 

In 2021 Malaysia's hourly minimum wage hovers around $ 1.38. Just yesterday in Petaling Jaya ( basically, greater Kuala Lumpur), I had "nasi campur" or self-serviced rice, curry, vegetables, and fish ( high-quality protein ) including some 10-30 ingredients for  $ 1.67 - now this isn't the most nutritious way to spend 1 hour and 13 minutes of minimum wage. But it is an example of how you could spend that much on FOOD AS A SERVICE, and get sufficient nutrition to make a human body economically productive at either manual or intellectual tasks. So let this be a benchmark for food service at the level of essential services. Let's teleport out.

Now in order to buy a basic sandwich and salad in first-world nations takes roughly the same number of minutes of minimum wage in those countries. But for 4-8 hours of minimum wage you can get a meal in a more formal setting, also known as "fine dining". Let's now teleport back.

Today "fine" dining experiences in Kuala Lumpur are nominally $ 36 for lunch, $ 70 for dinner, and ranging up to $ 200 or more. This means local restaurateurs hawk a cultural experience to naive locals for 26 to 173 minimum wage hours. But where is the finesse? It doesn't matter how pure and fresh the food is at these prices, it's simply not relevant to the average citizen. And what isn't within reach of the average person, simply doesn't qualify as fine. It's blithely over-engineered. (Which isn't to say, I'm not frequently the culprit of grossly over-engineered projects, myself.)

I'm just going to cut this rant short by posting a slightly "localised" version of Noma's manifesto. Brain this, if you will. I'm waiting for the ASEAN luxury food exports to take off ... but no one wants to make it happen ...

;)