All photos by OneBranding, courtesy of Kebaya

Dish By DishNew York

How Kebaya Preserves and Celebrates Peranakan Cuisine, in Five Dishes

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If you’re not familiar with Peranakan cuisine, you’re likely not alone, but chef Salil Mehta (Singlish, Laut Singapura, Kebab Aur Sharab) is aiming to change that with his latest restaurant, Kebaya, which opened Feb. 14 in the Union Square neighborhood, not far from his first New York restaurant, Laut.

For a chef who has built a reputation around Singaporean food, Kebaya represents a logical progression: Peranakan food culture incorporates elements of Singaporean dishes, as well as that of Malaysia and the coastal areas of Indonesia’s Java and Sumatra islands. Kebaya also features dishes from the Chitty Peranakan (a community also known as the Indian Peranakans), a distinctive group of Tamil people found mainly and originally in Melaka, Malaysia, and in Singapore.

 

The restaurant’s namesake, the kebaya (pronounced ke-bye-ya) is a garment traditionally worn by women in Southeast Asia.

With myriad culinary influences, it’s tempting to describe Kebaya as “fusion,” but that would be a mistake, Mehta insists. “It’s not fusion food,” he protests. “It’s evolutionary food. This is a cuisine that evolved by a mix of the local Java people, Chinese immigrants, and Indian immigrants, and them coming together.”

A key mission of the restaurant is “to help preserve recipes that are at risk of being lost to the vestiges of time.”

Salil Mehta and Margaret Goh.

While Peranakan cuisine may not be familiar to many New York restaurant-goers, it’s been gaining awareness and recognition globally. In 2016, Candlenut, a Peranakan restaurant in Singapore received its first Michelin star. Now, Mehta hopes New York is ready to embrace Peranakan food too.

“The flavor profiles and ingredients that are used are so amazing and so unique. It’s unlike anything else,” Mehta explains. “There’s no replacing certain signature ingredients or flavor profiles,” such as the buah keluak, a seed or nut that’s considered poisonous if it’s not run under water for 48 hours. Mehta describes the elusive flavor as a cross between black truffles and cacao.

To build the menu, Mehta partnered with Margaret Goh (“Aunty Margaret,” to Mehta), a Singaporean food consultant of Peranakan descent. Goh serves as culinary director for Laut,, a restaurant across the street from Kebaya, and lends her name to the babi pongteh, a comfort-food braised pork dish.

Here’s how Kebaya translates the complexities of Peranakan cuisine and its heirloom recipes, in Mehta’s own words.

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Ayam buah keluak at Kebaya.
Ayam buah keluak.
Ayam buah keluak at Kebaya.
Ayam buah keluak.

1. Ayam Buah Keluak

“It’s chicken cooked in buah keluak sambal. We take some nice pieces of chicken, bone-in, skin on, and we marinate it with nice fresh turmeric root, coriander seed, and salt. We stir-fry it on really high heat so it retains its juices. Then we make a sambal out of shallots, lemongrass, lime leaf, garlic, dried chiles, candlenut — another ingredient used in Malay cooking that is used to thicken up the sauces; if you can’t find candlenut you can use macadamia nut as a replacement. Then it gets some fresh turmeric root, a little bit of caramelized dark soy sauce, some palm sugar, and it’s slow-cooked in the sambal.

“This is one of the staple Peranakan dishes. Any time we read about Peranakan food or celebration or anything to do with representation of the culture, this would be dish number one on anybody’s mind. I think Peranakans are the only ones cooking with this particular ingredient [buah keluak], except for this one Indonesian dish I know where they use the poison nut to make a soup. But in terms of its versatility and using the ingredients in this manner, it’s the Peranakans of Malaysia who use them.”

Kuih pie tee at Kebaya.
Kuih pie tee.
Kuih pie tee at Kebaya.
Kuih pie tee.

2. Kuih Pie Tee

“Kuih pie tee is a homemade pastry cup. We use a special mold, and the batter is made of all-purpose flour, cornstarch, eggs, and coconut milk. It’s a wet batter we dip into these molds, and fry it into little crispy cups. We fill up the cups with slow-braised jicama in fermented soybean. Then we put some shrimp in there, egg ribbons, fresh cilantro, and it’s served with a side of nice and spicy sour chile-vinegar dip.

“This is another signature dish from the Peranakan culture. It pretty much represents the different ingredients — the jicama from local Java side, fermented soybeans from China side. Putting it all together in these little cups makes for a beautiful one-bite dish that’s unique to that part of the region.

“It’s super labor-intensive. Every little dish takes a long time, and has many different components. I assume that’s one reason it’s not well represented in the Western world. A 100 of these cups would take me eight hours to make. There’s a high margin of error in these — they break easily, they don’t form the shape very easily, and there’s a lot of waste. That’s why three of these little cups cost $15. Once made, they hold up really well. On Mondays, two guys come in and all they do is make all these cups.”

Kerabu beehoon at Kebaya.
Kerabu beehoon.
Kerabu beehoon at Kebaya.
Kerabu beehoon.

3. Kerabu Beehoon

“Kerabu means a salad. [The Peranakans] can turn anything into a salad. We have two kerabus on the menu: one is scallop and the other one is this one, a noodle salad.

“We blanch a thin rice noodle, allow it to come down to room temperature, and then we mix it with the dressing (fish sauce, lime juice, fresh garlic, fresh chile) and a homemade sambal. The sambal is very complicated. This one we make with dried shrimp, lots of shallot, dried chile, palm sugar, and dessicated coconut butter. We cook it until the oil floats up on top. Then we add that sambal. Then we toss the noodles with the mix of those ingredients. We top it with fresh Vietnamese mint and torched ginger flower — another important ingredient of Peranakan cuisine, also known as galangal flower — and fresh shallot and a little bit of green mangoes, for the sourness. That’s your noodle salad.”

Chitty Peranakan nasi goreng at Kebaya.
Chitty Peranakan nasi goreng.
Chitty Peranakan nasi goreng at Kebaya.
Chitty Peranakan nasi goreng.

4. Chitty Peranakan Nasi Goreng

“Chitty represents Indian Peranakans. We wanted to really emphasize the Indian influence on Peranakan cuisine with this particular dish. ‘Nasi’ means rice, ‘goreng’ means fried — it’s like Indian Peranakan fried rice, that’s the direct translation.

“For this particular dish we make a curry sambal. It’s made with lots of lemongrass, lots of shallot, garlic, ginger, galangal, some fresh lime leaves, some fresh curry leaves, tamarind, a mix of fresh turmeric powder, coriander powder, fennel powder, chile powder, nutmeg, some dried spices like star anise, cinnamon, clove, cardamom, bay leaves, and we cook it low and slow until it turns into a sambal. We use that to make a fried rice with potatoes, tomatoes, onions, some egg, and we top it off with some crunchy anchovies.”

Aunty Margaret’s babi pongteh at Kebaya.
Aunty Margaret’s babi pongteh.
Aunty Margaret’s babi pongteh at Kebaya.
Aunty Margaret’s babi pongteh.

5. Aunty Margaret’s Babi Pongteh

“This is one of my favorite dishes on the menu. ‘Babi’ means pork. Pork is a very important ingredient to Peranakan cooking’ a lot of dishes are pork-focused. This dish is slow-braised pork belly with shiitake mushrooms, fermented soybean, a hint of cinnamon, shallot, garlic, caramelized soy sauce, some oyster sauce, and rock sugar. In Chinese cooking, when they braise, they do it with rock sugar, so it’s not as sweet. It complements the soy sauce and oyster sauce really well.

“This is more of a comfort dish… [I say] there are two reasons to go out and truly enjoy a restaurant, in my opinion. First, to be wowed by the experience, and the second, to remind you of your grandma. With this particular dish, the best compliment most people have ever given us is in this short time is how this reminds them of their grandma’s cooking. This is something that’s super important to the restaurant. This is a culture where recipes are passed down from generation to generation. So the fact it reminds them of their grandmas, says that Aunty Margaret did the right thing and we were able to follow it the right way with her.”


Kebaya is open Monday to Friday from 5 p.m. to 11 p.m., and on Saturday and Sunday from noon to 11 p.m.


Kara Newman is a New York City-based writer, editor, and cocktail book author. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram. Follow Resy, too.