GEORGE TOWN, Nov 22 — He is a Jawi Peranakan who is proud of his roots and it shows in his passion for local flavours and tastes.

He may be only 23 years old but Nurilkarim Razha is already making waves in the culinary world through his skills in the kitchen and extensive knowledge of local herbs and spices.

The young chef and co-owner of Jawi Peranakan restaurant, Jawi House, recently emerged as the first champion in The Star’s R.AGE Food Fight, a competition to search for Malaysia’s next food celebrity.

It is almost unbelievable to think that the food world nearly lost this talented chef to the legal profession as he initially studied pre-law because his parents wanted him to be a lawyer or at least, be in a “more professional” field of work.

Here, Nurilkarim shares some insights into his career as a chef and the passion that kept him going.

In his own words:

I was driving to work with my mother and she was telling me about R.AGE and that I should really take part in this. I had just come back from England where I went for the Penang Halal food promotion. I was still really busy with so many other things and I was thinking, whether I should join or not. What they asked for was a video submission. From the contacts I’ve made with PGT and Tourism Malaysia, where we did some filming for promotional videos, I asked some of these film people to shoot my video. I think because I asked professionals to do it, the video looked really good. I submitted the entry very late, two days before the deadline because I am a last minute guy. Only when I want to submit, I read the terms and conditions and we had to do it over, tell about palm oil benefits... made a whole new video. It all worked out really well… and two days after the deadline, I got a call that I was shortlisted and that is when the journey started.

Every weekend, we had a workshop... the first weekend was with Le Cordon Bleu, second one it was with Chef Wan and a few others with other celebrity chefs. What this competition made apparent is that a lot of people can cook but it’s a completely different ball game when you have to cook and be fun on camera and not be shy and have enough facts to share with your viewers. This is very different from Masterchef which is very dramatised while this competition, the target is to find a host… the Masterchef winner doesn’t become a host, he becomes a restaurateur or become someone famous. Not many of them are famous now, not really… at least not for Masterchef Malaysia.

Everywhere in other South-east Asian countries, they are so proud of their local products. In Malaysia, it’s starting to change... I know it’s starting to change, I see it in a lot of restaurants but a majority of Malaysians still look West. When we see imported goods from Europe or America, we assume it’s of higher, better quality, that it deserves that price it’s being sold at. But it’s not necessarily the case. Many things here are also highly valued but only when it’s exported. That’s a shame.

I’ve always liked to cook. When I was young I was always attracted to the kitchen… it was just the place where I could get the attention I needed as a child. Growing up, familiarising myself with the kitchen…  I started to follow my father to the market, cooking what we buy, going fishing. It’s not just about cooking, it’s about the whole relationship that we have with food.

My parents were academics so they would spend time overseas, sometimes they would bring us along… we went to Japan, went to Hawaii for a few months. Sometimes when they came back, they would let us try a lot of different things. My mother is from a Pakistani heritage so growing up, we ate a lot of northern Indian food. My father is from Kedah, more of a Malay kampung style. So, we ate a good mix of Malaysian cuisine, a bit of Indian, a bit of Malay, a bit of Chinese.

My parents didn’t want me to be a chef so I did pre-law initially for a year and a half. I didn’t see myself as a lawyer…  wearing a nice baju. All I thought was that I really, really wanted to cook. There’s this thing in me that will be really tak puas hati if I were to really become a lawyer. It took a long time to convince my parents. They weren’t happy at all… very upset, very angry... I think after one year of doing my diploma in cooking, they could see I was very serious about it. Sure enough, I enter the kitchen, I did my training at E&O for a while and after I graduated I worked at a French restaurant and when that happened, my parents gave up trying to tell me other things.

After my mum retired, she wrote this book which is a compilation of recipes of Penang from my family, friends and neighbours. When she launched the book, a lot of people asked where they could go to taste the food, to understand what this Jawi Peranakan she’s talking about. So my mum felt that it was her responsibility almost to find certain projects to conserve and restore. She got this place in Armenian Street, she did it up. She used this as a venue to promote her book so you can buy the book and taste the recipes from the book. So, that’s how it all started. From being anti this industry, you know how my mum didn’t want me to be a chef, now she’s working closely with me and both of us are doing whatever we can to promote local culture, local heritage. We do that via our food, our art...

What we have is very unique… even for the Malays, this is something very unique, like the nasi lemuni, nasi kacang balmiah. I think a lot of Penangites have not seen these kinds of food before. Unless you go places like Gelugor, Tanjung Tokong. Once you focus on a niche, something unique, that’s when people start to notice. I think that’s how it happened with PGT, Tourism Malaysia… when they have events, they want something different and they want a representative of a particular Peranakan community. People in Hong Kong would have never heard of the food I’m cooking, don’t know what Jawi Peranakan is, have never seen a face like mine before, look Bangla-Bangla but can speak English and sure enough, there were very impressed and they were very intrigued.

If you go on social media, a lot of these European chefs, American chefs are travelling constantly to Asia to learn more about our produce. Like recently, there’s this big craze for mangosteens. We eat mangosteens all the time. They are bringing back like 10 kilos of mangosteens to New York and making this little cold starter with mangosteen and it looks amazing but it takes them to do it…  to put our produce on a different level.

My true passion is to do more modern Malaysian food. I think my link to my heritage is quite steady now, I’ve been running this restaurant for three years. As a chef, I’m not fully content with what I’m doing. When you have to cook authentic food, you can’t be too creative. I am always looking at the use of local ingredients... to present in a modern way, to get people out of their comfort zones. That’s what I’m looking forward in future. Hopefully in two to three years, I might have a venue to do my own modern food using local ingredients. I think that’s what’s really driving me now.