KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 20 — Before Sharon De Souza became the cook behind Kuala Lumpur’s reservation-only Nyonya Supper Club, she had another career entirely: banking.
She came to cooking later in life, prompted by a desire to preserve the recipes she had grown up eating and to pass them on to another generation.
Those recipes — handed down by her mother and grandmother and rooted in her family history in Melaka — will form the centre of a week-long Malaysia Day collaboration at Park Hyatt Kuala Lumpur next month.
A Baba Nyonya Story: Recipes of a Living Heritage will run at the hotel’s Park Lounge from September 14 to 20, bringing De Souza’s home cooking into a very different setting while retaining some of the practices she uses at her supper club.
Born in Melaka and of Kristang and Baba Nyonya heritage, De Souza continues to grind rempah by hand and source specific ingredients required for recipes inherited through her family.
For the Park Hyatt menu, she has selected dishes that reflect that culinary inheritance and Baba Nyonya cooking more broadly.
Among them is nasi ulam, made with finely sliced aromatic herbs, toasted coconut, dried shrimp, salted fish and sambal belacan.
Daging Tulang Rusuk Kapitan takes a richer turn, with beef short rib slow-braised with ground spices, coconut cream and lime.
Nyonya laksa will be served with rock lobster and vermicelli in a coconut curry broth, accompanied by quail egg, laksa leaves and calamansi.
There is also Kuah Lada, a dish the hotel describes as traditionally eaten in Nyonya homes. De Souza’s version features golden snapper simmered with tamarind, turmeric and black peppercorns, with Chinese doughnuts served alongside to soak up the gravy.
The collaboration arrives as Malaysia marks Malaysia Day, giving its focus on inherited recipes an added resonance.
Rather than treating Baba Nyonya food simply as something preserved from the past, the project places emphasis on recipes that remain in use: cooked, shared and handed from one generation to another.
That idea has also shaped De Souza’s own approach. Her supper-club dinners remain closely tied to the traditions with which she grew up, and the dishes she cooks carry both family memories and the methods through which those recipes have survived.
At Park Lounge, they will briefly move from the intimate setting of her supper club to a hotel dining room, but the recipes remain closely tied to De Souza’s family history and the traditions in which she grew up.
* A Baba Nyonya Story: Recipes of a Living Heritage will be served at Park Lounge, Park Hyatt Kuala Lumpur, from September 14 to 20.
