GEORGE TOWN, April 9 — Chef Wan is in love. With Penang.
“I love what the government has done to this city; I’m very proud of it. If you look at it four, five years ago, it was rundown and a bit dirty but now… you come to Penang, there are so many changes especially in preserving heritage,” he said on a recent visit.
The celebrity chef lamented that the “new generation doesn’t care” very much about cooking Peranakan food and that so many restaurants are doing what he calls “not quite Peranakan” food.
“This is why I love Penang because of the diversity of everything... you have food culture,” he said.
On the closure of his halal buffet restaurant, One Market, in Singapore, he said he is now looking at different places with different investors.
“I would like to have a good cafe-style restaurant… we are going to start another one very soon in Singapore… we found a space in the Esplanade and in KL, we have a few investors coming in and are looking at a few places but nothing has firmed up yet,” he said.
He added that he may even consider setting up a restaurant in Penang if there is an investor.
The ever-busy cooking show host is also juggling other projects, all without a manager or personal assistant to help him out.
There is his 11-year project — a Malay food encyclopaedia — and he is now getting scholars from Universiti Utara to look through the draft, to add in important historical stories and do more research on the words and phrases.
He doesn’t know when it will be published and refuses to fix a deadline, saying “when it’s ready, it’s ready.”
There are also plans to start the first Asian Culinary Academy that is fully dedicated to Asian cooking.
“It will be fun. It will be in Langkawi, it will probably take two to three years but we’ve got a piece of land there,” he said.
Chef Wan recently wrapped up a show on single mothers to talk about their journey, struggles and their strong spirit in raising their children on their own.
His next project will be a food-themed comedy which he will host on Astro Warna. “It’ll be fun to do a sitcom comedy on food... it’s not going to be in the kitchen all the time, it can be in the market, in the restaurant,” he said.
“So that’s my new challenge, from cooking to being a comedian... wish me luck,” he added.
