OCTOBER 3 — There is no polite way to say this: Malaysian food writing is abysmal.
It is not abysmal because there is no food to write about. It is abysmal precisely because there is too much.
Too many stories, too much history, too many traditions and inventions and small shifts of flavour that could each be the subject of a book.
And yet, what you read in newspapers, lifestyle portals, blogs, or the marketing copy that masquerades as critique... tastes the same no matter where you bite.
A vanilla-flavoured world of adjectives and lists. “Delicious.” “Authentic.” “A must-try.”
This is not writing. It is advertising.
The problem is not just that it is shallow. The problem is that it cheats the food itself.
The food of this country carries centuries of labour, migration, survival, and invention. Each plate is an archive. Each stall, a living record.
To reduce that to tired clichés like “bursting with flavour,” “packed with umami,” “grandma’s secret recipe” is an insult not just to the cook, but to the culture that gave birth to the dish.
What makes this worse is that Malaysia, of all places, should have the richest, most diverse, most argumentative food writing on earth.
We should have critics willing to wrestle with questions of taste, labour, and belonging.
We should have writers who make you laugh, who make you angry, who make you remember a line the way you remember the smell of belacan on your fingers.
Instead, we have a chorus of agreeable nodding. A kind of writing that fills pages and feeds algorithms, but tells us nothing about who we are or how we eat.
So what should we be aiming for?
We should be aiming for food writing that tells stories. Not just about whether the lamb was pink or the curry spicy, but about the room, the people, the politics of price, the theatre of service.
Food writing should read like chapters, not menus. Restaurants are not just places where food is served. They can be stages where dramas unfold.
Good writing places you at the table. You should be able to hear the clatter of cutlery, see the waiter’s expression, taste the disappointment or joy.
We should be aiming for honesty. Sometimes brutal honesty. The best criticism is merciless when it has to be, but always specific.
It does not say the food was bad. It shows you how it was bad. It gives you images you cannot forget.
This is the kind of writing that readers trust because it risks something.
To say something is bad is easy. To show it is bad, with precision and without fear, is the work of a critic.
We should also be aiming for knowledge. Good food writers are also good researchers. They are not just observers of meals, they are students of cooking and service.
They know what it takes to reduce a sauce properly, why bread tears a certain way, how a waiter holds a room together.
They know because they have asked, studied, compared, and remembered. Too often here, writers say nice or not nice things because they are not sure if what they experienced was good or bad.
They cannot tell if a broth is balanced or flat, if the meat is tender because of skill or because of heritage.
That uncertainty breeds cowardice, so they fall back on adjectives and empty praise. This isn’t generosity, it is hemorrhaging ignorance.
At the very least, writers should be well learned in the objectivity of cooking and service. They do not have to be chefs, but they must know enough to separate craft from accident, intention from incompetence.
Without that grounding, their work is not criticism. What is that Malay proverb? The empty tin makes the loudest noise.
And yet, hats off to those who are pursuing journalistic quality and integrity in their work. Those who apply the rigour required to produce writing that is not only intellectually engaging but that also contributes to the greater body of knowledge we do not already know.
They are disciplined enough to verify, humble enough to keep learning, and curious enough to dig where others can only skim.
They see food and the act of eating not as a shortcut to stardom to to feed a narcissistic self-need, but a pertinent subject worthy of perseverance, study, and craft.
How can you have an opinion of what food is good or bad if you are not prepared, not well-read enough, to have that argument?
Without preparation, opinion is cacophony. With it, opinion becomes critique.
We should be aiming for writing that connects food to the world outside the plate, outside our own ecosystem. Value for money, cultural pretension, exploitation of labour, class, sustainability.
These are inseparable from the meal itself. A dish is never just a dish. It is always a product of people, of choices, of systems.
Good writing insists on reminding you of that and ever so slyly prodding you into the direction of a greater thought.
Now compare this to Malaysia.
Our food writing is polite to the point of cowardice. It avoids judgment. It avoids conflict. It fears offending chefs, advertisers, or public opinion.
It reduces the act of critique to the recycling of press releases.
Where good writing has a voice that is unmistakable, ours are anonymous. Where good writing uses metaphor and narrative, ours use adjectives and lists. Where good writing speaks to readers, ours speak for restaurants. And where it is critical, it hides behind “this is my opinion”.
We like to say that our food is our identity. But if that is true, then our food writing is a mirror and it does not reflect well.
What it shows is a culture uncomfortable with honesty, unwilling to argue and too easily satisfied with platitudes.
The irony is that Malaysians themselves are never shy about food. We argue endlessly about where the best nasi lemak is. We quarrel about what belongs in a laksa. We are vicious in our judgments at the table. But the moment it becomes text, the sharpness vanishes. We retreat into clichés.
This is the gap we must close.
The point is not that we should all become savage, or that criticism must always be cruel. The point is that we should learn from what makes food writing work elsewhere.
A voice that is distinct. A willingness to be precise. A refusal to lie. An understanding that food is never separate from politics, history, and culture.
A grounding in the objectivity of cooking and service, so that judgments are not just noise, but knowledge.
Imagine if our writers took the same risks. Imagine if a review of a high end restaurant in Kuala Lumpur did not just tell you that the food was “innovative,” but asked whether the prices made sense in a country where cooks are paid so little.
Imagine if a piece about hawker food did not just praise “heritage,” but examined what it means that younger generations do not want to inherit the trade.
Imagine if the metaphors made you laugh out loud, if the verdicts made you argue, if the sentences stuck in your head for years.
That is what food writing could be.
The excuse that “we are not ready” or “people only want lists” is just that, an excuse.
Readers will rise to the level of what they are given. If you feed them clichés, they will learn to expect clichés. If you feed them sharpness, precision, truth, and knowledge, they will come back for exactly that.
Malaysian food deserves better. It deserves writers who treat it with respect which is to say with honesty. It deserves critics who can tell the truth, even when it hurts. It deserves prose that is as memorable as the dishes themselves.
Until then, we remain what we are: a nation with glorious food, and terrible writing about it.
* This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail.
