Dewakan and modern Malaysian cuisine

Though Darren attempts to shed light on indigenous ingredients, his tasting menu is not exclusive to it. As a whole, it’s a love story to some of Malaysia’s most high-quality produce, a romantic ode to the unsung heroes who cultivate them. ‘These [local farmers and vendors] are people who are doing something different, and I feel attracted to them. And I want to be a part of them as well, so [Dewakan] is that expression,’ he says. 

For any chef, to cook with ingredients is to first understand them. Darren may be well equipped with the historical and cultural roots of his produce, but he’s also smart as a fox when it comes to ‘manipulating’ ingredients. ‘Take for example, our sweet potato chips,’ Darren explains. ‘Now, sweet potato has got a high amount of starch in it already, but it doesn’t have enough to hold itself together as a chip. So we cook it, pulverise it and then we lay it out on a sheet and dry it out in an oven. So understanding the composition of the ingredient allows you to manipulate it to create a texture or a taste that you wouldn’t [otherwise] get.’ 

The same logic of manipulation applies to his daun selom oil, which circles his dessert of aerated yoghurt, and the water chestnut foam atop the steamed pomfret. But perhaps the most astounding example of this practice is how he uses overcooked rice to make ice cream. To substitute the crème anglaise one would typically use to make an ice cream base, texture and mouthfeel is achieved from the starch in rice. ‘We removed ourselves from the traditional box and we started thinking that, as a Malaysian, if we did not have any of these influences, how would we make ice cream?’ Darren says. ‘And rice came to mind.’ 

While the pulut ice cream is testament to this principle, the pisang goreng ice cream in the chocolate dessert relies on flour instead. ‘We deep-fry our pisang then we blend it up,’ he says. ‘There are two things in it. One is the batter that’s been fried up, that becomes the emulsifier, and also some oil, which the pisang soaks up when it fries. So the oil gives you the creamy mouthfeel, that’s why our ice creams are so smooth.’

Despite the modern setting and kitchen technique employed at Dewakan, there’s something so comfortingly local about the food. ‘Everything that we do here is vetted through that spirit of doing something different, to do something that is very Malaysian,’ Darren says. Which makes this writer question: Why is a spirit that is so Malaysian also a spirit that is so different? ‘Malaysians tend to want to be everything except for Malaysian,’ he jokes, albeit with a striking sense of morbidity. 

Acknowledging some of Dewakan’s present hurdles with pulling the crowds in, Darren is quick to point to the market. ‘I won’t speak for the industry because I don’t think I’m the right spokesperson. But I think it’s the market that dictates these things,’ he says. Among the many intricacies of running a new business, Darren flatly states that the biggest challenge so far is ‘convincing someone to pay for it’. ‘Also, nobody [in the industry] seems to try to elevate a cuisine based on ingredients, rather than a cuisine based on a culture,’ he adds. 

The number of restaurants and cafés running on losses closely follows the rush of openings in our city. Which is why, in a trend-obsessed culture that likes to jump on the bandwagon, a restaurant like Dewakan might appear suicidal. ‘The market prefers to jump from hype to hype,’ Darren says. ‘There’s no analytical skill to a lot of decisions that we make. And that’s why you will not find many people opening restaurants focused on ingredients that are local. Because “local” is a bad word.’ 

Perhaps it’s also the possibility that young chefs here don’t have Malaysian role models, which contributes to the lull in creativity, the lack of fresh, bright minds busting out of the framework. ‘For the current generation and the generation before, there was no one [local] to look up to,’ Darren says. What we find in KL’s dining scene is a sense of ‘borrowed’ originality, a twist of what somebody else with a European accent might have already done. Which is probably why it’s easy to be in awe of Dewakan – the food being so inherently Malaysian is also the food being so inherently unique in our city. ‘This restaurant is an expression of my cuisine so I don’t have the kind of rules or stigma that other chefs would face,’ Darren says. 

This cuisine he refers to can be branded as modern Malaysian cuisine, though Darren is not one for labels. ‘I guess [the term modern Malaysian cuisine] came from trying to explain to people what we were doing in a nutshell. People would ask me “What restaurant is it? French?” and I’d say “Uh, no.”’ 

However, Dewakan’s concept may not be everyone’s cup of tea, as proven by a slow start in numbers. Granted, there are neither sweeping views of the Twin Towers here nor high-society crowds clamouring for a seat in Shah Alam, but Darren is defiant about the very mention of marketing. ‘I’m not going to buy a Facebook boost, and I’m not going to change my menu every week,’ he says. ‘I’m just going to build one relationship at a time. I don’t want to be a flash in the pan, I’m here for the long run. I’m here for bigger, bigger things.