I want to blog a bit about the recent 'hoopla' when our Tourism Minister Dato Sri Dr Ng Yen Yen said that we needed to protect our food heritage. This came to light when someone posted a thread on FriedChillies on some news coverage about this. I thought that it's probably best to wait until the heat has died down a little before putting this up so here it is. You see, if we Malaysians are really interested in getting people to know about our food on a global basis, this will be a more like a marathon instead of a sprint. So a month or two worth of delayed posting I think would not matter much.

Firstly, it's about time we heard kick a** statements like this from our Government instead of being all 'lets try to negotiate and see'. Sometime we have to take the bull by its horn and not worry about what comes out the other end of the horn, usually down South. I would like to personally thank our Minister of Tourism for such a bold and brave statement. Timing is a bit off but nevertheless, I am glad that she said it and took a stand. We have been waiting for this for 5 years! Yes my friends, if you have followed us that long (we've been around since 1997), you'd know that we were so pissed off that Anthony Bourdain passed off OUR Ampang Yong Tau Foo as Singaporean that we wrote that in the first edition of the FriedChillies Foodsters Guide. That was in 2005.

We all know which 'country' Ng Yen Yen referred to, right? It’s the country that shouted the loudest when we said that someone is stealing our food. If you eat the chili, you'd probably feel the heat as one proverb says.

Can you blame them though?

To be fair, the country in question did not steal the origins of the food, that is very hard to do. But what they did was even better. They attempted to hijack (that is the correct term) the brand identity of the food. i.e. they were saying if you want to try their version of laksa, nasi lemak, bak kut teh and others, Singapore is the best place to try them. Oh, I said the country in question. Who am I kidding? In Malaysia, everyone knows this fact.

Have the Singaporeans done something similar like this before? Do you remember Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin harping about a certain Singapore Lychee several years ago? The 'rebranding' of Malaysian Rambutans into Singapore Lychee.

So now, when the global world thinks that laksa is from Singapore, can you blame the Singaporeans? No, how can you? They didn't say that Laksa comes from them. They said that Singapore Laksa came from them. What did we do to say that “hey Laksa is ours too?” Nothing much in comparison to them. For 5 years, they were actively promoting their/our local street food to the world whilst we were doing something else. They appeared on the Martha Stewart show, got international magazines to publish great articles about Singaporean food, organised international cooking classes in New York and London teaching people how to cook Singaporean Fried Bee Hun (whilst we were flying in western chefs from elsewhere trying to teach us how to cook Stroganoff from somewhere). Check out our kopitiam. It’s all about branding. You get the word out, people buzz.

So, what can we do now? Is it too late? Taking the Bull by its horns?

Yes, Fight back. We've always cherished our food but we have been taking it way way way for granted. We collectively always thought that all these cheap street food will always be there. 'No need to protect them lah'. Right? Be honest with yourselves. So the question is, if we ourselves don't appreciate what we have, if it is valuable, others will want to claim it as theirs.

So leading from this, it's about time that we stand up for our food and promote it better. Start taking some ownership and take the time to know more about the origins and culture of our food. Appreciate our food better. So you can talk back when issues like this comes up.

My recommendation is to bring the focus back to Malaysia. Afterall, we do love our food. Cooking techniques are perfected here, passed down from generation to generation, sold with more love and tastes more delicious than anywhere else in the world.

So then, how come globally no one really knows about this? I know and you know that if you are a century old street food dish, with culture that spans the three major races of South East Asia, have ingredients that are as varied and flavourful as it can be, the best home for a street dish to be in, has and will always be MALAYSIA.

So where did we go wrong? Maybe it's a typical Malaysian complacent attitude that thinks nothing bad will happen. This, my friends will eventually be our downfall.

Ng Yen Yen's Dilemma and her Three Hundred Million Barrier.

With past Tourism Ministers, in terms of food tourism, we've literally hit rock bottom. So for Ng Yen Yen, there is only one way to go, which is up. Sworn in as the Tourism Minister on her 63rd birthday, she pledged that 'I will give my very best to ensure the tourism industry reaches its peak and will make Malaysia the best tourist destination in the world'.

Earlier, I talked about branding being a marathon rather than a sprint game. I heard from a reliable source that Singapore has budgeted or spent 300 million on food promotion alone. I am not sure whether is it 300 million RM or 300 million SGD but does it matter? The number 300,000,000 alone brings to perspective how serious Singapore is in using food promotion as an economic strategy for their country. So how much have we spent then in comparison to them? Are we willing to match that figure? Put our money where our mouth is? The Singaporeans did.

So if we are really serious that we want to do this, lets really do it. Lets help Ng Yen Yen. She needs all the help she can get as the bull’s horn we are taking on has a 300,000,000 food promo budget. I believe everyone can make a small step in this direction by writing more about it if you are a blogger, learning more about local food so you can explain it better and just take every opportunity that comes your way to elevate our local cuisine on a global basis.

Share your thoughts with us on how you can champion local food, comment on our kopitiam...