malaysia tatler. august 2019 147
one of the reasons we felt the need to come
over to the French capital: for Malaysia and
Australasian scholarship to be part and parcel
of this momentum.”
Intellectuals from Australia, Brazil, Canada,
France, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Japan,
Lebanon, Singapore and the USA tackled
the theme of ‘indigeneity’ via the social
glue of food: pastry, pickles, bakuteh, sushi,
wine, ulam—how do these foods tie into our
societies and what do they say about us?
While it is impossible to iterate each and
every paper here, those that touch on our
motherland include: Being Peranakan—
State of Research & State of Affairs; The Ulam
School Project—Reconnecting with Edible
Flora To Attenuate Public Health Crisis In
Malaysia, Cambodia & Vietnam; The Cooking
Methods Of Ethnic Food Among Aborigines
Social Groups; Of Deities, Ancestors and
Ghosts—The Ritual Food Offerings In The
Hungry Ghost Food Festival; Measuring Social
Cohesion In Malaysia—The Spatial Practice
Of Eating Out; and more.
So much talk of food and drink was
guaranteed to stir appetites, hence a
sumptuous gala dinner prepared by
students of the Institute of Gastronomy at
the University of Cergy-Pontoise; cooking
demonstrations by culinary greats Pascal
Barbot of L’Astrance (2 Michelin stars) and
Darren Teoh of Dewakan (the fi rst Malaysian
JOEL HART
Oxford University, UK
Joel’s passion for food and
wine fuelled his research
on a pickled mango
condiment from India.
“Amba has migrated along
colonial routes across
the Arabian Sea to Iraq
and from there to Israel,
Palestine, the London
diaspora, and the global
metropolitan gastroscape.”SUSIE NORRIS
Food Market Gipsy, USA
Susie’s presentation titled
Teaching Classics To
Home Cooks challenges
box-dinner deliveries
despite their convenience.
“People must be educated
about the health risks
associated with our profi t-
driven, mass-produced
foodways.”VOLTAIRE CANG
RINRI Institute, Japan
Voltaire, an expert on
sushi culture, underscores
that sushi doesn’t always
have to use salmon or
tuna. “Try locally-sourced
fi sh or seafood not
transported from too far
away; these too can make
for excellent sushi.”FOOD OF THE GODS
Darren Teoh (left), the head chef of Dewakan,
introduced an international audience to black
banana porridge topped with cured duck egg yolk
followed by goat brushed with miso-petai at a
food demonstration during the conferencerestaurant to make it onto the Asia’s 50 Best
Restaurants list); serene tea ceremonies
carried out in the traditional Japanese way
by Keiko Imamura; and tasty lunchboxes
laid out by the culinary design team at the
Institute of Gastronomy.
Equal parts educational and enjoyable,
the Food & Society Conference allowed
keen observers to rub shoulders with roving
academics in multiple prestigious venues,
including the historical auditoriums of
Sorbonne University and La Cour du Marais, a
medieval private mansion-turned-event space.
Keen on attending the fourth Food &
Society Conference in Vietnam in 2020?
Kindly visit food-and-society.com for further
information.“This year and the last have
been very auspicious years for
Malaysian gastronomy”
CONFERENCE
CONTRIBUTORS