Kampong Gelam: Kitchen of the Malay World

You hear Malay, Javanese, Tamil and Punjabi as you wander the streets with shops selling colourful textiles and carpets, spices and flowers. Here you find different curries and bread, nasi padang, sup tulang, mee siam, a Javanese kitchen, Hainanese coffeeshops. Bookstores sell literature and newspapers as far away as Cairo. In this episode, Khir tells us about the Kampong Gelam he grew up in.

Khir Johari was born and raised in historic Kampong Gelam, Singapore. He studied mathematics at Santa Clara University in California, and completed a masters in education at Stanford University. Since returning to Singapore, Khir has focused on research into the food cultures of maritime Southeast Asia. He is the author of The Food of Singapore Malays: Gastronomic Travels through the Archipelago (Marshall Cavendish Editions, 2021).

What Khir Talked About

• 02:32 – The origins of mee maidin, the dish that Khir cooked in From Book to Cook
• 07:18 – Kampong Gelam as the incubator for the Nusantara (Malay World) kitchen
• 09:19 – Four main streets in Kampong Gelam selling food, including the only place in Singapore that sells mee odong
• 14:35 – The origins of mee siam
• 17:46 – Three types of mee siam that came out of Kampong Gelam
• 18:36 – Khir’s childhood in Kampong Gelam, where the Tamil Muslim community organized an annual commemoration of a Sufi saint
• 20:23 – Publishing houses in Kampong Gelam
• 22:51 – Why Khir spent 10 years writing the book The Food of Singapore Malays
• 27:12 – What Khir is working on now
• 28:38 – Khir’s dream job if he lived in Kampong Gelam in the 19th century
• 29:37 – The most maligned ingredient in Malay cooking
• 31:15 – The one recipe in his book Khir wants people to try
• 33:07 – Food is…

Transcript and Resources

• Read the transcript: biblioasia.nlb.gov.sg/podcast/kampong-glam-kitchen-malay-world/transcript/
• Watch Khir make mee maidin: biblioasia.nlb.gov.sg/videos/mee-maidin/

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This episode of BiblioAsia+ was hosted by Jimmy Yap and produced by Soh Gek Han. Sound engineering was done by One Dash. The background music "Di Tanjong Katong" was composed by Osman Ahmad and performed by Chords Haven. Special thanks to Khir for coming on the show.

BiblioAsia+ is a podcast about Singapore history by the National Library of Singapore.