No food-focused issue is quite complete without a mention of Malaysia’s most talked-about fine dining spot to date. If you have yet to visit Darren Teoh’s Dewakan, do so post-haste.
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No food-focused issue is quite complete without a mention of Malaysia’s most talked-about fine dining spot to date. If you have yet to visit Darren Teoh’s Dewakan, do so post-haste.
![My Reading Room](https://myreadingroom.s3.ap-southeast-1.amazonaws.com/img/article/media/media-DcbdMFjQO9HnLRGy.png)
It had me at its name. A portmanteau of the Malay words for ‘god’ (dewa) and ‘eat’ (makan), the Dewakan experience could be likened to a pilgrimage, a journey where the earthly soul communes with a higher being through a ritual-like repast that invokes the senses. Having opened in April this year, Dewakan is already the go-to place for anyone with an appetite for fine food as well as an appreciation for culinary provenance. I particularly appreciated Head Chef Darren Teoh’s penchant for paying homage to Malaysia’s rich bounty of natural produce, using ingredients not normally seen in a fine kitchen’s garde-manger.
Think pretty vivid blue butterfly pea flowers, a staple in traditional dishes like Kelantanese nasi kerabu or Peranakan pulut tai-tai but reimagined by Teoh in a hauntinglybeautiful dessert of creamy Gula Melaka marquise with meringue and pulut (glutinous rice) ice cream. Given his academic background (Teoh was a lecturer with KDU University before choosing to don his chef’s whites fulltime), it’s no wonder that the food at Dewakan
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