‘It was accidental television that led to the supper club.’ You may recognise Guan Chua from The Taste, a TV gameshow that aired on Channel 4 in 2014 where Guan was mentored by the late Anthony Bourdain. Born in Kuala Lumpur, Guan moved to London to attend university, then worked in the banking industry for six years before taking a sabbatical to attend Le Cordon Bleu. ‘I got this random email from one of the producers of the show who had been following my blog where I’d been writing about culinary school,’ he says. When Guan saw Bourdain on the list of the show’s judges, he knew he had to audition. ‘I did all this research on what his favourite dishes of Southeast Asia were. [When I cooked for him], straight away his palate is so sharp – he said, ‘I think this dish has Peranakan roots in it’.’
On the back of his TV show fame, Guan decided to launch his supper club specialising in the food from his homeland. ‘Malaysian food in London tends to be street food. The Penang style of Nonya/Peranakan food is quite differen; it has a lot of Thai influences, because of the geography. The best supper clubs tend to do a brand of cuisine that’s very unique and not often one you can find in a restaurant.’
Guan’s home fits ten people around one large table (‘the majority of supper clubs are residencies nowadays, but I still love the house supper clubs the most’), so the downside for diners who love his authentic-Nonya-meets-Cordon-Bleu style is that his dinners sell out within hours of being advertised. ‘Occasionally I do larger events just to meet some of them. It’s also nice to get people to connect and reconnect with this food and give them inspiration to travel.’
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