Good things come in pairs — we are extremely proud to share that @restaurantshukl has been SELECTED as part of the MICHELIN Guide Kuala Lumpur & Penang 2026!
This award belongs to all of us —
👨🏻🍳 first of all, the team at Restaurant Shu KL who uphold our standards of quality and hospitality without compromise every single day;
🧑🏻🌾 next, our industry mentors, peers and suppliers who challenge and support us in bettering the versions of ourselves we put out to the world;
👬 then, our shareholders and friends who have unwavering faith in what we do;
🥳 and last but not least, our guests who are both our biggest cheerleaders and strongest critics.
We remain committed to never resting on our laurels and constantly pushing ourselves out of our comfort zone. From the bottom of our hearts, we express our deepest gratitude to everyone who has been a part of our journey. We believe this is only the beginning and the best is yet to come — we cannot wait to step into the next chapter with you! ✨
#michelinguide26 #michelinguidemy
It's a proud day for the Shu family — our very own Chef Chin Wong has been honoured with the Young Chef Award by the MICHELIN Guide Kuala Lumpur & Penang 2026!
@chinisacook , you inspire us everyday with your burning passion and original creativity, insatiable hunger for knowledge towards your craft, unwavering dedication towards progress and utmost commitment to hold us all to the highest standard possible.
This award is truly a testament to your hard work, craftsmanship, and most of all leadership.
We are beyond proud to be led by the most generous chef who leads by intention and example, and more so the most genuine person who always only wants to bring out the best in us. Congratulations on a well-earned victory! 🥹✨
#michelinguide26 #michelinguidemy
What defines identity? What is Chinese cooking?
At @restaurantshukl , Chef Chin Wong continues his exploration of diaspora dining through Identity Volume 3 — a menu that moves beyond fixed definitions of “Chinese food”. Describing himself as “a third culture kid”, Restaurant Shu KL is a medium for Chin to question and explore an ongoing dialogue shaped by heritage, movement, memory and lived experience. Each course in Identity Volume 3 carries fragments of that journey.
🧄 早餐 Breakfast
Inspired by the familiarity of Chinese breakfast culture. Caramelised soy milk pillows and scallion oil are tucked into a tartlet, finished with @tlurcaviar
🐟 蒸 Steamed?
Titled as a question, “Steamed?” playfully subverts the familiar Cantonese steamed fish. Instead of heat, cured pomfret is served cold and seasoned with a house-blend soy infused with roasted fish bones
🍳 怀念 Memory
One of Shu’s staple dishes. Inspired by the pork lard rice with egg that Chef Chin’s mother grew up eating, reinterpreted with Shu’s decade-long jasmine rice bread, chilli oil egg and pork fat emulsion
🍊 成年 Aged
Duck liver parfait seasoned with 10-year-aged tangerine peel for balance and acidity
🍶 黄酒 Yellow Wine
Shellfish marinated overnight in Shaoxing wine, paired with a silky Hua Diao butter sauce
🍵 冬瓜茶 Winter Melon Tea
Winter melon tea sphere coated in white chocolate, delivering a creamy bittersweet finish
🪴 南洋 Nányáng
Perhaps the clearest expression of the menu’s theme. A dish rooted in shared heritage and cultural intersections. Wet-aged grouper is paired with a curry shaped by Chinese diaspora influences across Southeast Asia — from evaporated milk to krachai and regional spice blends inspired by Singaporean, Thai and Cambodian curries
🍄🟫 家世 Heritage
A tribute to Chin’s Foochow lineage and his grandmother’s red wine dishes. Pork loin stuffed with pork farce and chestnut is served with Foochow red wine lees purée, watercress foam and mushroom rice infused with 12 varieties of mushrooms flown in from Yunnan
We’re returning to The Datai Langkawi in a month's time for "The Chef Series 2026: The Art of the Distinctive"! Join our Chef @chinisacook as we celebrate diaspora dining set against the lush backdrop of Langkawi’s ancient rainforest 🌳
Happening only on 19th & 20th June.
Visit @thedatailangkawi for more details, or its event website: /events-and-occasions/the-chef-series/
“华裔“或“华侨”这个身份，不独属于中华文化意识相对比较强的新马华人。Restaurant Shu @restaurantshukl 的黄振华 @chinisacook 主厨的世界观在于， 新加坡、泰国、柬埔寨、老挝、越南等等东南亚国家的华人，每个区域的华人都对于自己“华裔”或“华侨”的身份有不同的经历、见解和诠释。因此对于“侨民食物”的定义，透过这一道《身份》菜单第三回（Identity Volume 3），黄主厨反映出的并非是狭窄单一的、新马华人演化出的侨民食物。反而，Identity Volume 3的视野，是将版图扩大至整个东南亚区的侨民饮食文化。
The identity of being “ethnic Chinese” or part of the “Chinese diaspora” does not belong solely to the Chinese communities of Singapore and Malaysia, who may have a comparatively stronger sense of Chinese cultural consciousness.
Chef Wong Chin Hua of Restaurant Shu peeks through the Chinese diaspora lenses differently: Chinese communities across Southeast Asian countries such as Singapore, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam each have their own distinct experiences, perspectives, and interpretations of what it means to be “ethnic Chinese” or part of the diaspora.
As such, in defining “diaspora cuisine,” the Identity Volume 3 menu reflects not a narrow, singular evolution of Chinese diaspora cuisine rooted only in Singaporean-Malaysian Chinese culture. Instead, its vision expands to encompass the broader landscape of the diaspora in the Southeast Asian region.
🔗 前往官网阅读完整文章 Visit our website or click the link on our profile for the full article.
In its third volume, @restaurantshukl and team dive deeper into the flavours of the diaspora, mostly inspired by chef Chin’s personal upbringing and familiarity with flavours.
This menu acts as a refined version of its previous iterations, feeling cohesive yet exploratory, with a structured sense of playfulness.
#TatlerDiningMY #TatlerTastes #Shu
Now that I’ve successfully conned you into giving me your attention with this completely unrelated picture of truffles.
Part one of a discussion about the role of culture in cooking.
There’s an element of culture that should always be discussed when one cooks with a cuisine.
No matter how avant garde, how progressive, how creative one cooks, it’s always tied to what came before.
I cook what I term “diaspora cuisine”, because it’s not quite Chinese, in a sense. Like I’m not quite Chinese.
I’m ethnically Chinese, but culturally? My spoken mandarin is decent, I can’t really speak either of the dialects of my ancestry.
I’ve been accused of cultural appropriation by chefs who do Classical Chinese cooking, though, as I learn more about Chinese cooking, I find myself asking, what is Classical Chinese cooking? What is a the cuisine of a culture that is so old and vast? A culture that encompasses such vast terroir, and a culture that has evolved so much over millennia? And what is the place of the diaspora in this cuisine?
I’ve had guests tell me that my food is not Chinese because I don’t serve my fish whole. As a member of the diaspora attempting to explore chinese-ness via the medium of food, I ask myself if the food is Chinese enough, but beyond that, I also ask myself, is the food too Chinese? Cos at the end of the day, if I were to cook a dish that would be 100% identifiable as “Chinese”, whatever that means, that would be playing it safe, and inauthentic to me.
We cook what we cook, in an attempt to ask the question, “what is Chinese?” Is our use of Chinese ingredients and seasonings enough to make it Chinese? Do we have to follow a lexicon of traditional Chinese dishes?( a long ass discussion on tradition and authenticity) is it enough that i as a person of Chinese ethnicity, cooks with an intention to cook food with a Chinese identity? Or will what we do never be Chinese enough? Will i ever likely have the answer? Probably not, but it’s a question that should be asked no?
#shubts
Something we’ve been working on as a new component on an old dish.
Beetroot brunoise. Candied in a syrup of cold infused Szechuan and pink peppercorns then dehydrated to form a beetroot chew with an intoxicating scent of peppercorns, whilst retaining their earthy sweetness. Next step is to test rehydrating it in beetroot juice infused with the same peppercorns to alter the texture to have a meatier chew whilst reinforcing the peppercorn.
Lardo.
On the left. Cured in the traditional Italian way. On the right, cured with red and green Sichuan peppercorns and five spice.
Aged for 18 months.
We haven’t found a place for it on the menu, but it is goddamn delicious
Meat powder, an idea from the past, to be revisited.
We took Wagyu trim, roasted the shit out of it. Dehydrated, blended into a powder/crumble like texture, then roasted it again to further build mailliard flavors. Extremely unpleasant to eat texturally, but has a lot of potential for infusions. Could be an interesting way to build meat stocks/broths/jus.
#researchanddevelopment #researchandkeepindrystore #researchandforgetaboutitforyears #shortattentionspan #chindoesnotunderstandhowtousehashtagsforengagement
I’ve never been the biggest fan of tomatoes. Growing up, tomatoes typically came underripe and in slices as a garnish for Hainanese western food( is it a form of Chinese diaspora cooking or is it British?). They were mealy and tasted of nothing.
We’ve come a long way since those days, and we are able to get much “better” tomatoes nowadays from pretty much anywhere in the world. I am, however, still left with an aversion to raw tomatoes from those childhood experiences, but I will devour cooked tomatoes, like in a pomodoro, or a tomato stew.
South East Asian tomatoes are not great for the most part, but that’s if we were to use the European barometer for quality. The tomatoes we get here tend to the acidic and umami instead of sweet and umami.
So why do we(cooks trained in European style cooking) insist on using them like a European tomato?
If we look at them as the tomato they’re meant to be. Their potential really begins to open up. A reduction of their water as a seasoning. The steeping into broths and so on. And yes @rileyculinary , I’ve a feeling my obsession with tomatoes stems from that one discussion/argument with you from years ago
Our take on 鲜 was to make umami rich sauces with 海产. We paired our beef with an emulsion of oysters, and our abalone, with a sauce of its liver. We made it a touch lighter than what one would normally have at a sushi omakse, as I personally found the liver flavor to be a little bit too intense typically. The abalone is braised in a 甘蓝菜 butter emulsion, and then seared.
Have a few ideas to adjust the sauce with once we get back into the kitchen. Am thinking some pommery mustard would be nice in there.
