Three generations of one family, cooking the dishes our grandmother kept on folded paper, at a counter that looks out over the old temple roofs.
We cook for one neighbourhood, the way one woman taught us to.
We cook the food of one family from one neighbourhood. The flavours stay bold and the hands stay slow, and nothing is softened to please a stranger.
Nusara carries the name of the woman who taught this kitchen to cook. She kept her recipes on loose paper tucked inside a teak cabinet, and she cooked for the monks who passed the family shophouse each dawn. Three generations later we set the same dishes on a long counter that looks out over the temple roofs, and we still pound the curry pastes by hand because she would have asked for nothing less.
The teak cabinet
Our grandmother's recipes still live on folded paper inside the same teak cabinet she kept by the stove. We read from them every morning and change nothing we cannot justify to her memory.
Pastes pounded by hand
Every curry begins in a granite mortar, chilli and galangal and lemongrass worked until the kitchen smells of the temple lane at dawn. A machine cannot find that smell.
A counter above the roofs
The long counter looks out over the temple roofs and the canal beyond. We cook in front of you, the way the family always cooked in front of the people it fed.
From the kitchen to the temple view
A counter that has watched the same roofs for fifty years.
The shophouse has always faced the temple. We cook in front of you, the roofs catch the last light, and the lane below carries the same smell of chilli and lemongrass it carried when the family first opened the doors.
A kitchen cooking from memory, and cooking it better than anyone has a right to.
A seat at the counter is yours, whenever you are hungry for home cooking.