That One Dish Spotlight, No. 12: Pamelia Chia
A conversation with the food writer on food memories, her journey from chef to writer, and Singaporean foodways
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recalls her mother’s reverence for food with abject fondness. In fact, some of the most seemingly mundane food memories of her childhood—following her around a wet market with a big chunk of char siu in hand, for example, or tucking into pig intestines after her mother had referred to it as “Chinese chewing gum”—were what ultimately instilled in her a thorough appreciation of the diverse, yet heritage foods of her native Singapore’s culinary landscape.The that one dish. spotlight is a column that connects us with amazing AAPI writers, artists, chefs, creators, and entrepreneurs who talk about the “one dish” that best captures their experiences living at the intersection of multiple cultures. Everyone’s got “that one dish” that provokes a certain emotion, becomes a staple they lean on in the ups and downs of life, or immediately transports them to a formative time, Anton Ego-style. Our personal experiences continue to show how food and the five senses involved with both making and enjoying it evoke vivid memories that serve as meaningful links to the past. You can check out TOD’s archive of past interviews here.
Now a culinary teacher and food writer, Pamelia’s approach to understanding Asia’s food cultures continues to be one of curiosity and conviction, where unpacking layers of meaning and technique behind everyday dishes results in deeply grounded, intellectually generous work. Through her weekly Substack newsletter, “Singapore Noodles,” she shares dispatches on Asian food traditions, recipes, and stories. Her latest cookbook, “Plantasia,” originally published in 2023, is now being re-released with The Experiment this October. (Do check it out at the embedded Bookshop link, it’s a beautiful culinary study of vegetable-forward eating across Asia, featuring interviews from some great names in food).
Pamelia’s commitment to Singaporean food heritage doesn’t involve preserving it in amber, but celebrating it as alive—complex, deeply personal, and continuously evolving. Her background as a chef working in professional kitchens may simultaneously impress and intimidate the home cook—but one look at her socials reveals a kind of unfussy, but exacting style that presents food as meant to be eaten and understood, not just admired or dressed up for clicks or spectacle. It speaks to a respect she has for food, where it’s seen as a vessel for connection and understanding. Without further ado, this is me and Pamelia on her food writing journey, her earliest food memories, and why Singaporean foodways mean so much to her.
Paid subscribers! This Friday, you’ll be receiving some additional Q&A content from me and Pamelia about cooking Asian food in Breda—plus a bonus recipe for a dish that originated in Singapore’s Hakka community. If you’ve been loving “That One Dish” and want to upgrade your experience, please consider upgrading your subscription to enjoy that in addition to bonus recipes, supplemental content, and other goodies.
Walk me through your food writing journey—what was growing up in Singapore like, and what eventually brought you to the Netherlands?
“I’ve always been really interested in food. My mom, however, always felt that cooking should be a hobby; for her generation, cooking is for housewives. I think that she wanted more from me, especially because I was doing well in school—but I loved food, and decided to become a chef after getting my degree in food science. I was doing that for about seven years, and in that time I lived in Singapore and moved to Melbourne as well. I didn’t feel like it was for me. The hospitality industry can be hard sometimes. There’s a sense of, if you left your career it’s because you didn’t have enough passion or weren’t good enough. When I first realized that I wanted to leave, I spoke to a chef friend about it and his advice was to just put my head down, do the job, and develop more grit. He was well-meaning, but it compelled me to stay in an industry I didn’t really like for a few more years. People always equate being a chef to having a love for food—and these two things aren’t the same, because I felt that being a chef actually took me further away from loving food. Being a chef is about being the perfect machine, consistently churning out plates of food, numbing your emotions and getting things done. At home, I really have a different approach to and relationship with food that’s all about slowing down, simple pleasures, having fun in the kitchen, and experimenting.
While I was working as a chef, I was thinking about ways I could create more options for myself if I wanted to leave the industry one day. In my second kitchen job, I was actually lucky enough to have a four-day week. Three days out of the week, I’d write my first cookbook (“Wet Market to Table”)—and that’s how I got into food writing. I was really surprised that the book did well; it became a bestseller in Singapore. It made me realize that people liked my recipes and reading what I had to say about food.”
What inspired you to start writing and sharing stories about Singaporean foodways specifically?
“It was moving abroad. After I’d written my first cookbook and sent in the manuscript, my then-partner-now-husband decided to move to Australia for his masters. He asked if I wanted to come, and I felt like it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I’d never gone on an exchange program while in university, and that’s something I had a lot of regret about. Living in Australia really opened my eyes to a whole new world in that it showed how little people knew about Asian food in general. A lot of people only knew of ‘Singapore noodles’ whenever I brought up my heritage: ‘Oh, there’s a really nice restaurant down the road that serves great Singapore noodles.’ That was the first time I’d ever heard of this dish.
[Back home], even though I loved cooking I never really cooked iconic dishes. I never knew how to make something like chicken rice because it’s so cheap and readily accessible in Singapore. [Living in Australia] forced me to start cooking dishes from Singapore. I was working in restaurants, where there’s this culture of having staff meals. My chef would be, like, ‘Oh Pamelia, you’re from Singapore—can you make chicken rice?’ I didn’t want to admit that I didn’t know how to make chicken rice; I’d be secretly sweating buckets. It created so much pressure and embarrassment. I think it’s very common for many Singaporean chefs when they start working in kitchens overseas. People ask them, ‘Okay, make chili crab.’ But we’ve never had the need to make chili crab, because in Singapore these things are so accessible and cheap.
For the first time, I started delving deep into learning how to make all these things. It was really good timing, because COVID happened not long after and there was a period where everyone was bored at home. Singaporeans, for the first time, were, like, ‘You know, maybe I should learn how to make curry puffs or chicken rice, just for the fun of it.’ The recipes and content I was writing really found an audience in that way.”
Tell me about your earliest food memory.
“My mom was always the kind of person who loved throwing big parties at home where she’d cook a buffet dinner—curry chicken at the center of the table with baguettes. An apple strudel bought from outside, homemade jellies, things like that. For the whole night, the door to our house would be wide open. There’d be tons of shoes outside, and people would come and go through the night. It’s not like what you’d normally consider a dinner party in the West—you know, the super aesthetic kind of modern-day dinner party with nice linen, cutlery, and crockery. My mom’s parties were about hospitality.
Now, as an adult, when I think about Singapore and its relationship with food, I feel like a lot of that has changed because people in my age group hardly cook. Every time I go back to Singapore and get invited to a friend’s house, it’s always, ‘Let’s get a takeaway, let’s order in.’ It’s very different from what I’m used to.”
Why do you feel like that’s the case?
“In my mom’s time, housewives were the norm, right? You’d have either part-time or full-time housewives who were home to cook. Now for those my age, most people have hectic jobs. They never learned to cook because they grew up with their parents doing everything—or because tasks like cooking were outsourced to domestic help, which is a big thing in Singapore. It’s because of that most people in my generation only learn to cook when they get married, which is typically in your late 20s, early 30s. Personally, I feel like that’s too old to be picking up a skill so fundamental to life. That’s what I noticed when I was in Melbourne. A lot of my friends were able to cook really good meals, even if they weren’t chefs, because they’ve been cooking for themselves since they were 16 or something.”
How do you navigate your identity when you’re in a place like the Netherlands where the food culture is incredibly different from the one you grew up with? And how do you feel like your journey around the world and your career has influenced your work?
“Moving overseas has given me a lot of empathy for non-Singaporeans who want to try cooking the cuisine. When I first moved out of Singapore, I used to enforce all these rules. If you were to make a hokkien mee, for example, I’d tell people to use a specific kind of squid, or to use calamansi instead of regular limes. I’ve relaxed a lot of these rules in my head because of what I just shared before. Food is ultimately to please, and if we want our country’s cuisine to be well-known, we have to allow it to take new forms.
I'll never forget this story that someone once told me. Before moving to the Netherlands, my husband and I lived in this small town [in Australia] with just 2000 people. I happened to meet this Singaporean who was living near me, whose parents moved to Australia in the 70s or 70s. I asked her what she cooked, if she cooked any Singaporean food. She was really embarrassed and sheepish about it, she’d said, ‘Nah, I don't talk about it, it’s not authentic at all.’ When I pressed her, she said, ‘Oh, we have this dish that’s a riff off fried carrot cake.’ Fried carrot cake is a very popular Singaporean dish, its cubes of steamed rice cake with grated radish or daikon in it. Then it’s fried with sambal and dark soy sauce, things like that. When her parents first moved, they couldn’t find daikon or rice flour, so they bought crumpets from the supermarket, snipped it up, and fried those in the sambal and dark soy sauce—and that became a good enough replica for them to remember flavors from home.
When she told me this, I thought about how beautiful that was. Who am I to say that that’s wrong, or that somebody shouldn’t do it. Now that I’m a culinary teacher here in the Netherlands, I come across so many students. I realize that a lot of people really want to learn, but it’s just that they don’t have the exposure that I had growing up. Teaching them has given me a lot of compassion and empathy. It makes me want to teach them as well as I can. It’s always about meeting people—whether they’re your readers or your students—at a place of relevance, right where they are, so that they can slowly take steps to want to be adventurous.”
All responses have been edited and condensed for clarity.