Some families who run F&B businesses have proprietary recipes that they hold close. For David Lee, his family’s culinary heirloom is a unique recipe for Hakka-style fried pork marinated with red fermented beancurd. The recipe, over 80 years old, was created in the ’40s by his grandfather in Sandakan, a city in Sabah, Malaysia.
That fine-dining stint made David understand “the importance of money”. He returned to Sandakan, where he “started a small stall at the wet market” to continue selling his grandfather’s fried pork kway teow. Here, the chefs serve the same hearty marinated fried pork that David’s family sold in Sabah. You can order it dry or with soup at $6.50 for a small bowl, and $8.50 for large. “My grandfather’s stall had only fried pork kway teow, but you can’t do business like that these days because people want choices,” shares David.
According to David, the Malaysian fresh - not frozen - pork is first marinated in a proprietary blend with red fermented beancurd, then doused in a “glutinous rice flour and plain flour” batter before being deep-fried to a crispy finish. It’s also crunchier than his grandfather’s original old-school version. “Most people these days expect fried pork to be very crispy,” David points out.