The furore was loud and to be expected. When Malaysian Tourism Minister Ng Yen Yen accused other countries of “hijacking” Malaysia’s food and claimed dishes such as Hainanese Chicken Rice, Chilli Crab, Laksa, Nasi Lemak and Bak Kut Teh as Malaysian, she sparked a controversy amongst Singaporeans, Indonesians and even Malaysians crying foul over the idea that any particular dish can be ‘claimed’ by a single nation.

Ms Ng went on to later clarify that she never meant to patent any dishes, but rather to start promoting some of these items as Malaysian tourist products, but the damage had been done, with commenters on both sides of the causeway weighing in on whose food belongs to whom.

CC image by Lyndi & Jason

I find the current arguments over food sovereignty mildly amusing because most of the foods in question are enjoyed over a geographic region that often ignore national borders, so to claim a single dish to belonging to a single country is quite riduculous. And more often than not, dishes change slightly depending on the region it resides: Katong Laksa in Singapore is a little like the laksa you’ll find in Malacca, but not at all like the laksa you’ll find in Penang or in Sarawak. I’m proud to say that I’ve tasted all of them, and they are all wonderful in their own right, and the differences in these four laksas make me think of laksa less as a distinct culinary dish and more like a general cooking method.

The same goes for Chicken Rice: sample this dish in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand and you’ll get four dishes that are same same, but different. Arguing about whose food it belongs to is like arguing which is the correct form of the riddle: it doesn’t matter if it’s a chicken, a cow, or a hippopotamus that crosses the road. It still gets to the other side. And who cares where some unnamed Hainanese uncle invented the dish? The point is that today we all (the half-a-billion people living in Southeast Asia) enjoy eating chicken rice. Making claims over where it originates is probably impossible to prove and it certainly won’t make the dish any tastier.

I’m not against promoting regional specialities – I certainly enjoy Penang char kway teow more than our local version which has broader noodles. But I find the jingoistic claims to “our food” versus “your food” slightly irritating. Do we really want to nationalise our culinary heritage, to such point that we accuse other people, who have been eating the same food for generations, as hijackers? Shouldn’t food unite us more than it divides?