One of the best parts about living in Malaysia is the opportunity to enjoy a variety of food from different cultures. Needless to say, we can get pretty defensive when foreigners have a deferring opinion about our dishes.
Remember earlier last year when TasteAtlas rated our Nasi Lemak as “Ok”? Many were enraged by the ranking that they even questioned the person in charge of the list for the Southeast Asian food category. It looks like TasteAtlas is at it again, only this time, it’s about where they labelled the food is from.
A list of the Top 10 Most Popular Noodle Dishes in Southeast Asia was recently released by TasteAtlas. The list has been reposted on social media and netizens, especially Malaysians, are not happy about it. Popular dishes like Laksa, Char Kway Teow, and Curry Laksa made it onto the list but much to everyone’s disappointment, those dishes were not labelled to be from Malaysia.
In the list posted, the food website labelled Laksa as a popular Indonesian dish and Char Kway Teow as a popular Singaporean dish. While it’s true that both these countries have their own version of the popular noodle dishes, Malaysians find it strange that absolutely no dishes from Malaysia made it onto the Top 10 ranking. Netizens took to Facebook to express their frustration about how these dishes were attributed to the neighbouring countries.
In the comments section, some argue that it’s not a matter of whether or not the dishes exist in those countries but rather how popular they are there. You can also see some netizens including one Indonesian suggesting that even Indonesians are unfamiliar with Laksa and that the food is more popular in Malaysia than it is in Indonesia.
After the whole Nasi Lemak fiasco last year, it looks like Malaysia has a long way to go before any of our dishes gets TasteAtlas’s seal of approval.
Sources: TasteAtlas, Facebook
