It’s really not difficult to have bad Japanese food here. In fact, it’s not even that hard to have bad Japanese food in Japan. Sometimes it boggles the mind how you have a nation that prizes itself on the freshness of its ingredients so much which also has the biggest thriving industry of processed and instant food.

But anyway, on to the restaurant at hand: Wahiro at Katong Mall, a wonderful little place too large to be called a hole in the wall, but too small to be one of those horrible chain restaurants that churn out those unmistakable and equally unpalatable rectangular shaped slices of dubious raw fish plonked on boxed sushi rice. You get the idea of where I’m coming from.

We step into the restaurant, almost missing it because of its unassuming exterior. The decor is mostly dark wood with soothing deep sea green walls and the neat square of the space is divided up by a curving sushi bar that also holds a small rustic kitchen replete with good things to eat. There are 4 men in neat white aprons and hats behind the counter, and a Japanese chef who had left the reputable but expensive Suntory restaurant at the Intercontinental.

Service is efficient but unobtrusive and the menu is not extensive, with about 15 items offered, including a difficult to beat 15 dollar sushi or sashimi menu which also comes with fruit, a hot dish, a fried dish and a salad. G and I go with the bento box because we’re such suckers when it comes to not being able to make up our minds at Japanese resturants. In any case, Wahiro does not disappoint. First in the wonderful, loving presentation of food in our bento, from the fresh raw fish, to the mackerel basted in a fragrant miso sauce. There is also a teacup filled with salmon roe, a generous helping of unagi and the most delicately fried salmon fishcakes. And if that’s not enough, we are given the house special don mushi soup, which comes in a little teapot (!) topped with a wedge of lemon. The soup is a clear broth flavoured with japanese shitake mushrooms, a tender piece of chicken and cilantro. Wonderful, simple and very fulfilling. Even the pickles here aren’t the lurid purple and yellow ones you see everywhere, but gently brined cabbage, which is piquant but not overwhelming.  And to round off the meal, very cold slices of watermelon.

Pretty close to my ideal Japanese restaurant experience – which should be as if a person who really loves to cook brings you into her house and prepares a simple but skilful culinary experience. Each item just as it should be. The occasions that this happens in a restaurant are rare, but surely this is why Wahiro continues to pack them in.

1. maggi instant mee chicken flavour, with or without egg

2. spaghetti bolognese: more maggi instant mee with canned leggo's sauce with extra ground beef

3. shepherd's pie: mashed potatoes, ground beef with a special sauce mix

4. chicken casserole: I don't remember how this was made, just that it was very very white. Don't ask.

5. And a plethora of snacks purchased from the little shops surrounding our apartment: curry puffs, breaded meat dumplings, rice dumplings and my absolute favourite – strawberry tarts.

And my dad? Well aside from the fact that he eats almost everything with great relish most of the time – I think I've inherited my love of stinky cheese from him. I remember the first time an air stewardess aunt flew into town bearing my first truly odourous taste of potted stilton. mmmm…. I wonder whether we still have the porcelain jar that it came in, that even my fastidious grandmother could not wash the smell out of. I remember always loving cheese, even folding those plasticky slices of kraft into little cubes to make them more palatable, and hankering for the tranches of la vache qui rit, the ultimate in gourmandisse back then.

As for my grandmother what can I say. I think my relationship with her defines my love hate relationship with Asian food. On the one hand it's comforting, but on the other it's fraught with all kinds of emotional blackmail and culinary stress. My grandmother specialises in soups – the slow simmered kind with pork ribs, chicken, salted vegetables, corn, lotus root – anything that requires a lot of preparation and attention. She is also the queen of the perfectly cut vegetable, tuber root, etc, you get the idea. Also her idea of fun is to spend an inordinate amount of time deboning fish to use in one her other specialities: Penang laksa. For the uninitiated that's a lemongrass infused, spicy rice noodle soup dish chockful of mackerel and torch ginger bud garnish. Yummy, but akin to preparing a complicated French restaurant classic.

Growing up with "Ahma" also meant that I enjoyed her repertoire of Anglophone dishes. These were part of the legacy of her marriage with my grandfather who loved all things British including cricket, tennis and a good old fashioned chicken stew. Of course, it had to be translated into the Peranakan kitchen. So my grandmother's stew also has an abundance of cinammon, star anise, pepper corns and nutmeg. Whole, in the soup, to be fished out at the bottom of a pot in a heady, intense spice rush. Let's not even start on her pork cutlets.

But really, I like to think that the beginning of my culinary life really began in my second year in college. Well, perhaps my first summer in the United States when I was living by myself in a yucky dorm in Manhattan. I was started to grocery shop for myself and attempt dishes from my childhood at varying degrees of success. I think I actually felt homesick. And then there was the revelation of hanging out with my newly acquired friend A – who had spent most of her teenage years in Paris and had food inclined parents who introduced me to the whole new world of cured meats, mozarella cheese-tomato hors d'oeuvres and the all important creme brule blowtorch! A, meanwhile, she definitely made me a die hard fan of plain yoghurt (it goes with everything!)

Then there was really going to France for the first time in my life – pilgrimages when you are eleven do not count, especially when accompanied by tomato hating grandmothers. Specifically the south of france where suddenly everything tastes better, more vivid – even maggi moussaka! What is it about that first trip to the outskirts of Toulouse? I don't know. Maybe it was the pairing of zucchini with rice (I had never had the vegetable before!) or couscous cooked by a Basque or how I can barely remember what I ate, just that it tasted good and the company was good and that was why it was so full of happiness.

Then of course, predictably, I fell in love and had to live with and cook for a vegan who turned vegetarian who turned ovo-lacto who now eats seafood and occasionally indulges in some non-kosher foods. It was a challenge at first. Especially in the advent of such sacrileges as tofu cheese and rubbery fake burgers. But we soldiered on, armed with tomes of cookbooks by the likes of Madhur Jaffrey and Martha Shulman. In fact, starting out I just had 2 cookbooks: "The World of the East" by MJ and "Best Vegetarian Recipess" by MS. And I really learnt how to cook then, living in semi isolation in a drafty apartment in Rhode Island making hiking pack expeditions to the nearest Whole Foods supermarket. G also bought me my very first recipe book, spiral bound, now falling apart but with its pages charmingly drawn in with cooking line illustrations. And if you look at the stained and creased pages, you can see how we evolved from internet recipes calling for prepackaged stuffs to making meals slowly and carefully from scratch. And best of all baking bread from scratch, using the cavernous 1970s oven left in our narrow kitchen where we learnt to cook with balletic grace without ever bumping into each other.

Then of course there were the long trips to Italy which really merit an entry all to themselves and then there was coming back to Singapore – which I really should save for later too, since this entry is just becoming too gargantuan…

One night we venture out of the hotel into the mudcaked streets. The monsoon season has ended officially, but the puddles of water collecting a mixture of insect larvae and plastic bags cling tenaciously on to the sidewalks. There is hardly any street lighting, only a distant glow of restaurants and hotel signs to light the way. We walk by what would be a staid choice for tourists – the kingfisher restaurant – looks packed to the brim with Westerners looking glumly at their watered down tom yum goong.
Minutes later we find ourselves in front of a do it yourself barbeque place. Seedy, aromatic and bustling, it smells like fried lard and raw meat – the perfect combination. Tentatively we wait to be seated, then of course it becomes apparent that this joint is far above theses niceties. So we sidle ourselves up at a table near the road, hoping to escape the pervasive smell of charred flesh permeating the place. Of course as the meal progresses we realise that this is a false assumption, since the amount of burnt meat smells settling onto our hair and clothes is dependent solely on wind direction, something that we do not have control over.
I wish I could say that I was an adventurous traveller when it comes to food. Sure, I’ve grown up in Asia so I have a gut well attuned to most of the slightly menacing intestinal flora in the region – I once spent an entire month in China without even once suffering from what the locals call aptly a “pulled stomach”. Still, I mostly put that down to a few simple rules: no raw vegetables, peeling the fruit, no tap water and unfortunately no roadside food. So as I eye the containers of raw meat, marinated in mystery sauce by mystery cooks put side by side with sliced cabbage and other raw vegetables washed in suspect tap water – I take a deep breath, grab a slightly grimy plastic plate and plunge in. I try to ignore the pungent whiff of beef and chicken left too long raw. The restaurant is filled with the chatter of happy customers, each coating their aluminium grill cum steamboat with a generous chunk of pig fat, so recently separated from its owner that its little stubby hairs are still intact. (This I point out gleefully to my slightly squeamish vegetarian husband who is clearly in the wrong place.)
As we dive into our meal, cooking raw and semi-raw chunks of seafood, meat, instant noodles and vegetables, I carefully overcook each item I’m about to eat, hoping for the best. After the broth becomes inedible with the saltiness of the instant noodles, I give up and look around at the other patrons with interest. Just behind us is a skinny white guy, blond American looking. He is dressed in baggy bermudas, a t-shirt and a grungy plaid shirt. Sitting by himself he has been there since we arrived and is showing no signs of stopping his relentless consumption of everything in sight. Dish after dish of raw meats and vegetables disappear from under his nose. He only pauses every now and then to catch his breath, smiling a wry smile to himself before launching again. I didn’t know that so much dubious food could make its way so happily through a foreigner. And just when we think he’s done, he heads back to the buffet stand, spending an inordinate amount of time in front of the ice-cream (no! not the ice!) scooping at least a dozen scoops onto his plate – and even venturing to the watermelon slices (cut fruit eeks!) and eking out another 10 or so or those. These he eats with obvious relish, before settling his bill and setting out in the night on a rented motorbike.
He is quite the hero.