The travel secrets of celebrity chef Poh Ling Yeow
There are good reasons why the MasterChef Australia judge doesn’t like to follow restaurant recommendations and prefers apartments to hotels.
Poh Ling Yeow burst on to our screens with her million-watt smile in 2009 as a contestant in the first series of MasterChef Australia. Returning to the show in 2024 as a judge, Poh prefers to be called a cook not a chef and cites a large extended family of home cooks as her most important inspiration.
With five cookbooks under her belt and numerous television series, including teaming up with fellow MasterChef alumni Adam Liaw last year to produce Adam & Poh’s Great Australian Bites for SBS, she prefers low-key local restaurants to Michelin stars when travelling. And boulangeries to patisseries. “I don’t like fancy food,” she says.
Born in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Poh’s earliest memories revolve around food. The flavours of the city “are in my veins”, she says, “that unique mixture of Chinese, Malay and Indian”. She recalls the bells of bicycle food vendors summoning the neighbourhood, of being a reluctant visitor to the wet markets furiously dodging mysterious and scary black puddles, and of “drinking coffee out of a saucer like a little cat” while her grandma’s buddies played mahjong at the local coffee shop.
“But I’ve not been back for a long time,” she says. As a keen baker, she’s gravitated towards Europe in recent years, travelling to Paris with “bestie” and French-born business partner Sarah Rich.
For almost a decade, the pair have run a stall, Jamface, at the Sunday morning Adelaide Farmers’ Market at the Wayville showgrounds, selling baked goods, cakes, pies and preserves. Poh and Sarah share the baking duties. “It’s a proper cottage industry,” she says.
Poh’s family migrated to South Australia from Malaysia when she was nine and Adelaide remains her base. A successful artist with a bachelor of design from the University of South Australia and about 20 exhibitions to her credit, Poh has channelled her creative energy and easy charm into making cooking accessible and fun. And that dynamite laugh could be bottled and sold on the market stall.
Although food tends to guide Poh’s travels, she’s becoming more cautious in following personal recommendations (or making them). Restaurant preferences can be very subjective, she says. Memory and flavour are so enmeshed, and some travel-food memories are enhanced by the romance of the moment; a moment that cannot be replicated by someone else. In the future she intends to “wander” rather than madly run around ticking off a long list of recommended restaurants.
What to do in Adelaide
Head down south to McLaren Vale to explore the vineyards. I’m not much of a wine drinker but I love the culture around it, and I absolutely recognise that it’s what makes Adelaide unique. And the beaches are wonderful. Don’t miss the Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide Farmers’ Market and the Central Market. I have met so many visitors who’ve said, ‘Wow these markets are incredible’. What makes the Central Market so interesting is the diversity of produce; you can find things to make just about any dish in the world.
Why I prefer apartments over hotels
I never stay in hotels, always in Airbnb apartments because I love to cook and explore local supermarkets, where you can learn so much about what people eat and how they shop. When I was staying on Place des Vosges in Paris, I noticed you could buy small portions, a single cup of flour, perhaps because there is so little storage in tiny city apartments.
What to pack
I pack a practical, comfortable wardrobe, with lots of black and white, even though I’m a colour bug. Sneakers form the basis of the look; good walking shoes are essential. I try to take two back-up battery charger packs for the phone, as I rely on this device for navigation. No heavy suitcases – many apartments in Europe don’t have lifts.
Favourite food memory
I have a strange spiritual infinity with Italy; somehow the food calls to me. And after I heard about an incredibly rare pasta, Su Filindeu (Threads of God), the secret recipe and method passed down from mother to daughter in a single family in a little village in Sardinia, and in danger of extinction, the story haunted me. How could I learn to make this pasta? Then I saw Jamie Oliver had visited and realised the cat was out of the bag – the recipe was being shared. I called a Sardinian friend and set off for Domu Antiga, a little family farmhouse and cooking school. It was gorgeous. There was practically a ladder to my loft room, I spent a whole day making bread – six types. We made rabbit stew, sharing our dishes with guests. We learnt to make cheese, the milk delivered warm in an old-fashioned milk can.
The pleasure of dining local
In Modena I found a small restaurant run by a couple in their 70s: local crowd, a scribbled menu, bottle of prosecco slammed down, someone standing on the table belting out opera and being heckled – something to do with football. I much preferred it to the famous Michelin-starred restaurant I visited earlier. My favourite-ever meal is El Quim in Barcelona’s Mercado de La Boqueria where I ate tiny baby squid, smaller than my fingernail.
What to buy
Cooking accessories, such as a pasta cutter from Bologna. And I buy wooden spoons everywhere. There seem to be different shapes in different countries. My favourite was found in Paris; it’s made from olive wood. I also buy small artworks.
Poh Ling Yeow is a member of the 2024 judging panel for MasterChef Australia, now screening on Network 10 and 10 Play.
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