Under fluttering batik cloths worn soft by time, I’m learning to wrap nasi lemak in a banana leaf.
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We’re at Kebon Dapur, which means “kitchen garden” in Malay, a small greenhouse farm in the northeast of Singapore. Here, medicinal ulam raja, curry leaves, and chilies grow in abundance. A chicken named Cotton roams freely. Built with Meranti wood and kitted out in pre-loved furniture, the space is a loving homage to traditional kampung (village) houses.
The session, led by Museum of Food and Dapur Cahaya, a platform dedicated to illuminating Malay cuisine, begins with an ode to the banana leaf – once a vessel for the coconut rice dish, now replaced by plastic and styrofoam. We layer rice, sambal belacan, and ikan bilis into neat parcels.
The scent of sambal clings to my fingers as I fumble with the folds, trying to mimic the neat triangles others shape with ease. There are more ways to wrap a banana leaf than I’d imagined.
As we eat under the warm glow of fairy lights, I’m struck by how these simple acts – cooking, wrapping, sharing – carry the heft of care.
In a city chasing the future, a new generation of Singaporeans is making sure the island stays connected to its past through independent ground-up movements – quiet acts of resistance against a tide of mass-market culture.
Lead photo: Toh Ee Ming. Above photos: Dapur Cahaya
Yeo Min, 29, founder of Museum of Food and a pastry chef, began by documenting the quiet disappearance of traditional Chinese pastries.
What started as research for an archival cookbook soon revealed a deeper concern: heritage food wasn’t just vanishing from stores, but from collective memory.
In 2024, she launched the Museum of Food, a non-profit which operates as a roving museum, bringing vintage kitchen tools, cookbooks, and hands-on workshops to spaces across Singapore.
Beyond mere culinary instruction, these sessions are designed to invite reflection. One revives porridge kueh, a nearly forgotten Hokkien dish made with leftover rice. Another partners with sustainable seafood platform Pasarfish to spotlight lesser-known local seafood for fishballs. In an Anyhow Achar session, participants pickle vegetable scraps to honour frugality and reduce waste.
To Yeo Min, heritage food education is a public good. “We want people to be more mindful, to understand where food comes from, how it evolved, and what it represents,” she says. That same impulse drives 21-year-old Suria Insyirah, founder of Dapur Cahaya: “Foraging reminds me of time with my late grandparents. It’s helped me discover my own identity.”
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Photos: Museum of Food, Wild Dot
Sessions to slow down
On a sun-drenched weekend, I find myself in the far reaches of Jurong Lake Gardens in Singapore’s west. Children squeeze fistfuls of unrefined clay – sourced from local pottery kilns – through a suspended drip bucket, watching liquid pigment ooze into bowls. Then, using soft brushes and foraged leaves, they dab earthy brown strokes and botanical prints onto a scroll of paper unfurled on a long table, as part of a Clouds in the Sky workshop by art collective Wild Dot.
Founded by artists Shirin Rafie, 36, and Liz Liu, 32, Wild Dot began as a kitchen experiment with mashed blueberries – and a shared desire to reconnect with the land through colour. Drawing on their backgrounds in illustration, botany and design, the duo now runs community workshops exploring natural pigments and the hidden stories of local everyday plant materials.
“Before the industrial age, colour was made by hand,” Liz says. “It relied on the maker’s understanding of how to gather and transform what nature provided.”
Their pigments come from surprising sources: black glutinous rice for a velvety wash, rain tree leaves and jackfruit leaves from roadside shrubs for soft greens, and flax lily for vivid purples. Flame tree pods yield yellow-brown tones, sappanwood shavings from a herbal tea from a local market give pinks, and khaya tree roots salvaged from a roadside landscaper bring earthy browns.
Increasingly, Shirin and Liz are leaning into community-participatory work, using shared labour to spark conversation and connection. Their ethos is simple: in a fast-paced city, their work invites people to slow down and notice what’s growing just outside their door.
“We want to highlight the little things we can find when we look underneath a leaf litter – the little critters, soil of different colours, the plants that grow in the cracks. It’s the act of noticing, and over time, forming a relationship with them,” Liz says.
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Left and middle photos: Wild Dot. Right photo: Orang Laut SG
Connecting with coastal culture
Along a quiet stretch of West Coast Park, a smattering of sampan boats and wooden shacks marks the last gathering space of one of Singapore’s indigenous Orang Laut groups. Also known as “sea people”, the Orang Laut once traversed the waters of Singapore, some eventually settling on the Southern Islands.
This spot was an embarkation point; today, the community still gathers here to swap stories in a singsong Malay dialect, passing down ways of life that have otherwise eroded.
In its transformation from postcolonial trading port into gleaming metropolis, Singapore paved over swamps, razed kampungs, and reshaped its coastlines through reclamation. Fishing villages gave way to high-rise housing blocks. Entire ecosystems vanished; many Orang Laut communities were displaced. Pulau Semakau, where some once lived, is now the nation’s offshore landfill.
For many senior Orang Laut, the decades of displacement and cultural erasure have caused loss and alienation.
In 2020, Firdaus Sani started Orang Laut SG to bring back the coastal histories often left out of official narratives. “There’s little focus on coastal cultures today, even though these traditions are unique and vital,” says the 37-year-old, whose grandparents were residents of Pulau Semakau. “Development and borders have severed many connections.”
Orang Laut SG recently hosted its first l Hari Orang Pulau (Islanders’ Day), and regularly organises walking tours, dialogues, and communal feasts that honour seafaring heritage. At some of these events, visitors can taste dishes like squid-ink-rich sotong hitam and coral fish in tangy, spicy assam pedas that evoke Nusantara flavours, or observe elders carrying out fading maritime traditions, like weaving bubu fish traps or preparing pufferfish.
Going forward, Firdaus hopes to share more stories through art, poetry, and performances. “As young people, we’re often made to feel powerless, but our voices matter,” he says. “This is advocacy in a new form.”
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Epilogue
Lately, I’ve been reading Braiding Sweetgrass by Potawatomi professor Robin Wall Kimmerer – a hymn of love to the living world; to indigenous wisdom and the teachings of plants.
As someone on my own green awakening, who is getting to know farmers, makers, and craftspeople in my home country, I find myself drawn to this language. A gentle vocabulary of kinship, of care, and a quiet refusal to forget. Of re-learning how to live in reciprocity with the land, the sea, and the networks of community that sustain both people and ecosystems – even as our pragmatic, unsentimental city marches on.
