It’s surprisingly common to hear about chefs growing up eating a certain cuisine but not actually learning to cook their native food until later in life. Whether this is down to the style of cookery taught at colleges or simply a rebellious urge to initially try something different when moving away from home, it’s hard to say but almost always, something leads people back to the food they grew up eating. For Abby Lee, it was moving back home during the pandemic that allowed her to rediscover Malaysian food and she hasn’t looked back since. At her London restaurant Mambow, she’s now introducing Brits to Malaysian food through her own modern take on the cuisine.

Abby grew up spending time in both Singapore and Malaysia, and some of her most distinct memories as a child are of time spent in her family’s bakeries in Singapore. ‘I started helping to slice sourdough and decorate the cakes at quite a young age,’ smiles Abi. ‘They’d put a little stool out for me to stand on and I’d be coating carrot cakes with walnuts. Even though it was baking, I was always surrounded by food as a kid.’ At the age of just fourteen, Abby made the bold decision to move over to the UK by herself and ended up staying, ‘it was the culture that I came for more than anything,’ she explains, ‘I felt like I’d be more creative and open-minded in the UK.’

It wasn’t until she was at university in Bristol however, that this creativity began to take hold in the form of cooking. Feeling uninspired by her economics degree, Abby started to learn how to cook for her friends. Dinner parties quickly became feasts and feasts soon became supper clubs, as she realised that cooking was more than just a hobby. The food she was cooking wasn’t remotely Malaysian at this point; she instead predominantly leant towards Italian recipes as they were more straightforward and produce-driven, ‘pasta-making really appealed to me,’ she adds, ‘as it has that baking side to it that I was very familiar with.’

Abby left university set on working in the industry but, as she didn’t have a working visa, instead attended Le Cordon Bleu in London to get some classical training, before returning to Singapore. Despite being back in Southeast Asia she still persisted with Italian food, working in a local Sicilian restaurant. Through contacts of the head chef, Abby then had the opportunity to move to Puglia to work in some of the region’s most renowned restaurants including at the Michelin-starred Pasha Ristorante. These two years that she spent living in Italy proved formative for the young chef.

‘It took a lot of getting used to working in restaurants like that,’ she explains, ‘but those long hours really toughened me up and I liked the discipline. Being surrounded by food in Italy just put me in a magical state of mind. I think after a while though, it did also make me realise that Michelin-level cookery feels like an art form more than anything. I reached a point where I just wanted to make food that was tasty; I didn’t care about gels or things that looked like olives but weren’t when you bit into them.’