Herba and Rempah: A successful home-based business selling Peranakan cuisine opens its first restaurant in PJ, serving salted fish bone curry, ‘sambal petai hae bee’ and more
In May 2024, she opened the doors to her first physical location, marking a new milestone in the business that’s been in the plans for the last couple of years."When I first started I hadn’t thought about it,” she says of opening a restaurant."After about two, three years, I started thinking about it because a lot of customers would come to me and ask to dine in.”Chuah searched for a location for a while before eventually settling on Dataran Prima, Petaling Jaya.
This meticulous approach to cooking was instilled in Chuah by her 94-year-old grandmother Lim Chew Lan, who she learned to cook from."I learned during my college days away in New Zealand when I had to learn how to cook for myself,” she recalls. This spread of dishes at Herba and Rempah includes the 'sambal petai hae bee' at the bottom right, which is scarcely seen in KL anymore.is a classic Peranakan dish, is a dish Chuah felt must be on the menu. The salted fish bones add a robust and intensely savoury character to the mildly warming curry, which is a real treat when ladled over rice., which was Chuah’s favourite growing up."Whenever we travel, my grandmother would make a packet for us to bring overseas.