Linda Tay Esposito Is Keeping Nyonya Cuisine Alive

Linda Tay Esposito wants you to love Nyonya cuisine as much as she does. It’s not hard to love, but it can be hard to find, especially if you live in the United States. Over the last 17 years, Linda has shared her passion and knowledge of South East Asian cuisines, teaching classes in the Bay Area and at the Milk Street Cooking School, while sharing her students’ progress on her Instagram account, Flavor Explosions.

And in June of 2026, Linda will be joining Milk Street and Culinary Backstreets as the resident chef and chief tour guide forour trip to Malaysia, where we’ll spend eight days immersing ourselves in Penang, cooking and eating our way through the region, all while learning about the rich culture and history behind Nyonya cuisine. You can sign up here to get trip updates and immediate access to tickets once they are on sale, but in the meantime you can read on to get a primer in this unique and vibrant culinary tradition from Linda herself.

How did you get into cooking and teaching?

I grew up in Malaysia and came here for college 40 years ago, long time ago, and didn't really cook that much before I came out here. And it wasn't until I got my green card that I was able to do something outside of my studies — business and economics and international development and stuff like that. The minute I was able to do something outside [of that], I wrote to Chef Matt Schuster, who was the head of marketing at Whole Foods in San Mateo and had a community kitchen.

I told him, “I don't have any experience working in a restaurant or culinary training, but I have 200 people that can vouch for my good food.” And so he said, “Come on in.” And since then, I have not stopped.

And then I got involved with [putting on] team-building culinary events [for] a group. It was like six women chefs and it was really great, because they were all so nurturing. I was working alongside these chefs who were moonlighting when they were not working in restaurants and I learned a lot from them.

I'm sorry, but my goal is to get people to do it, not hold on to old traditions...

That really gave me a great foundation, coupled with my knowledge of Malaysian food, to really bring it to the next level. When I taught at a few other cooking schools in the the Bay Area, where I was just focused on my recipes — I was really focused on Nyonya food, because it was something I related to.

I try to make my recipes easy to reproduce. A lot of these traditional recipes are handed down from generation to generation and they take pride in adhering to the traditions of long, laborious work. And no doubt, it's definitely tastier when you hand grind, but I want it to be more accessible. I want people to be able to make it and reproduce it. Sometimes I post my technique and I get a lot of internet folks telling me, “That's not how you do it!” I'm sorry, but my goal is to get people to do it, not hold on to old traditions so that it's so exclusive, nobody can reproduce it except for your 98-year-old grandmother.

Can you tell me about the origins of Nyonya cuisine?

It's a long story. Back in the 15th century, when they found the Cape of Good Hope, when they found the spice route — this is the same time as when Christopher Columbus was in search of spices and ended up in America instead of in India. The Portuguese ended up in India, in Goa, and then continued sailing to Malaysia. Those were the days when people were sailing by the winds, right? There were traders coming in from China, sailing with the winds. And Penang, Malacca, Singapore — these are the three ports that are shielded by the big island of Sumatra. So when [traders] come with winds, when they go across the equator, [the winds] change direction. And so they stay in the safe harbor of Singapore, Malacca and Penang while waiting for the winds to change.

They stay for half a year, and then take the backwards wind back up, and during the half year is when they you know...they are men, right? Story has it, they get involved with these women and they "marry" these woman. They have a whole family in China still. So, the generic story is that they marry local women. And the local Nyonya baba, also called “Peranakan” and sometimes also referred to as “Straits Chinese”— because they are along the Straits of Malacca — it becomes a culture.

They even speak the Malay language, but their food is quite different than the local Malay food. The local Malay food doesn't have as much meat, doesn't use pork, and doesn't use a lot of stir-fry and fresh ingredients. They're mostly like long-stewed curries and stews, whereas the Chinese have more quickly stir-fried and fresher ingredients. It's kind of like a marriage of both of the techniques. And because the women, sadly, have to accommodate the men, they start using pork. So, it has local Malay flavors, but still the freshness and some techniques from Chinese cooking.

I teach food that I grew up with, really the memory of taste, the memory of flavors, the memory of those Sunday afternoons in my grandmother's house. And we are supposedly a Chinese family — Chinese-Malaysian fourth generation. We have curries on the table. At Chinese New Year, we serve curry. We serve achar — all this Nyonya food, which always made me wonder. And my mom says that my grandfather's mother was Nyonya, but I didn't know more than a small vision of this small old lady wearing a sarong kebaya, which is that whole traditional costume. I remember her. I think she died when I was four or five years. I do remember her with a little bun, in her kebaya.

What flavors are emblematic of Nyonya cuisine?

In any of my classes, we use a lot of what I call the “Malaysian mirepoix” — shallots, lemongrass, turmeric, galangal and chili. We use these five ingredients and we create an entire meal where every dish tastes so different, but [all] using that base. It’s more herbaceous and aromatic than, let's say, Indian food or Indonesian food, but it's less herbaceous than Thai food, so it's kind of in between Indonesian and Thai. It doesn't have as much tangy [flavor as Thai], but it has more than most Malaysian food. They use more salads, they use calamansi juice, which is the Asian lime.

We also do not use a lot of dry spices. It’s mostly fresh herbs. We'll put a whole star anise into a curry, but we use it very sparingly. We don't grind it up into the curry. When we are doing our curries, we just throw in a stick of cinnamon and the star anise and it's just for the fragrance. But it's not like Indian food — we don't use as much. I've never met anyone that tasted Nyonya food and said they don't like it.

And then there's tau yu bak, which is a soy sauce pork, [made with] Malaysian soy sauce. We are actually going to one of the factories [on the culinary tour] that makes Malaysian soy sauce. My grandmother made it in this little, tiny pot — all cracked up — but she dedicated it to that pork dish. She stuffed it with pork belly, — what we call five flower pork belly — and then she drizzled the dark soy sauce. It's very thick. It's like a treacle. And then she studded it with whole cloves of garlic. And she would just slowly cook it in the same pot, and it cooks in its own juice. And it's just tender pork belly, fragrant with garlic, with soy balancing the flavors. It's delicious. Nothing else. That's it! Three ingredients!

I know you gave a class for milk street on asam laksa. Is that soup a good representation of Nyonya cuisine?

It is a good representation. First you sauté the Malaysian mirepoix. My friend doesn't sauté it, because her broth is very clean, like oilless, so maybe she has a point. But my mom sautéed, so I sauté. Then you put in asam leaf. It is actually Vietnamese rau ram, which is kind of like a coriander-mint flavor. It's very tart. We put in this fruit called sour fruit. It's like a very sour apple that is dried. The idea is just to make it tart.

In the U.S., I'm not going to ask people to go to Etsy or eBay and ship it from Malaysia. Just put more tamarind in. If you don't have that, put lime juice. It's a fish broth with a lot of acidic flavors, the aromatics, then we eat it with noodles, and then fish on top.

The topping has onion. It has mint. It has the asam leaves. It has pineapples. We have a shot of this thing called shrimp paste, which is shrimp that is dried and then cooked down with sugar until it's kind of like a pitch-black caramel. It's just a pungent, sweet, salty sauce that you drizzle on top...just to kind of wake up the dish, and then you serve it with a sliver of lime.

And then another one, which I modernized: I use the same spice paste, but instead of a broth, I use it as a pasta sauce. I toss the rice noodles in the paste, add the aromatics, toss it, then I top it with sashimi.

And to me, the flavors are authentic and honest. It's not like a fusion cuisine where you're adding wasabi to butter. The approach is definitely non-traditional, and I'm willing to make that compromise to make sure it's very inclusive and that people continue to eat the cuisine — to sustain this cuisine — that people continue to make it as part of their daily lives. A lot of us eat pasta as part of our daily lives. I don't see why we can't have this asam laksa pasta, which is lovely.

Are recipes closely guarded within the family?

It's usually cooked in groups. Family getting together and everyone doing a little piece, but there's always a matriarch. It's what I call a “matriarchal cuisine.” It's not a matriarchal society, but women have the power in the kitchen.

Did you watch “Crazy Rich Asians”? Remember the first birthday party with Michelle Yeoh in the kitchen, directing away? That's a Nyonya kitchen. That's a Nyonya family. All the food in that movie was all Nyonya food. All the cakes during the Bible study session, they are kuih. You can see how the matriarch has a whole group of people working for them, she directs them. And she knows what is right and what is wrong.

It's not a matriarchal society, but women have the power in the kitchen.

Because it's born out of the trader class, they are more economically advanced. That's why [there's a] need for elaborate [stuff], right? When you're rich, you're like, “Oh yeah, I want to cut it super fine!” The rest of us are like, “Just put it in there!”

There's a lot of cutting of herbs. There's tons of herbs. I plant a lot of the herbs in my living room and in my garden as well, because now it's hard to find these herbs.

But to answer your question about how closely guarded it is: It is really, very closely guarded. My best friend from kindergarten is a very, very good Nyonya chef. She does private dining in Singapore. And for me to extricate any recipe from her — it's a lot of delicate diplomacy. It's only after she tells me how bad I'm doing, how bad my sauce is, then she was like, “My grandmother doesn't do that.” Sometimes she gives me a recipe and says, “Don't share it.” Can you believe it? Here I am, going around trying to tell people about the cuisine, because that's the only way to preserve it, to have it alive.

Will you be visiting Nyonya restaurants during the trip to Penang?

There are lots of good Nyonya restaurants in Penang. In fact, Penang has two one-star Michelin restaurants. One is a French restaurant and one is a Nyonya restaurant. The first night we're going to Kebaya, which is kind of like a modern, what we call “atas” — atas means “high-end,” it's just the local lingo [for] fine dining. It's beautiful food [that] really highlights local ingredients.

For one lunch, we're going to Baba Phang, which is just a regular restaurant with really good Nyonya food— you bring your family to have dinner there, [for] birthday celebrations and things like that.

And then the third is not Nyonya, but Peranakan. It’s Arab Peranakan. There’s Indian, Arab and Chinese Paranakan. The Indian Peranakan has more Indian flavors to it, rather than the Chinese flavors. The Arabic one is probably halal and has more Malay flavors than Chinese flavors. So there's also the confluence of Arabic with Chinese and local Arabic with Malay. So we're also going to a restaurant which is Arabic Peranakan — Jawi Peranakan — for the last night.

It sounds like such a special trip.

I think there's so much to offer. It's such a beautiful cuisine. Penang is so cute. In fact, when I went to Oaxaca with Culinary Backstreets, the little streets in Old Town Oaxaca really reminded me of Penang. You know, tiny, tight streets with motorbikes and a rickshaw.

A lot of people are so worried about the heat, [but it’s] not too hot. It's warm year-round, it's humid, but not overly humid. If you wear a little sundress, you're fine. Just drink more beer! And the food is not overly spicy. The food is not as spicy as Thai. It's just such an aromatic food.

Learn more about our culinary tours here.

Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Pinterest.

And if you're looking for more Milk Street, check out our livestream cooking classes with our favorite chefs, home cooks and friends for global recipes, cooking methods and more.

Claire Lower

Claire Lower is the Digital Editor for Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street, with over a decade of experience as a food writer and recipe developer. Claire began writing about food (and drinks) during the blogging boom in the late 2000s, eventually leaving her job as a lab technician to pursue writing full-time. After freelancing for publications such as Serious Eats, Yahoo Food, xoJane and Cherry Bombe Magazine, she eventually landed at Lifehacker, where she served as the Senior Food Editor for nearly eight years. Claire lives in Portland, Oregon with a very friendly dog and very mean cat. When not in the kitchen (or at her laptop), you can find her deadlifting at the gym, fly fishing or trying to master figure drawing at her local art studio.