Homiah was born with the aim to share rich Nyonya flavours and celebrate Malaysian food culture
“Malaysia is home to some of the best food in the world,” enthuses Michelle Tew of Homiah, a US-based company that boasts products from sambal chilli crunch and laksa paste to rendang. “Everyone deserves to try it, and our cuisine should be known to the world.”
Growing up in Malaysia, Tew had an interest in cooking from a young age, delving into Nyonya recipes and techniques by the time she was 15 years old. “My grandmother was a Nyonya cook in Penang, so a lot of that heritage was passed down to me,” she smiles. Going to the US for university, she was surprised to find that hardly any Americans were familiar with Malaysian, let alone Nyonya Peranakan cuisine.
Read more: Julien Royer of Odette and Masashi Horiuchi of Potager on the importance of collaboration
“This is different from Australia and the UK, where Malaysian fare is much more common,” she says. As such, she started hosting supper clubs out of her dorm room, an initiative that grew into pop-ups and larger events after she graduated. However, this remained a side gig for many years—the Mathematics and Philosophy graduate worked in the corporate world, eventually going to business school, only finding her calling during the pandemic.
“I realised more and more people wanted to buy my sauces to recreate the flavours I was sharing with them at home,” she says. She returned to Kuala Lumpur at the time, setting up a production facility, and Homiah was born in 2022.
