Under The Table

A new cottage-industry of home cooks is thriving online, offering dishes little seen elsewhere. Is it legal, asks ALEXANDRA CARLTON, and does it matter when the food is this good and made with love?

- Alexandra Carlton

“Why do you want Asian food? Dietitian tell you?” asks the tiny Singaporean grandmother who’s greeted me at the door of her western Sydney apartment block and handed me a plastic bag holding two takeaway containers. One’s filled with ayam sioh, sticky chicken drumsticks, and the other with Nyonya acar, a sweet-and-sour vegetable pickle. The question is asked kindly but cautiously. I’ve just bought dinner from a stranger’s home, and the woman who made it seems as astonished by the transaction as I am.

Welcome to the world of underground home cooking, where passionate cooks expand their family meals into cottage businesses. Typically, they’re making the food of their homelands for friends and neighbours, often cuisines that can be hard to track down commercially such as Egyptian, Filipino, Indonesian, Spanish and Pakistani. And sometimes they’re playing fast and loose with the law, flouting food hygiene or business regulations or both.