“Papp-ar-delle?” Mum asks, stretching the ah for a beat.
“Pasta. Like a long flat noodle."
She pauses, tracing her finger down the minuscule print of the menu. The dim lighting, perfect for couples longingly staring at each other (or for hiding pasta stains from first dates), makes deciphering the menu a true test of coordination for mum, who squints under the phone light she’s using to read the menu.
“Burrata?”
“Cheese. A soft one –”
“With tomatoes?”
The light beam jolts erratically as she adjusts her glasses.
“Yeah, it’s very fresh.”
“So, it’s a salad?”
I shrug noncommittally. Ordering is a well-worn pattern of mistranslation, a syncopated rhythm echoing the way she translates for me each time I’m shopping at the Chinese grocery store. Here, under the polished oakwood ceilings of the newest 'casual bar' tucked away in alleyways of the inner city, the roles are reversed. I field each question with a quick response. Crudo is raw fish, but not sashimi. is a fritter. Mascarpone is another type of cheese.
'Agnolotti' stumps me, as does '', so we consult Google. The seafood portion of the menu brings us back to familiar ground.
Frìtole are pillowy doughnuts associated with Venice. Source: Valeria Neccio
“Squid ink pasta,” mum says triumphantly when we reach the specials of the day. The waitress commends mum on a good choice. She recommends we hold back on the tiramisu “for now”.
Mum expresses awe at the cheese. The arch of her eyebrow telegraphs her scepticism at the burrata salad, but melts into delight as she spoons the first globe into her mouth. Her eyes light up when a steaming, bright broth is poured into our bowl – a moat of deliciousness forming a halo around a fragile arrangement of herbs and prawns at the centre.
Growing up, mum would constantly ask us what we wanted to eat, whether we liked what she’d packed us for lunch, and whether we wanted more food. As a teenager whose priorities were more attuned to the next episode of The OC than what was for dinner, her questions were dismissed as nagging, her need for feedback felt exhausting, and eating her tenth iteration of chicken pot pie was boring compared to KFC.
Yet with each dish that comes out, I find myself parroting the questions she asked me when we were young – “do you like it, is it too hot, do you want more?” – as her eyes light up again.
Unsurprisingly, the squid ink pasta is a hit.
Seeing her joy at each dish reframes my memories of her dinner-table interrogations. It makes me appreciate why she’d wake up at 5am to make congee for us even though she had a 7am meeting to rush off to. It explains why she’d pay a little extra to get me the brand of noodles I liked, or leave a bowl of fruit for me after school.
It explains why, upon touching down in Penang, Malaysia, she’d always make a beeline for the hawker stalls, returning with generously stuffed and silky , her energy never betraying that we’d just come off a five-hour flight. She’d patiently show me how to pull the burgundy-stained peel off my first mangosteen to reveal the soft pearly white fruit within. We’d always make a detour to the on the way back to our hotel, picking up a sugarcane drink or some other delicious reminder of her childhood.
With each banana leaf I unwrapped and each spoonful of laksa I devoured, she pieced together memories of our family – weekends with popo’s sizzling wok full of wontons, gong gong’s fishing trips before falling ill, how the smell of coconut was everywhere – stirred into broths, steamed in , dried over desserts. As if the eclectic sweetness of or the crisp funk of cuttlefish skewers could bridge years of migration, our shifting accents and mediate the distance between our generations.
Seeing that smile across her face is rewarding. So I find myself leaving the last piece of squid for her. I’m already thinking of picking up some burrata the next time I go to the farmers market.
READ MORE
Malaysian laksa (cheat's laksa)
The waiter clears our tables and hands us dessert menus.
“You know the first time I had pasta was when I came to Perth right?” mum says.
“Oh?”
“Yeah, we didn’t have it in Malaysia!” she says and laughs. “Your mama made it. With mashed potatoes in the sauce!”
She laughs at the twist of my mouth.
“Well, it wasn’t as weird as eating spaghetti from a can!”
I laugh.
“This was fun,” she says, “I haven’t been to a fancy restaurant with so many courses before.”
“We went out for banquet last week!” I exclaim. I think of steamed fish, sizzling pork and a seafood claypot rotating around the lazy Susan of the Chinese restaurant we were at, a collection of courses which dwarfed tonight’s three-course meal.
With each banana leaf I unwrapped and each spoonful of laksa I devoured, she pieced together memories of our family.
“It's not the same - you know what I mean.” She gestures dismissively.
It makes me pause. I look at the neat tables and polished silverware. The well-manicured couples. I’m suddenly conscious of my ratty sneakers in a sea of pastel dresses and pressed-linen shirts.
Mum asks whether we can get the tiramisu as takeaway. The waiter politely counters by bringing us the bill.
We leave soon after. Mum navigates the city like a veteran familiar with the city’s ever-constant evolving cycle of construction. The narrow roads spill onto the wide expanse of the freeway, before curling back into the cramped roads of suburbia. 
Perhaps her familiarity meant that it never occurred to me that she considered our dinner a detour from her usual path. For me, eating out became ubiquitous, starting from all-you-can-eat wings at the university bar, morphing into Friday night drinks at the office and ending as a necessary time-saver, fuelled by the Instagram algorithm of “top restaurant lists” in the graveyard of tabs left open on my mobile.
Mum asks whether we can get the tiramisu as takeaway. Source: Adam Liaw
As we pull into our garage, I promise her one thing.
“We’ll go back for the tiramisu.”
This story is the winning entry of the SBS and Diversity In Food Media Australia . You can find out more about the competition and the winning entrants .
