Mount Austin was drawn up as a housing estate. Rows of shop lots, a golf course, a mall on the edge of it. Nobody planned it as a destination, and yet a Singaporean crossing at Woodlands can be soaking in a mineral bath, racing a go-kart, or meeting a
Long before herbal roast duck became common on coffee shop menus across the region, Restoran Ya Wang was building its name on it in the old streets of Johor Bahru. The family-run shop has been around for about three decades and is widely credited as the first in the
Salahuddin Bakery has been baking in Johor Bahru since 1937, and it still does so the way it started: in a room-sized brick oven fired with wood. The bakery was founded by Shariff Mohamed Mahku, a baker who arrived from New Delhi in 1925 and sold sugee biscuits from
Long before the queues and Michelin Bib Gourmand recognition, Fu Hang Soy Milk was a humble neighbourhood breakfast shop. Opened in 1958 – when American aid flour was reshaping what Taiwanese people ate in the morning – it has spent nearly seven decades with a time-tested method that speaks for itself.
Walk the alleys of Shapoutou after dark, deep inside Shenzhen's Futian district, and the lamps glowing overhead are shaped like hamburgers. Four kilometres away, a six-storey building has been dressed to look like a Happy Meal box. Shenzhen has been McDonald's home city in China