Hi, I am Mei Lin Chen
I grew up in a kitchen that never seemed to close. My grandmother ran a small noodle stall in Penang, my mother cooked Cantonese dishes for family gatherings that stretched across three generations, and my father — a quiet man in most settings — became someone else entirely behind a wok. He taught me to listen to the oil, to trust the sizzle, to feel when the garlic was thirty seconds from burning.
That was where UmamiCart started, though I did not know it at the time.
From Penang to London
I left Malaysia at eighteen to study in London. I packed a suitcase and a bag of dried shrimp paste that customs nearly confiscated. Those first years in a tiny flat with a two-burner stove taught me something important: Asian cooking does not require a professional kitchen. It requires understanding. Understanding why day-old rice fries better. Why you bloom spices in oil before adding anything else. Why miso should never boil.
Over the next fifteen years, I traveled back across Asia — not as a tourist, but as a student. I learned to make pho from a woman in Hanoi who had served the same broth for forty years. I stood next to a yakitori master in Osaka who adjusted his charcoal by millimetres. I watched a Tamil grandmother in Chennai make dosa batter that fermented overnight into something that smelled like sourdough bread.
Every trip confirmed what I already suspected: the best Asian food comes from home cooks who learned by watching, tasting, and doing — not from culinary school textbooks.
Why UmamiCart Exists
I started UmamiCart because I kept having the same conversation. Friends in London would ask me how to make pad thai that did not taste like the takeaway version, or why their stir-fry was always watery, or what the difference was between light and dark soy sauce. The answers were never complicated, but they were hard to find online without wading through life stories and pop-up ads.
So I wrote them down. Clearly. With the reasoning behind each step, because understanding the ”why” makes you a better cook than memorising the ”what.”
Every recipe on this site has been tested in my home kitchen — the same one with a standard gas hob and a carbon steel wok I have seasoned so many times it looks like it belongs in a museum. If a recipe works here, it will work in yours.
What You Will Find Here
UmamiCart covers the full breadth of Asian home cooking — Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai, Vietnamese, Indian, Filipino, Malaysian, and Indonesian. We publish three types of content:
- Recipes — tested, detailed, with exact measurements and clear technique explanations. From weeknight stir-fries to weekend projects like homemade ramen broth.
- Ingredient guides — because half the battle is knowing what to buy. We cover soy sauce varieties, rice types, chili peppers, fermented pastes, and everything in between.
- Technique deep-dives — velveting chicken, seasoning a wok, making dashi from scratch. The foundational skills that make every recipe better.
A Note on Authenticity
I do not believe there is one ”authentic” version of any dish. Pad thai tastes different in Bangkok than it does in Chiang Mai. Every family has their own kimchi recipe. My grandmother’s laksa would start a polite argument with any other Penang grandmother.
What I do believe in is honesty about where a recipe comes from, respect for the techniques that make it work, and transparency when I have adapted something for a Western kitchen. You will always know what is traditional and what is my own interpretation.
Get in Touch
If you have cooked something from this site, I would genuinely love to hear about it. If you have a question about a recipe or an ingredient you cannot find, reach out — I read every message.
You can contact me through the contact page.
Happy cooking,
Mei Lin Chen
Founder, UmamiCart