Foods like bubble tea can help us trace the constant blending of cultures across and beyond Southeast Asia, according to Professor Ananya Jahanara Kabir FBA, Professor of English Literature in the Department of English.
Serumpun, which means 'from the same root' in Malay and Indonesian, is an exploration of the shared foodways across Southeast Asia and the wider Indian Ocean world. Hosted at the Asia Civilisations Museum in Singapore, the event is organised by food historian and cultural activist Khir Johari under his events banner 'Dialogues by Khir'.
Professor Kabir was invited to participate in Serumpun after Mr Johari learnt of her presentation on Asian food and foodways at the National University of Singapore in April 2025. At that event, Professor Kabir presented her theory on why drinks containing wobbly bits, such as bubble tea, are culturally significant in Asia and now globally popular.
Serumpun marks a new phase in my ongoing research on creolisation, allowing me to compare culinary trends between South and Southeast Asia, and build links with academics, institutions, creatives, and influencers, all of which will contribute to the larger project on creolisation, heritage, and postcolonial identity formation in the Indian Ocean world that I am currently constructing.
Professor Ananya Jahanara Kabir FBA, Professor of English Literature
Professor Ananya Kabir joined Serumpun's conversations on Currents of Devotion and Edible Archives with a perspective shaped by long engagement with the Indian Ocean's cultural worlds. She offered a way of reading faith, memory and food that resonated across disciplines. Her contribution enriched the dialogue among chefs, writers, scholars and artisans who shared the table with her.
Khir Johari
The bubble tea craze
In her talk at NUS, Professor Kabir argued that desserts like es cendol, boba tea, and halo-halo, can be interpreted as edible symbols of cultural mixing across the Indian Ocean - a region that has been heavily shaped over centuries by trade, migration and adaptation, as well as the spread of specific preferred tastes.
The chewy, bouncy and elastic texture of these desserts lacks an equivalent in other parts of the world, with Professor Kabir defining it as a distinctly Asian taste.
Although some countries claim dishes to be "theirs", the ingredients and techniques are closely aligned. By using shared components, these dishes blur the boundaries between drink and dessert - just as they blur national borders. Professor Kabir therefore proposes that these foods can help us understand culture not as something fixed within a nation, but as a "swirl" of continuous exchange and creativity, which is how she understands creolisation.
National identity and faith in food
Through a series of panel talks to more than 200 audience members on 25 October, Serumpun 2025: Tasting Tradition, Telling Tales explored how food connects rather than divides people and promotes community over nationalism. Sessions investigated Southeast Asian cuisine from perspectives of history, memory, identity, and preparation and consumption.
Professor Kabir's first moderated the 'Edible Archives' panel discussion, with Meilati Batubara, Yeo Min and Akmal Anuar. Together, they discussed the significance of recovering and promoting cuisines, tastes, and cooking techniques from diverse communities that are often erased through the process of national identities being generated through the creation of a 'national' cuisine.
Professor Kabir also participated as a panellist in 'Currents of Devotion' with Professor Tom Hoogervorst and Datu Shariff, moderated by Khir Johari. The panellists were asked to consider how religious faith moved footways across the Indian Ocean world, such as food-related religious habits or food words of devotional origin that entered the Malay world.
In her response, Professor Kabir highlighted the Islamic word barakat, meaning 'the blessing of abundance', which is often manifested in food, and biryani, a festive dish of Muslim, Indo-Persian origin. Both words have travelled across the Indian Ocean world to create a shared food culture that links India with Southeast Asia.
The event included two dinners: one showcasing Lost Recipes of Kampung Gelam at Harummanis; and another showcasing rare dishes typical of Singapore's coastal cuisine at Fiz. Attendees also enjoyed a rendang picnic in the Singapore Botanical Gardens, where they enjoyed seven kinds of rendang from Indonesia by Reno Andam Suri, the country's unofficial 'Rendang Ambassador'.
Serumpun 2025 was a rare opportunity to meet and learn from stakeholders in the culinary sector from across Southeast Asia and experience the huge public interest in Singapore regarding culinary heritage- all while enjoying extremely delicious food!
Professor Ananya Jahanara Kabir FBA, Professor of English Literature
