Be warned! A visit to Wonderfood Museum will make you hungry

GEORGE TOWN, Dec 13 — A giant bowl of glistening cendol that looks like it is about to melt into a sticky sweet puddle at any moment.

Sticks of satay that look so juicy that you can almost taste the tender barbecued meat.

A sunny side egg with just the perfect orange half-cooked yolk that’s larger than your face.

Sounds like a foodie’s dream or maybe just a food wonderland?

Try your hands at teh tarik and frying noodles at the wonderfood museum.

In a way, it is a food wonderland, except the foods displayed are all replica food made from synthetics, plastic, silicone and a mix of various chemicals and materials.

These are not your run-of-the-mill, factory produced plastic-looking food but painstakingly handmade and hand painted replicas displayed at the newly opened Wonderfood Museum in Penang.

Sean Lau with the giant laksa in front and cendol in the background at his Wonderfood Museum.

The new museum aims to promote the varied types of multi-cultural food available in Malaysia.

Museum founder Sean Lau believes that Malaysian food is as diverse and varied as its people and culture.

“I believe our food more than just represents our different cultures, it is also a form of art that many people don’t see or realise,” he said.

A scene of how hawkers used to sell their food by the roadside.

So, to draw attention to the beauty of our local food, and also indirectly to the beauty of our multi-cultural society, he decided to display all the different types of food available in the country as a work of art in his museum.

There are hundreds of Malaysian food from nasi lemak to roti canai to bak kut teh and local Penang favourites like laksa, Hokkien mee, curry mee, char koay teow and or chien (oyster omelette) displayed in the museum.

The museum is divided into three different zones; Info Zone, Wow Zone and Educational Zone.

“Food is art, food is also life, so I want people to come here to see the art of food and also to learn the lessons of life from food,” Lau said of the different sections with different information displayed.

Traditional Malay food on a mat as a work of art at Wonderfood Museum.

In the Info Zone, about 100 types of Malaysian food are displayed and the traditional food of the Malays, Indians, Chinese and Baba Nyonyas are also displayed on walls and in display cases.

Visitors looking at the display of Nyonya food at the museum.

There is also a section on the eating habits of typical Malaysians where they may have breakfast of nasi lemak at a roadside mamak stall, lunch at a local porridge stall, dinner at a nasi campur stall and supper at a roti canai stall, all a very Malaysian-style of eating before there were restaurants and cafes.

Over at the Wow Zone, it is where fantasy takes flight such as a section of food going bad to remind people that nothing is eternal so that they must always live in the present.

Imagine if food can go bad, we can accept that nothing is eternal, so lets live in the present.

“This section of food that is colour blind and grey is to remind people that if everything is colour blind, there would not be any discrimination,” Lau said as he introduced a section of colourless food in various shades of grey.

Imagine if food is weightless, we can live without any pressure to conform.

There is also a weightless food section, where the food is seen floating up from a floating table, to remind people to let go and be as light as the food and a multi-coloured food section to tell people that life can be as colourful and beautiful as they want it to be.

Then there is the giant replica food section where the largest cendol replica is displayed along with giant-sized replicas of laksa, satay, curry mee, Hokkien mee, rojak, ais kacang, or chien, char koay teow and nasi lemak.

Giant sized laksa and cendol (background) at the Wonderfood Museum (left). Giant roti canai anyone? A replica of the popular tea break food at the Wonderfood Museum (right).

After the Wow Zone, the displays continue upstairs with the educational section with displays on bitter, sour and sweet food and a corner displaying the amount of food an average Malaysian consumes.

The world’s most expensive food in an opulent gold room.

There is one special luxurious room of gold leaf covered walls that displays replicas of the world’s most expensive food from the Golden Sushi that costs US$1,800 (RM7,555) to Domenico Crolla’s Pizza Royale 007 that costs US$4,200.

From the opulence of the room, the next room is a shocking one. It only has one round table with a bowl of sharksfin soup but underneath the table, bloodied sharks and their fins that were cut off are strewn all over the floor.

Imagine if food is weightless, we can live without any pressure to conform.

“We used a real shark as the model to make these sharks and this corner is meant to educate people that what we serve on the table may sometimes be inhumane underneath,” Lau said.

The parting message...food is precious, don’t waste.

If that is not a strong enough message, the last exhibit delivers an even more powerful message. The exhibit is that of a scrawny little child crouched over some pieces of leftover food on the floor against a red backdrop and the message, “Food is precious, don’t waste.”

“This is the part where parents will start lecturing their children about not wasting food and this is just the impact I want to make,” Lau said.

Wonderfood Museum
49, Beach Street, George Town, Penang
Time: 10am-6pm
Tel: 04-2519095 / 012-2251968