Dining · Kuala Lumpur
Dewakan
Malaysia's first two-star restaurant cooks almost entirely from the country's own larder, down to wild yams and fruit most Malaysians have forgotten.
From a campus kitchen to the 48th floor
Dewakan opened in 2015 on the KDU campus in Shah Alam, where its chef, Darren Teoh, lectured in molecular gastronomy; the restaurant began as part of the college’s entrepreneurial teaching. It later moved to the 48th floor of Naza Tower in Kuala Lumpur, looking out over the city.
The name joins two Malay words, dewa (god) and makan (to eat). Teoh, who staged at Noma in Copenhagen and at Restaurant Amador in Germany, still sets the restaurant’s direction.
A Malaysian larder
Everything is sourced in Malaysia. Michelin describes a nose-to-tail kitchen built on local, native and endemic ingredients, some of which Malaysians have largely forgotten, and a team that promotes them on social media to reduce the country’s reliance on imports. Even the tableware is handmade by local artists.
The sourcing has grown up with the restaurant. In the early years the team bought mostly from the market at Taman Tun Dr Ismail; it now works directly with farmers and producers. Teoh has described the aim as bringing the “jungle” into the restaurant as far as possible.
Ingredients that take years
Some ingredients take years to understand. Kemili, a wild yam, took about seven years before the kitchen turned it into a nixtamalised flatbread. A lime-leaf oil made from limau nipis, first developed while Teoh was still teaching, appears on almost every menu. In 2025 sea conch was still on the unsolved list.
The tasting menu leans on fermentation and dry-ageing done in house, alongside seasonal fruit and herbs. Past menus show the range: an ox-tongue porridge of forbidden rice from the very first menu, grilled slipper lobster with breadfruit flatbread and noni sauce, and a dabai tart made without cacao, with rose fudge, heart of palm and a keluak shell. Not every experiment landed; Teoh names a goat ham as the dish diners liked least.
A first for Malaysia
Dewakan was the first Malaysian restaurant on Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants list, in 2019. It won a star in the first Michelin Guide for Malaysia in 2022 and a second in 2023, becoming the country’s first two-star restaurant, and added a Michelin Green Star in 2024. Michelin still lists it with two stars.
Ten years in, Teoh told Malay Mail that the team now serves only dishes it is “100 per cent certain about.”
Sources: Michelin Guide; Malay Mail
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