1. Do you have a restaurant somewhere?
2. Do you do other markets?

If you’re one of those people who’ve asked me these questions and thought you caught a glimpse of an eyeroll from me in response, I want to reassure you that you’re not paranoid. I have been known, in my hubris, to assume everyone’s followed my lifestory intently over the past two decades.

Anyhow I’ve gradually come to the realisation that thirteen years is a long enough time that I should probably revisit this so that I can, if nothing else, just point to this blog post next time someone brings this up (and save him/her from copping one of my unwarranted eyerolls).

So, here we go –

Question 1 – Do I have a restaurant?

I used to – on Majors Bay Road, Concord. It was one of just two restaurants on that strip that were included in the Sydney Morning Herald Good Food Under $30 Guide back in its day.

I closed it to look after Noah – who was born with Down Syndrome, duodenal atresia, AVSD, and hydrops fetalis – and who spent the first 217 days of his life in hospital, in both the NICU and the PICU. Three times in seven months, I got called in the middle of the night from the hospital to prepare for the worst.

I was told Noah’s condition was not survivable; I was encouraged/coerced to withhold treatment by the medical staff on the basis that –

• even if he did survive surgery he would be a vegetable for the rest of his life,
• I would have to give up everything to look after him, and
• he was never going to be a productive member of society anyway

Nobody believes me when I tell them this, or they brush it off as a non-systemic issue despite my evidence to the contrary.

Anyway, I chose to give up my restaurant to look after him full-time, though ironically, his need for ongoing therapy and medical follow-ups aside, all the doom and gloom from the so-called experts never came to fruition.

Miraculously one day after I posted publicly about my struggle as a single parent of a severely-disabled child, two guys, oblivious to my life drama, walked into my restaurant and asked if I wanted to sell it (the lease, not the business).

I played it cool, picked a figure off the top of my head, they negotiated it down but not by much, and thirteen years later they’re still going strong, operating as a cafe, and I couldn’t be more happy for them.

Question 2 – Do I do other markets?

Short answer, currently no, I only do Concord Hospital Market, and that’s only once a month, 11 months a year.

Long answer – my market life actually preceded my restaurant – and when I quit the latter, I confidently figured I’d just go back to doing a couple of markets a week instead of being tied down to a restaurant around the clock, and I could just bring Noah along with me in a portable cot.

Then the drama started – first, some anonymous campaigner at Orange Grove Farmers’ Market decided to go around collecting signatures for a petition to prevent me from bringing Noah along.

Rather than regurgitate the details, here’s a previous blog post I published – Why I’m Quitting 

That left me with one weekly market ie. Concord Hospital – and the drama carried on over there as well –

Not once –  Déjà Vu All Over Again (yes, it’s a deliberate tautology – eyeroll – I did French at uni)

But twice – Enough Is Enough

Just when you thought it was all sorted, Covid lockdowns hit, which meant I had ZERO markets for 3 years (being a hospital, they were extra careful to shut down everything even before the official mandates, and they didn’t reopen until way after the lockdowns were removed).

When Concord Hospital Market resumed, the organisers said they would start off with monthly events and gradually ease back into weekly ones.

It’s been three years and the markets are still running only once a month, and in fact when I checked a couple of  months ago, the new staff members had no idea there were any plans to go back to weekly markets.

Question 3 (Bonus Round) – Would I consider doing other markets?

If you know a good event that takes place on weekdays that can allow me to make it back to Kogarah before 4.00pm, let me know – reason being, among other things, that I got rid of my van during the lockdowns and I now have to hire a vehicle each market day, and it needs to be returned before 5pm.

So, what do I do now? Well, two main things – 

Handcrafted Dry Curry Pastes
I now produce small-batch dry curry paste kits — the same recipes I used in my restaurant — that ship worldwide. They let people cook real Malaysian food at home without the need for perishable fresh pastes or specialist ingredients.

Get yours here – Shop.JackieM.com.au

Malaysian Hawker Pro
I also run an online training programme called Malaysian Hawker Pro, designed to teach Malaysians and Singaporeans abroad how to recreate proper hawker dishes that are good enough to sell — not watered-down versions you find on TikTok and in lifestyle magazines.

Details here – MalaysianHawkerPro.com

Oh yeah, and I published an award-winning cookbook called The Durian Cookbook, and founded a group called Masters of Malaysian Cuisine where we partner with Tourism Malaysia and the Malaysian Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security, and I ran a culinary tour to Malaysia blah-blah-blah.

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