There is a table and a small stall in HD Cuisine, a small Malaysian restaurant located in the suburban Wheeling Shopping Center. There is enough space for 11 people in total. If the weather is fine and the time is right, you can enjoy nasi lemak, rendang beef or penang hokkien mee on one of the two tables on either side of the front door, overlooking the parking lot.

It may not look promising. There are only two other tenants next door, a dollar tree and a pizzeria with video poker machines. However, if you are visiting for the first time—even if you are only performing, as most customers do—the most reassuring thing you can do before your meal is to ask for the use of the bathroom.

You will enter the kitchen through the curtains and along a narrow path between the stove and the preparation station. The preparation station is occupied by four busy chefs, each over 50 years old, with nearly 250 years of comprehensive kitchen experience. This is the person you want to cook food for.

81-year-old Soo Teoh's grandmother is older, but her youngest son, 53-year-old Tony Tan, is the chef. He cooks for Hong Kong Star Cruises and the Shangri-La Shayang Hotel in Penang. But the real boss of this operation is his eldest brother, Lin Randazzo, who (along with Tony's daughter Mindy) works in the front of the house, and he might welcome you with a seemingly obvious question:

"Have you eaten?" she said. "We don't ask,'How are you?' We don't say, "Hello. "We saw people in the market and we said,'Good morning. Have you eaten it?' If you say no, it is,'Let's go for coffee now. Let's eat a bowl of curry noodles. They eat. They do. Talk. Then they go their own way to buy. Everything has to do with food."

Randazzo refers to Penang's huge market of single-dish experts. Her own mother (Grandma Su) worked as a hawker in a coffee shop in George Town, Penang, selling curry noodles, a thick double-sided soup combination; coconut gravy with shrimp, chicken, tofu and boiled eggs. Before that, her grandmother made large pots of soup and porridge for visitors to her grandfather's practice. "Nyonya women," Randazzo said. "My grandma has never left the kitchen. That's her job."

The ethnic background of the Tan family reflects the demographics of the melting pot of Malaysia—especially the Hokkien, Hakka, and Nyonya Chinese ethnic groups—and the same is true for the food they grew up with. "In Chinese culture, we have all these different dialects, but we do not only focus on Chinese cuisine, we have Malaysian cuisine and Indian cuisine, in addition to Cantonese cuisine, we also have Hakka, Teochew, and Mandarin." Not to mention Thai, Portuguese, Dutch, Arabic, Indonesian and Filipino are now available.

Randazzo settled in Rogers Park in 1992, ran a travel agency with her first husband, and then worked in a bank. There was no Malaysian food in Chicago at the time, and her hunger panic fueled her dream of opening her own restaurant. She herself is a versatile chef, but she needs professionals. Even in the late 1990s, when the New York-based Penang Flushing mini-chain opened its first Midwest outpost in Chinatown, she did not stop thinking, especially after she moved to the suburbs.    

With this idea, she sponsored Tony's green card application. In 2013, Tony's experience allowed him to find a job in Penang, Arlington Heights. At the same time, life intervened. Her first husband died, she eventually remarried, and more and more Tan family joined her.

At the end of 2019, they think the time has come. Randazzo signed a low-rent lease for a former Middle Eastern dining space in an empty shopping mall, and they began to create HD Cuisine, which is short for "Hawker's Delight". Two months later, the pandemic brought the project to a halt, but changes in the village code kept them busy rewiring the ceiling, delaying the opening for more than a year.

But you can say that although the pandemic has caused all the economic stagnation, it has not slowed the sudden surge of Malaysian food around towns. The first is Kedai Tapao, the couple’s Instagram pop-up group. Then Victor Low of Serai, the only Malaysian restaurant in the city, turned it into two and opened Kapitan in Lincoln Park, which specializes in Peranakan, also known as Nyonya cuisine. Randazzo hung her signature in January last year. By mid-May, she had opened her business and was still not ready to welcome the long queue of curious diners who poured into her on Father’s Day. Want to know her signature touted "authentic street food" "What means.

"I want people to know that these are family recipes," Randazzo said. There are inevitably differences of opinion between mother and siblings, but Tan knows how to implement these opinions in a restaurant environment. In the kitchen, he is the boss, but it is hard to imagine that he would tell his mother that her pumpkin pork bun was wrong.

The six-page menu is full of familiar pan-Asian dishes, but it’s important to zero out Malaysian dishes, especially the two chicken dishes, ayam masak kicap and ayam masak merah; firm, full-bodied halal birds, cross-cut bones, hard Deep-fried, then stewed with chili and soybeans or herbal chili tomato sauce respectively.

In addition, the menu also lists the most internationally representative Malaysian classics: murtabak, Indian-style chicken and egg pancakes; or roti paratha, each served with a cup of curry dal. There are thick people as beef, dry simmering thick spices; and rich coconut milk lamb and chicken curry. There are smoked fried noodles, such as silky barbecued pork or relatively delicate fried noodles; and deep bowls of noodle soup, such as Grandma Su’s curry noodles, or shrimp-based Hokkien noodles, each covered with thick egg noodles and The texture base of the combination of fine rice noodles.

But the menu itself does not reflect the capabilities of this small kitchen. It seems that every inch of walls and windows are covered with full-color posters of unusual specials, most of which can be purchased at any time-or at least can be ordered in advance. (You can also find a lot on the website, designed by Randazzo's daughter Michelle.) There is Penang assam laksa noodle soup, its broth is filled with mackerel and seasoned with torch ginger lily. There are also fried noodles with sweet potato gravy, shrimp fritters and noodles, as well as rich Hakka pork belly and yam kiu nyuk. Nasi lemak is Malaysia’s national dish. It is made in Nyonya style. Coconut rice is dyed blue with butterfly pea flowers. There are also dried anchovy, peanuts, cucumbers and plenty of ayam Kapitan or Captain’s curry chicken.

Granny Su makes a minced meat porridge with duck eggs and salt. She stuffed her bag with char siu, sweet custard, pumpkin and bean paste, while Tony strictly controls desserts, such as the elaborate colorful colorful-layer rice noodle pudding lapis lazuli.

In such a small space, there are a lot of uncommon Malaysian food, and all the food has an indescribable sense of self-control. At the same time, this small window about Tan's food is steadily opening. Randazzo is considering expanding into the vacant store next door, and her brother has more specialties, including a Thanksgiving meal: Indian grouper head stewed in coconut curry. Upon request, he will also make a full-fish version (from the nearby Boston Fish Market).  

"You can't find this anywhere," Randazzo said. "If people are tired of turkey, they can order this."

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