Yeah, you're just going to make me hungry! I've no Singapore or Malaysian food near me. There's a fairly decent Indonesian restaurant although it's not quite hot or spicy enough. The cooks from China, including HK, and Taiwan just don't rise to Malaysian and Singaporean standards! And there's certainly no mamak food here! Heh.
We're lucky being so close to SE Asia.
Young Aussies are great travellers and bring back their love of SE Asian food (as well as other cuisine) back with them following their trips.
With the change of immigration policy in the '70s, there has been an influx of professional Asian chefs to Australia with a huge impact on the quality of Asian cuisine. There was an infamous period of Australian history where they had a "White Australian" policy.
When I arrived in Australia in the late '60s there was a dearth of M'sian/S'porean food. The one M'sian restaurant in Sydney used milk to make their Laksas and curries, because of problems sourcing coconut milk. When the owner's son was interviewed for a food program a few years back, he said they had to go back to using milk in their recipe, because too many long-time customers complained when they changed over to coconut milk. There is no accounting for taste ?
Thankfully there has been a change for the better and authentic cuisine (not just Asian) is readily found.
