The woman who made Little Penang a hub of community, culture, and koay teow.

On a cold Wellington evening, Little Penang shone like a beacon amid the grey corporate buildings of Victoria Street. An ambient light reflected gently off the bright green branding. I pushed through the weirdly heavy door and told the manager I was here to meet owner Tee Phee. But she wasn’t there.

“Family emergency,” the manager explained. “She’ll be back soon. She’s asked for you to try something off the menu while you wait.”

It was an unfair trade. The koay teow th’ng I ordered, a fragrant chicken broth with flat rice noodles, juicy seafood, and chilli sauce, was the perfect winter warmer. I’d gladly wait forever for good Malaysian kai.

When Tee Phee returned, I was midway through the bowl. She introduced herself, glanced at what I was eating, then back at me.

“Are you Malaysian?” she asked.

“My family is, yes,” I said.

“I thought so,” she said, nodding. “Only Malaysians know to order that.” 

It felt like a stamp of approval, and believe me when I say, you’d want approval from Tee Phee. In the few minutes I’d had to observe her, I’d watched her move around the room with all the confidence of a ruler surveying their kingdom. She greeted several patrons with such warmth, directed her staff to give a mother and son a pot of tea on the house, and got into a debate about tattoos with the man at the next table over. When she finally sat down with me, she had to seat herself facing away from the front door, so she “didn’t get distracted by the regulars”.

I promised I wouldn’t take up too much of her time, but I needn’t have bothered. Tee Phee had a story to tell. 

Phee and her family moved to Aotearoa in the mid-1980s. Her husband had been headhunted by the New Zealand Stock Exchange, and she decided to quit her corporate job in Kuala Lumpur and move their family to New Zealand. Her children were very young, and she wanted to spend more time with them. 

“I wanted to make sure they grow up with the same values,” she says. “Money isn’t everything.” But eventually, she became “very, very bored”.

“I spent hours and hours in the gym,” she says. “There’s only so much you can do.” She began volunteering at Wellington City Mission, helping to feed those who couldn’t always feed themselves. In the midst of the 2008 recession, money at the Mission was pretty tight. Phee was horrified to discover that their kitchen could only serve people bread and powdered soup – “Not even from vegetables”. 

Determined to make a difference, she got permission to take over on Tuesdays, using her own large gas stove to cook at home, and buying the ingredients herself. It didn’t take long for the charity to notice that lines on Tuesday were longer than the lines any other day of the week.

“People said ‘hey, you should actually use your skills to start a business’,” Phee remembers, “but it wasn’t until someone said, ‘Hey you should share your culture’ – that is the one that really struck me’.”

When the time was right, she opened her own little takeaway store on Dixon Street, serving traditional Nyonya food. The lines soon grew long there too. Even though it wasn’t what she’d ever imagined herself doing, Phee really enjoyed running the business.

“But,” she recalls, “the old folks had nowhere to sit.” So she took over the premises next door and opened the first Little Penang restaurant. (That’s actually where I first tried her food, in that cosy eatery with the bright green walls. I’ve been a fan ever since.) In 2017, Phee opened a second Little Penang restaurant on the Terrace, and in 2020, the Dixon Street restaurant moved to bigger digs on Victoria Street. But then Covid hit. After a rough few years of lockdowns, including being the location of a highly publicised community case, Phee was forced to close the Terrace branch down. They’d tried splitting lunch and dinner service between the two locations, but even that wasn’t enough.

“It isn’t about the money,” Phee says. “If it was just about the money, I don’t think the restaurant would have lasted this long.” It’s all about the people. Little Penang will be 13 years old in September. In that time, Phee has mentored many students and migrants, and sponsored almost a dozen permanent residencies.

The restaurant serves as home to a growing community, literally. Malaysian students who came for the food back in the day, now come back with their own children. They all call Phee “Aunty”. In fact, Phee almost insists on it. It’s a small way to keep the culture alive. “Can I call you Aunty, please?” I quickly ask. “Of course,” says Aunty Phee, smiling. “I didn’t want to impose.” Suddenly, things felt far more comfortable between us.

All Little Penang staff, no matter their background, have to learn Aunty Phee’s way of doing things. The front of house staff are taught to greet all other team members before beginning their shift. When the staff eat, they call everyone to the table before sitting down together. This mirrors what happens in Aunty’s own home – to this day, the children in her family call their elders to come and eat before they begin themselves.

“My friends say, ‘oh, your children are so well mannered’,” says Aunty. “It’s something they don’t even think about. It’s part of our traditions and culture.”

I was surprised to learn the new restaurant Sri Penang on the Terrace, which uses Little Penang’s branding and menu, wasn’t being run by her. “No,” she said, “That’s Naveen’s. He got my blessing to do it.” 

When Naveen Arora immigrated from India, he started off in Little Penang washing dishes. Then he became a kitchen hand, and then a cook. Aunty Phee supported his growth to the point where he could branch out on his own and manage his own restaurant. She’s very obviously proud of him. 

“He deserves it,” she says. “He came in as a young man, not knowing what to do. He worked his way up. You get so much satisfaction, seeing that you make a difference to people’s lives. And when I needed help, when I was short staffed, he came back to help me.”

Aunty Phee and her family are originally from Penang, a state in Malaysia renowned for its street food – and that’s saying something, considering food is a huge draw for the whole country. Assam laksa (a hot, sour, flavourful noodle soup), nasi kandar (steamed rice, a delicious variety of curries and side dishes), nasi lemak (coconut rice, sambals, fried peanuts and anchovies) – the list goes on. 

But the one dish that Penang is most famous for, the dish I’ve been obsessed with all my life, is char koay teow. Flat rice noodles, wok fried with soy sauces, chilli paste, chicken, and seafood. Making it hawker-style is nothing short of art. I don’t always order it in Wellington, because it’s not easy to get right. But at Little Penang, I eat almost nothing else.

Aunty Phee has similar feelings when it comes to Malaysian food; she knows how she likes it, and won’t settle for less. I asked where she eats if she eats out, and she was careful about her answer.

“When we first moved here, we went to a few Malaysian restaurants, and a lot of things were compromised,” she says. “With due respect to them, but we don’t have broccoli and cauliflower in our mee goreng. But we shouldn’t change what is authentically ours. I’m a stickler for that.” She looks at me out of the corner of her eye. “What do you think?” she asks, as if realising we might not be on the same page.

It’s easy to see where she’s coming from. I too have lamented a beautiful curry laksa tainted with peas. Or a hokkein mee fried with broccoli. But it’s understandable why local restaurants innovate that way. I’ve never seen kangkung (water spinach) being sold in my local New World. 

“People from Penang are food snobs,” she admits freely. “All my soy sauces, everything is brought in from Penang. If you buy soy sauce from here, a lot of them come from China. They have more of a chemical smell.”

Moving forward, Aunty Phee would love to serve more dishes that you can’t find anywhere else. She wants to import more (expensive) ingredients, and create food that’s as authentic as possible. But she doesn’t want to charge her customers more. For now, the most cost-effective thing to do is to continue offering her street-food menu. It’s served her well for the last 13 years.

I told her about my obsession with her koay teow. “Let me know before you come in next time,” she says. “I have some imported koay teow noodles for you to try.”

Aunty Phee goes to leave, but before she can, she’s drawn into another conversation with another of her regulars. I’m left at my table, with my mug of hot milo, feeling like I’m part of another community I’d never thought to explore before.