The daily digest of Twin Cities culture | Secrets of the City

MELAKA, MALAYSIA. Nearly everybody has passed through this Malasian port town at some point in history - the Dutch, the Portuguese, the Chinese from Hokkien and Canton, Tamils from the south of India.

They came for many different reasons - as missionaries, as traders, as plantation laborers.

I came to see how the version of Malaysian cuisine served in Minneapolis stacks up against the original.

Yippee! We're headed for Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia this morning. Temperature is gonna be around 89 degrees in Singapore on Sunday, with a 50 percent chance of rain, but we can live with that. Singapore is supposed to be one of great food cities of the world, so stay tuned for a few gastronomic reports from en route.

Timing is everything when it comes to dim sum. First of all, if you are going for dim sum at the Mandarin Kitchen in Bloomington, (served Saturday and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., it's important to arrive early, for quick seating and the best selection. We arrived around 11, and were seated right away, but by the time we left, there was a crowd waiting in line for tables.

Yusheng means raw fish, but it's pronounced the same as another word that means increasing abundance, which is why raw fish salad is eaten on Chinese New Years, when it is traditional to dine on foods whose names or shapes may augur good fortune in the year ahead. Yusheng, however, isn't an ancient Chinese tradition - it was invented in a Chinese restaurant in Singapore in 1964, and it isn't widely eaten in China proper, though its popularity has spread to Malaysia and Hong Kong.