Food was never simply about what ended up on the plate for Chef Sid Murshid. Growing up, the kitchen was where he first encountered Malaysian cooking, watching his mother prepare the local dishes that would eventually shape his own culinary curiosity.
Today, Sid has built a following of more than 400,000 on both Instagram and TikTok, where his from-scratch approach and curiosity about food have made him a familiar face in Malaysia’s digital food scene. But cooking was not always the plan.
Long before he began sharing recipes online, Sid was drawn to music. He studied architecture but spent much of his time in the music room, exploring the scene and working towards his ambition of becoming a professional musician. It was only after the disruption of the pandemic that cooking, something that had always been part of his life, began to take centre stage.
From music rooms to the kitchen
Music was Sid’s first love. Growing up, he dreamed of becoming a professional musician and eventually spent around five to six years pursuing it seriously. Even while studying architecture, much of his time was spent in the music room, looking for ways to immerse himself in the scene.
Cooking, meanwhile, remained a quieter part of his life. His mother, who primarily cooked Malaysian food, was his earliest culinary influence. As a child, Sid was eager to help her in the kitchen, although being allowed to actually cook was another matter.
He started by learning to handle a spoon, then progressed to cutting ingredients and eventually cooking on his own. That early exposure to home cooking would prove to be more influential than he realised.
With music no longer working out as he had hoped, Sid began posting cooking videos. The habit of creating short-form content was not entirely new to him. He had previously used Instagram Stories to share recipes, challenging himself to squeeze an entire recipe into just 15 seconds.
What started as a way to experiment with video editing gradually became something much bigger. As he began posting more cooking content, an audience followed. The kitchen, it turned out, offered another kind of stage.
Looking beyond the dish
What distinguishes Sid’s approach to Malaysian food is that his curiosity extends beyond simply learning how to recreate a dish. He is interested in the stories behind it – where recipes came from, why certain techniques developed, and what they reveal about the people who made them.
That interest has led him to look at Malaysian cooking through the lens of history, culture, and circumstance. Malay cooking, for example, often reflects communal traditions and the realities of cooking for large groups. Techniques such as salai, or smoking, were not simply about creating flavour but could also serve the practical purpose of preserving food.
Elsewhere, different communities developed their own ways of cooking based on the ingredients, resources and traditions available to them. Sid’s fascination lies in understanding those differences and the reasons behind them.
Even dishes that may seem unusual today can carry stories of necessity and survival. He points to ambuyat, a starchy staple associated with Borneo, as an example of how food can emerge from periods when communities had to look beyond familiar staples and find alternative sources of sustenance.
That way of thinking has also made preservation an important part of his work. Some Malaysian dishes are at risk of becoming less familiar simply because fewer people are cooking them at home. “The easiest way to preserve it is to put up the recipe and cook it,” Sid says, reflecting his belief that food traditions stay alive when people can actually access and recreate them.
For him, documenting food is therefore not just about creating content. It is a way of ensuring that recipes, techniques and stories remain available to the next generation.
Keeping Malaysian flavours moving forward
Today, Sid’s work has grown beyond social media. Alongside content creation, he runs Grey Cafe and has ventured into chocolate, launching Sid’s Chocolates after becoming known for making things from scratch.
The chocolate project came almost by accident. Once he became known for figuring out how things were made, the question was: what could he make next? Chocolate seemed like the natural challenge, sending him down another rabbit hole of research and experimentation.
That willingness to keep learning has become a constant in his career. “Life is like a huge classroom,” he says, with always something new to discover, understand or experiment with.
It is also why technology has found a place in his approach to cooking. Working with the Thermomix TM7, Sid sees it less as a shortcut and more as a teaching tool – almost like a recipe book that guides users through making a dish. This philosophy comes through in the Malaysian Flavours Collection, a thoughtfully curated recipe collection by Thermomix Malaysia’s Ambassador Chef Sid Murshid, which draws from his childhood memories in Muar, Johor.
The project also reflects his interest in preserving family recipes. Some dishes he has worked with come from relatives, including his aunt, and putting them into a format that others can follow means they do not have to disappear with the person who first taught them.
At the same time, preserving Malaysian food does not mean keeping it exactly as it has always been. Sid is equally interested in giving traditional flavours new forms, whether that means turning teh tarik into a crème brûlée or experimenting with unexpected combinations.
His culinary journey is ultimately about keeping Malaysian food alive without letting it stand still. By staying curious about its roots while finding new ways to share it, Sid Murshid is giving familiar flavours a place in the future.
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