His Curry Stayed Hot, And Somebody Else's Version Is The One That Spread

He created the dish. The people who made it worse are the reason it spread.

Fish head curry is one of the few dishes I've never had to explain to anyone in Singapore.

Everyone knows the dish. Almost nobody knows the man.

Here's what I didn't know until recently:

Until a Singapore newspaper traced his family in December 2017, nobody was even sure what the initials "M.J." stood for.

Marian Jacob Gomez. From Trivandrum, in Kerala.

He started work at 17, after his father died.

He cooked in a shed on Mount Sophia Road, behind the Cathay cinema. Dirt floor. A customer who ate there remembers everyone eating with their hands — "even the lawyers and the millionaires and the Chinese."

The head was the cheap part.

Among ethnic Indians, the National Library says, it was what you ate if you couldn't afford the whole fish.

He put it into a Kerala curry and served it to Chinese customers, understanding it to be a favourite of theirs. That is the National Library's account of why.

The version circulating online says he made it milder and sweeter for Chinese tastes.

Every source that actually tasted it says the opposite.

His son says Lee Kuan Yew came by once and went red in the face.

In 1979 the New York Times sent a reporter. On the curry still carrying the Gomez name: "the red chilies overpowered the rest of the ingredients, and the sauce was as coarse as it was hot."

By then, other people had fixed that.

In 1951 a Chinese cook named Hoong Ah Kong opened Chin Wah Heng and copied the dish. He moderated the spices. He steamed the head first.

Hoong's son opened Soon Heng on Kinta Road. Sugar in the pot. MSG. A Malay chilli paste. In 1979 Soon Heng was selling nearly 100 fish heads a day. The shop still carrying the Gomez name sold 40 to 50. The Times picked Soon Heng as the best in Singapore.

Gomez was already gone.

He left Singapore for good — 1961 by the Times' account, 1964 by his son's. He handed the restaurant over. According to his son: to KT the trishaw man, Rocky the waiter, and Sebastian the cook.

Gomez led a quiet retired life in Kollam and died there in 1974, at 67.

His son says that towards the end, his father was a bit disappointed the three never wrote.

Here's the thing:

Gomez adapted once. An Indian cook, taking the cut his own community ate when they couldn't afford the fish, putting it in front of Chinese customers. That is the move Singapore credits him with.

Everyone after him kept adapting. Steamed first. Milder. Sweetened. Each version easier to like than his, and each one further from it.

They are the reason it spread. They are the reason it outlived him.

In March 2019 the National Heritage Board put fish head curry on Singapore's intangible cultural heritage inventory. The entry still hedges his name: "said to be the brainchild."

What are you refusing to make easier to swallow — and who's going to do it for you?