Virtual Brands and Pop-Ups Are Making Southeast Asian Street Food Accessible to Austin

Downloading hawker culture

“Ava Pendleton, founder and sole proprietor of Austin Kuih Co. (austinkuihco.com), spent childhood summers selling kuih from a stall by the side of the road with her aunt in Malaysia. Kuih is a sticky rice flour dessert enjoyed throughout Southeast Asia derived from Chinese gao, but with ingredients like coconut, pandan, and palm sugar that make it uniquely Malaysian.

"It goes back to the spice trade; we do have a lot of shared history and flavors as Southeast Asian people, and those flavors are inflected by colonizers," says Pendleton. "Sometimes I'm at a pop-up, and I'll be like, 'Have you tried Malaysian kuih?' I compare it to tapas – little bites. Some are sweet, some are savory, some are fried."

Born in Ohio to a Malaysian mother who came to the United States on a national scholarship (where she met Pendleton's American father), Pendleton bounced between Malaysia and the States during her early childhood and moved to Austin a few years ago. She started the Austin Kuih Co. in 2021 as a home baking project that turned into a cottage food business with multiple pop-ups and local acclaim, and she recently quit her job in education to be a full-time pastry chef. She currently makes everything herself and operates as a cottage food operator, batch-cooking for online orders and pickups along with pop-up events.

"What I want to do is honor traditional methods. And then what can we add, as Texans?" Pendleton says. "What ingredients don't have to come so far from us, and are sustainable?"”

— Austin Chronicle, Clara Wang