Kuala Lumpur Vegan Potluck 2024

For the third year in a row, the community vegan potluck made its appearance in Kuala Lumpur. This year was a bit different than the past two years in terms of location (and of course the food and participants). From previous experience, doing a potluck at the park — Perdana Botanical Gardens KL — meant an earlier start, bearing the hot and humid weather, and checking the sky every half an hour for dark clouds. To alleviate the stress but still be in touch with nature, the KL Vegan Potluck 2024 was held at Gaya HQ, a lush family home in Petaling Jaya.

And this year’s was under the banner of the recently revived Vegan Society Malaysia, co-hosted by myself and Davina.

Why I Like Organising Vegan Potluck

My first year of being vegan was in the UK because I was studying. Coming back to Malaysia, I needed vegan friends to keep sane in this non-vegan world. And so, I scoured Instagram through hashtags like #vegansinmalaysia and #kualalumpurvegan.

Soon enough, I found a few vegan people in KL and one of them was organising a potluck. This was back in 2016 and that potluck was at the Perdana Botanical Gardens. I had an amazing time and met so many beautiful people, some of whom I’m still in touch with today.

The pandemic brought everything to a halt including community events. Once everything started opening up again, and I was back from my digital nomad travel in 2022, I decided to host a vegan potluck at the park.

I’m not that original so I admit that I was inspired by the KL vegan potluck all those years ago.

I love how a community potluck can bring together people of different background sharing a bit of their culture through food.

You can read about the 2022 KL Vegan Potluck detailing how I organised it.

The Revival of Vegan Society Malaysia

Back in 2018, a group of vegans decided to register a non-governmental organisation in Malaysia. I was one of those vegans in the committee.

For a solid two years, we were active doing educational outreach and events. However, by the end of 2019, the society struggled to hold events as there was a lack of capacity and volunteers. Then, the pandemic hit in 2022 and everything ceased to function. And so, the society went dormant.

Once things started opening up in 2022, some vegans in Malaysia decided to do community events here and there. Some took the initiative to start a Malaysian version of Veganuary (written “Veganuari”) and others continued to grow their vegan food blogs on social media. Chef Dave appeared and gained millions of followers over 3 years while the pandemic was happening. Meanwhile, a couple decided to create Veg-Hub — an app that lists vegetarian and vegan businesses — and with their connection to vendors, they started organising “Veg Fest” at least twice a year.

Suffice to say, the plant-based or vegan community has grown over the years. After some informal chats, a bunch of us thought it’s best to revive the vegan society to collectively educate Malaysians on the vegan lifestyle.

Finally, in August 2024, the Vegan Society Malaysia (VSM) was re-born.

Joining Forces to Strengthen the Community

At the Annual General Meeting of VSM back in August, Davina was elected President and I the Vice President. We’ve cultivated our friendship over the years, bonding over life experiences and vegan food (of course). And so far, I think we complement each other quite well!

In our individual capacities, we’ve held vegan potlucks before. My potluck concept is to bring together people at a park with vegan food during vegan month (November). Hers, in addition to vegan food, is to encourage each participant to bring along a non-vegan friend.

We thought it would be a good idea to combine our potluck styles into one under the banner of the vegan society.

A Sunday With Kuala Lumpur Vegans

With the generosity of the host of Gaya HQ, we were able to set up tables and welcome guests at the outdoor patio area. People started trickling in from 11am. It was nice to see both new and familiar faces.

We started the event with a round of introductions — stating our names and the food we brought. Then, we feasted.

The food was as diverse as the participants of the potluck.

One person prepared bite-sized chocolates in different forms and flavours. Some brought cookies and another made matcha berry white chocolate bites.

In the savoury department, one experimented with “vegan egg” made from scratch. A few shared cultural dishes such as vegan briyani, vegan rojak, and khichdi (a South Indian dish).

There were also raw foods (“cheeze” and kimchi), hummus dips with celery and carrot sticks, dumplings and more.

From just one potluck event, the idea that vegan food is limiting was debunked.

Thoughts on Vegan Advocacy in Malaysia

After about an hour or so, we invited the guests to join a discussion on how they would like to see vegan advocacy improve in Malaysia. There were a handful of great ideas such as incentivizing local F&B businesses that offers vegan options, preparing a guide to eat vegan in Malaysia, podcast interviews, and educational field trips.

We also got to hear the perspective of those who were not exclusively plant-based:

• One thought that it’s not actually difficult to get information on veganism or finding vegan food options. What they don’t like is vegans saying eating plant based is the solution for everything, and that they would appreciate more compassion from vegans.
• Another participant found that the event was welcoming. They liked that people are conscious about their consumption.

The potluck sort of ended at 2pm but people stayed on to pack leftovers and/or talk some more. It did rain at about 3pm and some of us enjoyed the cool weather on comfy sofas in the patio before finally leaving after the rain stopped about an hour later. Overall, it was indeed a success!

What Could Be Better for the Next Vegan Potluck

So far, vegan potlucks have been great! It’s always chill and delectable. It’s minimal effort to organise with such a fulfilling outcome — you get to try different vegan food and reconnect with or meet new people.

But still, there can be improvements so here’s what I’d like to see happen for the next vegan potluck:

• more people! since now we know that the outdoor of Gaya HQ can accommodate more people
• fun quickfire interviews to share on socials
• casual facilitators for informal discussions in small groups because the way I see it, we tend to get into small groups while eating food and it’s much more efficient to gather insights than a big group discussion
• acoustic performance! like a sobremesa in Spain where people just chill and chat after a meal, which may include whipping up instruments and singing together ☺️