For years, Opah’s home had been the place to be during Hari Raya and family gatherings, when relatives and friends would arrive in droves for her cooking.
SEREMBAN: At 66, Sarah Haron thought she had finally earned the right to slow down. After 36 years as a nurse, she had retirement all figured out. She would open a retirement home and spend her later years doing what she had always done – caring for people. Her four children, however, had other plans.
“They always asked me: ‘How long are you going to carry sick people?’” she said. Instead of a retirement home, Sarah, fondly known as Opah to her 12 grandchildren, found herself in a kitchen. And not just any kitchen.
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Today, at 76, she remains the heart of Hayyan & Huda’s Kitchen, a family-run restaurant that has grown from a weekend experiment into four outlets.
For a woman who spent most of her working life caring for patients, it turns out that feeding people was not such a different calling after all. From caring for patients to feeding hundreds The idea of opening a restaurant did not come completely out of the blue.
For years, Opah’s home had been the place to be during Hari Raya and family gatherings, when relatives and friends would arrive in droves for her cooking.
“During Hari Raya, people would always come to my house. Not one, two or five people – sometimes up to 500 people,” she said.
“It was like a kenduri. My children sometimes didn’t even dare to come home because they knew they would have to help clean up. “People started asking me: ‘Why don’t you open a restaurant?’ They said they loved our food.”
Eventually, the family listened
But turning a lifetime of home cooking into a business was another matter altogether. “We had never experienced anything like this. We had to find suppliers, check the quality of ingredients, learn how to store things and even figure out how to use the freezer. “It was a bit of a culture shock.”
The family initially opened only on Saturdays and Sundays because there were simply not enough people to run the business. Gradually, her four children took on different responsibilities, bringing their own skills and professional experiences into the family enterprise.
All four became shareholders, while Opah remained where she was happiest – in the kitchen. What started as a daunting experiment slowly became a family business.
More than food – a taste of home
For Opah, however, Hayyan & Huda’s Kitchen was never just about opening a restaurant. It was about preserving something far more difficult to put on a menu – memories. “When we talk about food, we have to talk about memories,” she said. “Food is about memory. When people have a food memory, they come back.”
That belief is reflected in the traditional dishes she prepares, from daging salai and masak lemak to dishes made with telur itik. The flavours, she believes, should feel familiar – capable of taking diners back to a person, a place or a moment in their lives.
“You have to maintain that,” she said. “That is why when you come into Opah’s Kitchen, that is me. “You need to have an identity. If you don’t have an identity, you are lost.”
Identity that is deeply Malaysian
Having lived in Seremban since 1957 after growing up in Malacca, Opah sees food as one of the things that can bring Malaysians together. “You only really understand that sense of belonging when you leave Malaysia.”
She recounts travelling to London for her children’s graduations and encountering Malaysians from different backgrounds. “Chinese, Indian, Malay – we all felt like: ‘Oh, this is my kampung.’ “Even though we were not from the same country, we felt like we belonged together.” It is that sense of belonging that she hopes to pass on. “This is our warisan,” she said.
Grandchildren became her teachers
The restaurant’s name carries another, deeply personal story. Hayyan, 14, is autistic and has Asperger syndrome, while Huda, 13, has global developmental delay and is unable to speak.
For Opah, they are more than her grandchildren. They have also become her teachers. “Hayyan is very intelligent. He is very smart, but he has difficulty controlling his behaviour and emotions,” she said.
“Now, I’m a student of his. I have to learn from him too.” Huda’s journey has been different.
She was initially able to speak and manage herself, but her development later changed significantly. Their experiences eventually led the family to become involved in supporting children with disabilities through Hayyan and Huda’s Play Project.
When circumstances changed and the project could no longer continue in its previous form, Opah’s family stepped in to help sustain it.
Not an easy responsibility
Therapy, facilities, teachers and daily operations came with considerable costs, but Opah believed the work was too important to simply walk away from. One form of therapy she particularly wanted to preserve was swimming.
“It is a very good form of therapy for them,” she said. In caring for Hayyan and Huda, Opah found herself in another familiar role – learning, adapting and putting someone else’s needs before her own. Only this time, the people teaching her were her grandchildren.
The nurse who never stopped caring
In many ways, Opah’s life has come full circle. The woman who once dreamed of opening a retirement home is now spending her later years looking after customers, children and grandchildren.
Even at 76, she remains hands-on at the restaurant. She helps carry plates, checks on customers and makes sure diners have somewhere comfortable to sit. Her approach to hospitality is simple – everyone who walks through the door is a guest.
“Whoever comes here, I don’t care who you are. Whether you are a king or anyone else, when you come to my place, you are my guest,” she said.
“Everyone is the same”
That instinct, she believes, comes from her years in nursing. “I was a nurse, so I always felt that I had to make everybody happy,” she said. For Opah, hospitality is not a marketing strategy or a business formula. It is simply an extension of the way she has always treated people.
Four outlets and no more
Today, Hayyan & Huda’s Kitchen has four outlets. But Opah has no appetite for turning the family business into an endless expansion exercise. “That’s enough,” she said. “When you have too many branches, there are too many things to manage. Number one is workers. “I want to enjoy my life. I don’t want to have headaches.”
For someone who entered the restaurant business at 66, success is no longer about how many branches the family can open. It is about something simpler – whether people enjoy their meals, return with their families and leave carrying a little piece of the food memories she has spent a lifetime creating.
That philosophy has also shaped the family’s approach to pricing. Despite rising costs, Opah said the restaurant has so far tried to keep its prices affordable.
A second life, served from the kitchen
Perhaps that is the thread running through every chapter of Opah’s life – nurse, mother, grandmother and now chef. She once imagined spending retirement caring for elderly residents. Instead, life handed her another form of caregiving.
She found herself cooking for strangers who became regular customers, supporting children through the Play Project and learning from grandchildren who showed her that caring for others can take many forms. She may have left nursing behind, but she never really stopped being a nurse.
She simply found another way to care
And at Hayyan & Huda’s Kitchen, that care comes served on a plate – with a familiar taste, a sense of belonging and, if Opah has anything to do with it, a memory worth coming back for.