“If I do anything wrong, my sin will be his sin, so I’m like literally dragging him into hell,” Deanna laughed jokingly.
Deanna eventually converted to Islam, simply because she “wanted to”, she told us.
Apart from having to fast during Ramadan and learning how to pray, another major lifestyle change was completely eliminating pork from her diet and switching to halal options.
As a foodie, this was incredibly hard, Deanna admitted. Growing up, the dish she derived the most comfort from was a hearty bowl of prawn noodles.
“Prawn noodles was something that my family cooked every Sunday when we had family gatherings, so for me, not having prawn mee — it seemed very dismal.”
Hoping to quell her cravings, the couple travelled far and wide to find an alternative, but none of these tasted similar to an authentic bowl of prawn mee.
According to Asri, many of these halal renditions could not come close to the actual dish as the chefs themselves had never tried a proper bowl of prawn mee before.
However, Deanna had, and therefore, she decided to take matters into her own hands and create her very own bowl of halal prawn mee.
She took her grandmother’s recipe and tweaked it by trying to substitute the pork and lard components with other ingredients like chicken. But it was not a simple process — it took her a whopping six years to perfect the recipe.
Deanna had started her prawn mee journey purely with the intention of satisfying her own cravings. However, after trying her food, her friends and family encouraged her to start selling it because it was just that good.
After some discussion, the couple took a leap of faith and decided to open Deanna’s Kitchen’s first outlet at Toa Payoh in 2017.
And their decision appears to have paid off — business is so good they’ve branched out with three more outlets at Jurong, Chai Chee and Woodlands.
