Azalina Eusope’s singular journey into the hearts of San Francisco

She played in the storms she describes as "intoxicatingly exciting" with two of her closest companions: an orangutan named Madu ("Honey") and a blind chicken, tethered onto a leash lest it wander off.

Three decades later, she is in her sparkling new 12,000-square-foot commissary kitchen in San Francisco's Bayview neighborhood, a diminutive woman gently stirring a giant pot of bubbling lemongrass broth laced with spices.

It's a rare moment of Zen in her life, which now focuses on running a small business in aggressive growth mode, and raising two children, ages 12 and 14, with her husband. Yet amid 16-hour workdays, she seems to smile constantly.

A lifetime removed from splashing in monsoons, she can still find happiness in the eye of the storm.

Earlier this month, she took a big step — moving from her Off the Grid tent to a stall inside the opulent new food emporium at 1355 Market St., on the ground floor of San Francisco's Twitter building.

It's just the first outpost that Eusope, 35, plans to open this year. She has two more locations — another in San Francisco and one in Mountain View — in the works and casually tosses around the idea of opening in New York or Copenhagen.

At the same time, she continues to host cooking classes and work on expanding her footprint in Whole Foods, where she sells jars of coconut jam and peanut sauce at San Francisco locations.

Her rise has been slow and steady, but her goal is clear: bringing Malaysian food to the masses.

"There's nothing like this in San Francisco — or the greater Bay Area," says Alexander Ong, a local chef, formerly of Betelnut, who was also born and raised in Malaysia.

"What she's done is mirror the ideology of flavors from home, but using local products and being very picky about where you buy products — small farms, sustainable, the whole mantra."

Melting pot

There's no way to explain Eusope's future without touching on her past.

Her journey began on Penang, the second smallest state in Malaysia, a country flecked with dozens of cultural influences. In addition to the indigenous Malays, the country has been populated by people from Portugal, Spain, Holland, England, Polynesia, Thailand and China.

This melting pot has created a distinct cuisine, with the turtle-shaped island of Penang its lodestar.

"Penang is arguably the best place to go in Southeast Asia. It's a food mecca," says Ong, who comes from Sarawak, one of the country's largest states.

One of Penang's main culinary attractions is its food stalls, many of which are run by Mamaks, Muslim Indians who came to Malaysia centuries ago. Eusope is a Mamak and a fifth-generation street food vendor; think about that next time a San Francisco restaurant celebrates its 10th anniversary.

Yet Mamaks — especially the women — didn't have it easy. Her parents didn't want a girl, so she was raised by her grandmother. Still, her parents, especially her father, remained a part of her life.

And there was something else.

"In Malaysia, as much as people deny, or it's a taboo to talk about, there's a caste system, with racial segregation," she says. "The darker skin you have, the less opportunity you have. Everyone in my family either worked in a factory, or sold food in the street."

With her dreams of being a doctor, teacher or lawyer unattainable, she turned to cooking. As a teenager, she stumbled upon the opportunity to apprentice in Singapore, making contemporary desserts in a fancy hotel, then parlaying that into a pastry position at hotels in Sydney, Hong Kong and Bangkok.

She married an American, Tim Benson, who now works alongside her at Azalina's, and the couple have two children. The family settled in the United States, but the transition to a new continent proved difficult for the family.

She was faced with a choice: Retreat to Malaysia or renew her life in the Bay Area. She chose the latter.

Coming of age

Eusope has always seemed blessed with an internal fortitude. Some might say it was her fate — ordained when she was just a year old.

In the Mamak culture, a baby's first birthday is the occasion for the first coming-of-age ceremony. Placed in a spread of spices, the baby is given a fingerful of honey and then crawls — or walks, or falls — in the direction of her "soul spice." The soul spice is meant to guide the child until puberty, when the second coming-of-age ceremony takes place.

Eusope's soul spice is star anise; it signifies perseverance.

So when, decades later, her life seemed to be falling apart far away from her homeland, an adult Azalina Eusope took up her soul spice again. But this time, she did it quite literally.

"Sometimes when you're going through challenges, all you can see is the whole world crumbling in front of you," she says. She was losing herself, she recalls; to pull herself back together, she turned to her native cuisine.

"Eating the food that I hated growing up, I realized life is not that bad," she says.

To make ends meet — or, as she puts it more than five years later, to put a roof over her kids' heads — she sold Malaysian crepes and kaya-glazed banana fritters at San Francisco's weekly Alemany Farmers Market.

Her fledgling business logo? A single piece of star anise.

She had found her calling. Her food was good, her magnetic personality even better. As she served market shoppers, she told them stories and shared her culture. In the process, she became a charismatic spokeswoman for Malaysian cuisine, at the time virtually unknown in the Bay Area.

"She's so unique in that sense," says Ong. "She is that perfect ambassador in terms of food and culture."

Wanting to make her food stand into a viable business, she turned to La Cocina, the San Francisco nonprofit that helps low-income food entrepreneurs. Although she hesitated at first, she eventually found her way into La Cocina's commissary kitchen. Her small repertoire of dishes increased, and she became a presence at Off the Grid street food gatherings and in private catering. Those formative years also allowed Eusope to understand the Bay Area market.

"Azalina has always had an impressive single-minded focus on really big goals," says La Cocina executive director Caleb Zigas. "It's really exciting to see her get the kind of respect her food deserves. She really understood, more than a lot of chefs, the importance of translating food for an audience."

Now, Eusope has reached a point of maturity. No longer will she be found behind a plastic table at Off the Grid, with the icy Fort Mason wind whipping at her signature bandana.

Rather, her star anise logo graces a counter on the ground floor of the Twitter building, where she offers dishes like pineapple tea salad, made tart with the often-discarded pineapple skin; nasi lemak, a Malaysian staple of coconut rice served with beef curry; and a shrimp noodle dish called hokkien mee.

And if Eusope gets her way, she'll be telling her storybook tale far beyond the Mid-Market neighborhood.

"I want to see Malaysian food get its kudos," says Ong. "It's not getting the same recognition in the United States that, say, Thai food is," he adds, pointing to local Thai torch-bearers like Kin Khao and Hawker Fare. "Malaysian cooking is one of the hardest things to do. It's not a simple cuisine to conquer."

Whether that means making turmeric noodles from scratch or stirring peanut sauce for three hours to ensure that it doesn't burn, Eusope does not take shortcuts. Even now, with 14 employees, Eusope still works long days. She is not only the face of the business, but also its lungs, its legs, its heart.

And, its smile — despite yet another challenge: battling the breast cancer she was diagnosed with in 2013. She admits, reluctantly, that she tires more easily, but she doesn't dwell on it. Instead, she channels her fortitude and looks ahead.

"I am part of this harsh life. I accepted it when star anise was my soul spice."

When her father died two years ago, she was not able to return to Malaysia to say goodbye. In fact, she hasn't had any time to go home since starting her business, opting instead to be transported there through her taste buds.

On the day of her father's funeral, it seemed like half of Penang shut down because nearly everyone went to pay their respects to their favorite noodle vendor. He had made one laksa dish his whole life, attracting long lines, day after day.

Her father left behind no assets, only the admiration of an entire island.

"That's the legacy he left. As I mature, I just want to have that same impact," says Eusope, who offers her own version of her father's famous Mamak-style laksa — a vegan-friendly bowl of coconut and lemongrass broth with noodles and roasted vegetables — at the new Azalina's on Market Street.

She is reminded of the four generations before her. But in Malaysia they could never do what she has: Sell her food in Whole Foods. Own a restaurant. Feed all walks of life. Share the Mamak culture. Raise children who can be anything they want.

Those earlier generations were not afforded these opportunities.

"They could never do this because of the restrictions," she says. "I have no restrictions."

Paolo Lucchesi is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: [email protected] . Twitter: @lucchesi