It all started with a small window in Kampung Ayer, Brunei.

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Mama Ong had no cooking background - just the decision to begin selling homemade food from home.

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The neighbours were honest, sometimes brutally so. She listened, adjusted, and kept going. This early feedback shaped what would become one of the most familiar home-style local food experiences in Brunei.

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Over time, the recipes changed through repetition and feedback - what most would call complaints, she treated as guidance in building her traditional Bruneian food and nasi lemak recipes.

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Then one day, she added pandan juice into the rice. The colour changed and so did everything else, becoming what many now recognised as pandan nasi lemak in Brunei.

 

When asked about that moment, she just laughed and said she could not really remember. Life was moving, and she simply kept going.

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The children of her regular customers were the ones who named it “nasi hijau”, the green rice. The name stayed, and over time became part of a locally known Brunei nasi lemak identity.

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Everything was still made by hand, one pack at a time, through that same small window - a true example of a family-run food business in Brunei.

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Years passed. She raised three children while building it quietly from home.

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Today, The Green Rice has moved into a new space, grown its team, and become a long-established family-run restaurant in Brunei serving pandan nasi lemak since 1988.

And the window still lives.

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Now, you can still come by and collect your food the same way it began, through the window, a reminder of one of Brunei’s most familiar local food stories and traditional eateries.