KUALA LUMPUR, Aug. 30 -- Long before the age of content creators, AI-generated scripts and "influencer voice," there was the food television boom.

The turn of the century was the golden age of food and travel programming on TV: Andrew Zimmern, Bobby Chinn and David Rocco took viewers to the far reaches of the globe - though I always got a tickle watching them exoticise food from our part of the world - and then, of course, there was the man himself: the very face of food and travel TV, often imitated but rarely replicated, Anthony Bourdain.

In Malaysia, we had our answer in Jason Yeoh, better known as Axian.

Since 2000, he's hosted numerous shows for both Astro and later, the Asian Food Channel, but it was Taste with Jason that made hi...