The study of gastronomy involves the domains of history and culture, and the ways in which socio-cultures give meaning to food. That meaning creates food’s actant and symbolic realities, and those realities aid the construction of our everyday lives. Reflecting these domains, my research dissertation develops and explores gastronomic insights into a popular Malaysian dish. Rendang is not only a vernacular Malaysian dish, but also a ‘must eat’ food that is recommended to tourists visiting Malaysia. With my personal narratives and ethnographic methodology, I actively engage with my dual realm of existence, having lived in both Malaysia and Aotearoa New Zealand, to illuminate rendang’s meaning for me, and it’s meaning particularly within Malay culture. Consequently, the four central tenets of symbolic interactionism form my research method. As I apply the first and second tenet of symbolic interactionism, I actively engage in understanding the symbolic meanings of my actions within Malay socio-culture. Then, I implement the third and fourth tenet, reflecting holistically how meanings emerged and are re-created within my interactions with my family, friends, and wider community. Within that approach, my autoethnographic exploration of rendang places it as a dish that reveals knowledge transfer, the importance of belief and how symbols like rendang help us to construct and make sense of our world. Within the academic framework of my rendang research, I also located and negotiated my own taken-for- granted knowledge as a Malay, Muslim and Malaysian. Engaging in that process was one of the most challenging aspects of my research. In that way, I have been fortunate. My dissertation prompted me to question how I have come to acquire my taken-for-granted knowledge and come to understand the ways in which I see and negotiate the world around me. Exploring rendang has made real, for me, the importance of theory in everyday life, in almost unthinking ways. As I near the end of my journey, my autoethnographic study of rendang has revealed several things, the most important of which is the whakapapa of knowledge within families and communities that is expressed through rendang, particularly as a symbol of love.