Active discussions

Meet the Other Phone. Flexible and made to last.

Meet the Other Phone.
Flexible and made to last.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Talk
AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

Am I being AIBU to think my neighbour was rude to ask this?

225 replies

PO25 · 03/12/2016 15:43

Hi

I am guessing this might draw very polarising views but I just wanted to get your honest thoughts.

My neighbour just told my husband that our cooking is affecting them and to tone it down.

We are Malaysians so we do cook Malaysian food - where we do fry onions etc. We do a mix of western/asian etc in our meals every week. And we don't cook asian everyday - just no time!

We are professionals and live in a nice neighbourhood. Though this neighbour has been rude/unfriendly with us since we broached the subject of doing a basement three years ago. our house is small, so the proximity of my kitchen to my neighbours is close.

While we didn't go ahead with the basement, the relationship with our neighbour was cold since then.

I have two kids and live a busy life - so its not like I am spending all day in the kitchen.

I am really annoyed that there is a lack of tolerance. I grew up in Malaysia, where we respected and celebrated our cultural differences, especially with food!

I feel my neighbour is not being tolerant and rude. Maybe I am overreacting, but telling me not to cook something, is like telling me you can't be who you are. AIBU?

My question is how would you deal with this? If something was troubling you, and it could potentially be sensitive, how would you have broached this?

OP posts:
BigDamnHero · 03/12/2016 16:38

I am massively sensitive to smell (autism) and certain smells make me feel really ill/uncomfortable (and we're not talking 'unpleasant' smells but things like coffee or banana) but I'd never dream of telling my neighbours what they can and can't cook!! That's horrendously rude. I'd ignore them, OP.

hollinhurst84 · 03/12/2016 16:39

I told the woman that serves me in the post office how good her cooking smelled and she packed me off home with a load of food.
Now if I turn up to post something she's "come back in two hours, the food is not ready"GrinGrin she seems to hate not giving me food!!

My neighbours complained about my cooking smells, we had environmental health etc involved. Nothing ever came of it

Rainbunny · 03/12/2016 16:47

Are your houses connected in anyway? Is it possible that cooking smells may be getting into their home despite them keeping the windows closed? I only say this because I live in a condo and my neighbour smokes weed every single bloody day and it comes into my bedroom through the air vents. It's driving me mad to the point of murder and unfortunately I live in the USA in a state where it's legal now and my HOA (home owners association) are basically useless about enforcing any "quiet enjoyment" rules. So I can understand the helpless rage a smell you hate can induce (and I would happily take cooking smells anyday over the smell of weed!)

I don't care for the automatic assumption that the neighbours are racist just based on a dislike of certain food smells without more information. I'm sure there are smells that many of us don't like, it doesn't automatically make us prejudiced against the source of the smells. I love curry with a passion and a friend of mine lived next to a take-away curry place when he was a student. To be honest I always thought 'glad I don't live here" whenever I visited as there was a permanent smell of curry in his flat, which didn't bother him but would have made me obsess about whether my clothes and furniture smelled of curry IYSWIM.

Bluetrews25 · 03/12/2016 16:47

Wow, welcome to 1950.

Quintessing · 03/12/2016 16:51

I actually just remembered something.
I called out the firebrigade one night as I could smell burning from underneath the floorboards in my bedroom, on the first floor. I was adamant something was on fire. They came out, found nothing, but decided to knock on my neighbours door.
Turns out he had came home from work, started reheating his dinner, fell asleep, and the pot was burning on the stove. The kitchen was downstairs, so the smells wafted up to my bedroom.

I would wake up on a sunday morning to the smell of egg and bacon. It did not bother me though, it just got me up!

AskBasil · 03/12/2016 16:59

If you were cooking all day every day, I could see their point.

But as you aren't, they are being total tossers.

Throwing your parcel over is really bloody rude, they could have broken something.

I'd put a bit more spice in everything from now on. And possibly cook a few spices just for the hell of it while I put chips in the oven.

People like this can fuck off to the far side of fuck

Original poster
PO25 · 03/12/2016 17:03

Thank you for your messages.........

I had to laugh at the thought of offering them Durian though. For those of you who don't know this, it is certainly an acquired taste....hahahaha....

I have not seen Durian in the UK maybe chinatown?! But have never brought back one.

I think good point on getting my extractor checked....though I really don't think its the problem otherwise it would have been something he would have certainly mentioned when we moved in in 2010!

Thanks everyone who responded, really appreciate it.

OP posts:
Coffeethrowtrampbitch · 03/12/2016 17:04

You need to move in next to us op.

Dh and I have no sense of smell (for different reasons) so will never complain if you are cooking.

I love Malaysian food (went to a Malaysian restaurant in Glasgow as a child and will never forget it, food was amazing!) so your only issue might be me dropping off parcels at mealtimes and begging you for recipes.

It does sound as though they have another agenda, with being unpleasant to you anyway and now suddenly having a problem with your cooking after you've lived there for a while. I would try to avoid them as much as possible, and agree meekly to their face to every demand over what you cook and how you behave, and then ignore them and do what you want in your own home.

supermoon100 · 03/12/2016 17:06

Not sure if this has already been suggested but invite them round for some delicious Malaysia food. Everyone's a winner

glitterandtinsel · 03/12/2016 17:09

I would understand if it was constant smoking BBQs. But this is inside your house. Cook what you like. The smell of frying onions is yum in my opinion.
I hate it when people are like this. If you don't want your life with any hint of other people go and live in the middle of nowhere!Angry

Kai1977 · 03/12/2016 17:12

YANBU but you could try putting out small dishes of vinegar during and lighting scented candles after cooking, if you really want to do it anything about it. Mighy make a little difference but you shouldn't really have to.

SouthWindsWesterly · 03/12/2016 17:15

I had durian last weekend. The DC complained but DM, DF & I loved it!

Durian ice-cream in Penang.... mmmmm

Soubriquet · 03/12/2016 17:17

Durian is the one that smells like vomit isn't it?

scaryclown · 03/12/2016 17:24

I think he is jealous that you are propoding development, have a great family environment, and are better at life than him. Everything ypu do is becoming a trigger for him as it reminds him of his own ineptitude.

Feel pity for the idiot, but cook onions joyously and talk openly about development. With a bit of luck his stupid head will explode.

OR say 'i am cooking something English' and braise a masdive batch of liver and onions and wadt it through his house.

Or get an asbo on him...you can..

but better i think to be friendly, smile, offer him food and treathim as if he is nice to you. ypu might break through his horrible shell...

limitedperiodonly · 03/12/2016 17:28

They are being ridiculous. I live next door to a Thai restaurant. Their cooking smells rarely bother me. If I sit in the garden I can sometimes smell frying, which isn't great, but it's not that bad and I don't sit in the garden that often. I chose to move next to a restaurant, though it was empty then and stayed empty for years so I can't complain. If I didn't know it was Thai I couldn't identify the cuisine. It just smells of frying.

I cannot believe you cooking the dinner creates more of a problem for your neighbours than my next door restaurant does for me - basically nil. I don't complain about the English neighbours on the other side who like to have barbecues most summer weekends either. The cooking smells don't last that long.

DearMrDilkington · 03/12/2016 17:29

Come live next door to me op! I love cooking smellsGrin

Bluntness100 · 03/12/2016 17:31

you do know that an extractor fan extracts and puts it outside, it doesn't neutralise!

MyCarHasBrokenDownAgain · 03/12/2016 17:36

We used to have an Indian couple two doors up. Could smell their cooking often, especially on summer nights. Only issue I ever had with it was that the smell used to make me drool and my tummy rumble, especially if I was doing my after work specialty of boring meat and [boiled to death] veg! Grin I miss it tbh. Doing my own curry tonight mind ...

We also live near a perfume factory, I love the smell of that on a evening too :)

thetemptationofchocolate · 03/12/2016 17:36

I can't help wondering - is your neighbour called Andy? Does he have a piano? And a thing about trees? This sounds a bit like the neighbour from that other thread.

Boundaries · 03/12/2016 17:37

I have a solution.

Move next door to me OP.

Then cook more food.

Then give the leftovers to me.

Ok?

Lorelei76 · 03/12/2016 17:37

OP what did your DH say in response?

SusannahL · 03/12/2016 17:45

A friend of mine a while back had some Indians move in next door and they cooked very pungent curry every night. The smell in my friend's house was so bad that she had to mention it. It didn't go down well!

Surely it's no more acceptable to subject your neighbours to your cooking smells, as it would be to subjecting them to your choice of loud music?

wotoodoo · 03/12/2016 17:53

Send them an invitation to dinner!

That would neutralise any ill will and could develop a nice neighbourly cordiality x

limitedperiodonly · 03/12/2016 17:55

I used to drive past a sugar refinery on the way to work. That was a bad smell. Even worse than the whiff from the sewage works in Isleworth, west London when I lived here, if you can believe it.

Around about the same time we lived in a flat on the same floor as an Asian couple. It really smelled, not because of their cookery, but because they left rubbish in the communal areas for their son to come round to pick up. Sometimes he left it for a few days which wasn't great in the summer.

Possibly it had something to do with their ethnicity in that they expected their child to do things for them that they could have done themselves. They should have trained him better or got up off their lazy arses and gone to the communal bins every day. But you can be unlucky with neighbours whatever their background. Or lucky.

Memoires · 03/12/2016 18:04

Ooh please come and cook at my house! Perhaps every day for a month? (I have no idea how any of my neighbours would react - probably quite positively - but I would like to be able to watch you, so I can learn Malaysian cuisine...)