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The first of a three-part series that explores the rise of the design-led restaurants and cafes, and the way we used to eat and drink
In this era obsessed with image and Instagram, the notion of a modern-day drinking or dining establishment that doesn’t prize its appearance is as unlikely as Kim Kardashian retreating from the spotlight. Yet for all the visual content we are bombarded with, designing a restaurant, bar or cafe in the sense that we now understand—with the expertise and creative energies of the architect, interior designer and artisan coming together – this is a recent development and was for a long time limited to those with the capital.
International hospitality brands like Hilton and Holiday Inn, which made their Malaysian debut in the early '70s, and the purpose-built local brands like Federal Hotel and Merlin (now Concorde Hotel) that predate them, had the real estate to play with, and the budgets and connections to match. When Malaysia’s elite and aspirational classes weren’t circulating and cutting deals at private clubs, luxurious spaces designed to encourage patrons to stay and play like The Paddock Supper Club, Tin Mine and the revolving Bintang Restaurant became their playgrounds.
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This was unlike the imported US fast food chains that followed when KFC, A&W and McDonald’s arrived in Malaysia in the '70s and '80s. Utilising psychology and design tricks adapted from the lunch houses of industrialised US, they gamed the customer experience. Colours like red and yellow were used to increase appetite, uncomfortable moulded and bolted plastic furniture increased customer turnover, and repeatable design typography created instant recognisability and engendered a reassuring familiarity regardless of geographical location. They didn’t want you to stay, but they did want you to return.
For Kian Liew, head of global interior design for a Singapore hospitality group, the synergy between cuisine and interior design has always been fundamental to the experience. “A meal is an experience, not just gastronomical but also spatial,” he explains. “The unassuming kopitiam setting is as important to one’s enjoyment of char kway teow as the amount of wok hei.”
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It was the economic boom of the '80s and the excesses that followed that saw fine dining establishments in global capitals recast themselves in the role of the test kitchen and level up with design-led venues and inventive culinary concepts. Lai Siew Hong, founder and chief executive designer of Blu Water Studio (who designed the luxe The Edison George Town, transformed EQ KL, and playfully chic CitizenM KL) remembers celebrity chefs such as Wolfgang Puck and Alain Ducasse among the instigators of this inventive movement.
“Their innovative dining concepts, which reflected international influences and modern interior design, created a unique dining experience for diners,” he recalls. Dining out had become theatre. Instead of tickets, diners had a waitlist for tables that could take as long as six months.
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Malaysia’s formal aesthetic awakening gathered pace in the '90s as international names like the US' Adam Tihany, Japan’s Superpotato and Australia’s Poole Associates poured their creative juices into early incarnations of hotel-based dining establishments like Shangri-La Kuala Lumpur’s Lafite, Lemon Garden and Zipangu; Starhill’s Shook!; and the Ascott’s Sevenatenine.
Access to the internet and immediate, unlimited content from around the world had primed an audience of increasingly wealthy and well-travelled Malaysians hungry for culinary drama.
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Befitting that period, the overarching themes gracing the capital’s culinary scene mirrored in mood and style the sleek, shimmering form of the newly completed Petronas Twin Towers. Its steely, masculine ambition was evident in the elegant white tablecloth and marble opulence of Cilantro at MiCasa, the austere wall-to-wall booths and futurist optic fibre lighting of Third Floor at J.W. Marriott, and the inspired alchemy of contemporary and classic at Frangipani in Changkat Bukit Bintang.
Located in a restored art deco building, Eddie Chew and Chris Bauer’s contemporary French restaurant was unlike anything we had seen before. Featuring perforated steel panels and mesmerising ebony water in a central courtyard, the now-closed restaurant remains as compelling in memory as Bauer’s unsurpassed warm tea smoked salmon.
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